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I finally arrived at my hotel twenty hours after departing Allentown. So grateful, but so tired. The trip organizers were able to upgrade our hotel…I can only think it's because hotels have fewer guests right now…I was not expecting to see and experience beauty and pleasure on this trip, but travel sometimes yields its unasked-for jewels. When I entered my room for the evening (really, “night” at this point), I noticed a loud and strange noise coming from the open window. Upon investigating, I saw that it was not a window, but a balcony. The sound was the monumental surf of the seashore, across the street. I gazed upon paradise. It could be so easy to forget that just a few miles away children are suffering underground.
Like many Israeli hotel breakfasts, this morning’s was an array of flavors well beyond the American conception of breakfast…from sweet to savory to umami. Sour to rich. And dark-tasting coffee. Olives and dates and nut-filled pastries. Eggs and cheese and wonderful bread. And salads! It could be so easy to forget that a few miles away there are families who suffer on the brink of famine. It’s hard to figure out how to feel.
As I write this overlooking the water, I see runners going by and people splashing their feet in the surf.
I am reminded of the interview on NPR with Penina Pfeuffer I quote the other day (previous post). Meghna Chakravarty, the interviewing journalist, asked her to talk about a previous time she had mentioned she could see Gaza from her apartment. She clarified that it was not that she could see Gaza. . . it was that she knew it was only a few miles away. It was not across the globe. It was not what Vietnam was to the United States. It was not as far away from her as Iraq or Afghanistan are/were from us.
And, yet, I look out on a peaceful boardwalk. I watch people listening to headphones, their bare feet in the sand.
I know that on many US campuses, as I write this, protestors are crying out against “colonialism.” I think for many Jews of older generations this sounds like a woke buzzword. But, this is not a new idea, and it is not a radical one. I remember studying colonialism in college, and I found it to be a profound model for social critique. It has even helped me unpack and enlighten my relationship with Israel (as an American Jew) more ethically through the years. However, as I look at the evidence of leisure and economic prosperity all around me, I do not see colonialism. Colonialism was never about one group prospering while another does not. It is about claiming racial overlordship in a foreign place—a place to which you have no claim. Palestinians may have claim to this land, but it is not without common claim by Jews. What looks like colonialism is just the success of one group with claim to this land.
Pollyannish as it may sound, it is my hope that this success, beauty, and blessings may be shared. The vision does not have to be one of enmity. There is a version of Zionism in which this is a Jewish homeland, but that it is not ONLY a Jewish homeland.
Being here reminds me of being in the United States . . . we sit miles from center cities bereft of opportunity and safe neighborhoods. And, yet, we turn our eyes away when “the good life” and its moments of pleasure show up on our doorstep.
We deserve our prosperity (even if we do not have it) as much as Israeli Jews deserve theirs. Palestinians deserve prosperity just as much, too. Israel cannot make this prosperity happen for non-citizens (to be distinguished from Palestinian citizens of Israel), but it can also do more to stop standing in its way.
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This morning, I slept late in an attempt to recover from my hours and hours of travel. I could hear the surf again, but still did not want to rouse yet. (Our program starts at 1:30pm today). But, then, I heard a siren. I panicked a bit. Surely, no bomb will hit the hotel! I did not know where the shelter was! I looked in the hallway and called out. No answer. I went out on the balcony to see if I could figure out what was going on outside the hotel. People in the street, people on the beach, people in cars, and people on balconies had all stopped and were standing still as the siren wailed. Of course. I had seen film footage of this. I knew about it, but I had never been here to participate in it: on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) in Israel at 10:00am, a siren blares. All the Jews in the nation stop where they are and what they are doing and stand at attention--amod dom. I stood on my balcony, participating in this Israeli mitzvah for which I had never had the solemn opportunity. It was powerful and holy.
Today is Yom HaShoah. And, yes, people are on the beach and out running. There are surfers and sea kayakers. People are at work. People have their dogs and are doing yoga.
But the hotel’s lobby has a banner with a lone flame, along with the word, “Yizkor”—“Remember.” The airport last night was bedecked with the faces of hostages and art exhibits in their honor. The construction site across from the hotel has a huge banner that reads: “Yachad Nanetzach”—“Together We Will Be Victorious.”
As anti-Semitism has been rising all around us in the United States, I have begun to see myself in all the old photos from Europe in WWII. The women in these photographs—at home, in transit, under siege, in camps—they seemed to be from another world; a time wholly other and apart. But, more and more each day, as hate rises forthrightly around us, I am seeing myself in them. I see that I am no different. I see that their moment was just like this moment. The black and white of the photography is no longer the protective forcefield it once seemed.
And I think how often I forget—how often we in the United States Jewish community forget—how much this nation was built on the shoulders of a national trauma. Not just that Israel’s independence was a result of the Holocaust (scholars debate this), but that the ethos and culture of this place is still a story about trauma. Trauma of 1939, and traumas of 1948 and 1973 and 2001 and 2015. . .
But, we are American Jews. We started to build what our Jewish world meant long before this was a state. Our Judaism is about turning aside from so much of our difference (even more so than most of us realize). Life here in Israel is built around being a Jew(ish society) in the wide world with no filter. There is no protective covering of common nationhood beyond one's Jewish identity.
Like living on the border with Gaza, I imagine this edge feels like living on the line between life and death. On the living side, it is hard to walk away from a beautiful day at the beach.
Postscript: The receptionist at the hotel front desk was kind enough to show me how to get to the shelter in the hotel, which, by the way, she told me, they have not had to use much.
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