My first Israeli day started at 12:01 am with my arrival at Ben Gurion Airport. It was incredibly busy with planes coming in from everywhere, but the most interesting passengers were from the U.S. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of teenagers between about 16 to 22 all on some kind of “school” trip to Israel. I think it was part of the Birthright movement. (For those who don’t know, a rich philanthropist set up a fund to pay for every Jew in the world between 16-25 to get a free 10 day trip to Israel. There has been a lot of obvious criticism of the program, but one has to admit it is a very interesting concept. What if Arab countries with their petro-dollars guaranteed a free trip to Mecca for every Arab in the world over 65. Obviously, that isn’t going to happen, which makes the fact that a rich Jew did it a very interesting and unique system) Anyway, the kids were really psyched, dancing and singing and lots of teenage energy, since it was equal boys and girls, you can image what it felt like. And of course all of this takes place right in the middle of the Christian Evangelical group and the old people from Florida who have come to Israel to die.
I eventually made it to my apartment where my first project was to get on the Web. I spent one hour with tech support, generally in Hebrew trouble-shooting the connection. Even though the combination of Microsoft and Hebrew was almost lethal, I think I can honestly say tech support was great. You’re going to have to excuse my obvious chauvinism/racism but throughout the whole process I kept saying to myself, “I know this is going to work, because my tech support person is Jewish.” I know how bad that sounds, but I felt really comfortable when I heard that my support person’s name was Moshe. What was curious was I said, “I’m renting an apartment, using someone else’s internet line, I only want to pay for 6 weeks, can you do it.” And the response was a prompt. “Of course.” He seemed completely unfazed that I was asking for a number of non-traditional requests; I’m pretty sure that in the states they would have stopped me at, “I’m using someone else’s line.”
Then to the bank and grocery store and the best thing is that everyone speaks English. The bad thing is that everything is written in Hebrew, there are no English signs and everyone is speaking Hebrew, I never hear any English being spoken. The common theme of my excursion was that everyone was talking and arguing about everything. If you go to the teller and ask to change money, there is first a discussion and then an argument about the exchange rate; you go to the grocery store and buy cheese, there is a discussion and then an argument about the weight. So this is the insight I got, I know its not politically correct, but here goes. This country is based on a racial belief that first Jews are different, second that they are allowed to set up a country just for them, third, Jews are probably better if not chosen above others. So if your society is based on all these racial assumptions, I think it is probably acceptable to make stereotypical statements about Jews. After all, I didn’t start this game, “they” did. If I’m in America and someone says “Asians are bad drivers”, I get to say, “No, in America all people are equal and that’s an unfair racial stereotype…blah, blah.” But in Israel, making racial comments is part of the vocabulary; after all, the premise is that Jews are different so if that is true, a discussion of how they are different is always in order. That said, my observation is simply that everyone is talking and arguing all the time. Except of course me! I’m just standing there trying to figure out what the signs mean.
Anyway, the day was a bit depressing. I couldn’t understand anything I read and I could understand anything that people were saying and I kind of came to the conclusion that even if I lived as long as Methusala (900+ years) I was never going to learn this stupid language.
As the day wore on and we got closer to sundown a dramatic change took place. Holidays begin at sundown, not sunrise, so the coming of Independence Day was anticipated by everyone. I read that they locked down the West Bank and jets were going over the city, and I could see that there was going to be a large military presence for the big party planned in Rabin Sq. (That’s were Rabin was shot after speaking to a huge peace demonstration.) This is a good time to comment on an image that I will not soon forget. I was walking down the street and I heard a “gaggle” of girls laughing behind me. I turned around and saw about 10 of the cutest, 18-20 year old girls, all dressed in military fatigues, combat books, pony-tails and Uzi sub-machine guns, some with pistol on their belts. Wow, that really gave me pause. It wasn’t long before I saw their male equivalents all just as cute, young and loaded down with weaponry. I know much has been written about compulsory military service, and one obvious effect is that teenagers here look really fit. I’ve seen almost no obesity and all the kids look really trim.
At 8p.m. I was walking down the street on the way to the huge gathering and the sirens went off, I was prepared to “duck and cover” but it was the announcement for the moment of silence. Everyone and everything in every part of the country stopped for one minute. I’m sorry to have to rehash an over discussed image, but everything really did stop and not in a perfunctory way, but it seemed to me that everyone was actually contemplating whatever the memorial was supposed to symbolize. Didn’t something like this happen when John Lennon died, I seem to remember that the world stopped for a moment and it actually worked and was meaningful.
When I got to the Rabin Sq there were about 10,000 people, maybe more. Candles were lit on the stage, (see attached picture) and what followed was a 2 hour ceremony. It was all in Hebrew so I didn’t understand a word of it, but my under-developed Jewish soul, certainly was awakened. The music was so mournful, groups that reminded me of Peter/Paul/Mary can on to sing what must be the Israeli equivalent of Puff the Magic Dragon, lots of soulful clarinet/Klezmer stuff, an Israeli Joan Baez came out and sang something that had the word Aba (father) in it a lot, tears were running down my cheeks. Its was similar to that feeling one gets listening to a Puccini opera, when you have no idea what they are singing about, but you feel whatever it is, you have to cry your eyes out. I looked around and was struck by the fact that these are all Jews. It was hard to fathom. There were 3 Jews my age in Aurora, Illinois where I grew up. I probably knew 4 Jews in Berkeley and 2 of there were my Hebrew teachers. I haven’t quite come to grips with what this means, but on the most simple level I thought, “there is almost nobody here who thinks Jesus is the son of god and was born from a virgin birth.” That was cool.
Ignoring for the moment what all this means (politically) what was really clear to me is that whoever put this country of Israel together really understood how to manipulate symbols. If the cute teenage girls with Uzi’s doesn’t get you, then the Holocaust survivor testimonials will. I know it’s way too early for me to be claiming to profoundly “understand” something, but I was struck by the fact that during the day all I saw was Jews arguing and presumably acting badly and then as soon as the sirens went off for the moment of silence, there was an overwhelming acknowledgement of the singleness of purpose that is universally shared. What that purpose is will of course be discussed and argued vehemently at times, but it seemed to me that the basic premise that there was a common purpose is never nor can it ever be denied. I know that sounds a bit amorphous, and without more details, it is probably meaningless, but nevertheless, it was pretty cool to experience that moment of realization.
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