Homeland Insecurity

Flying back to Israel, my motherland, is always an anthropological experience, which starts already at the airport in New York. It's been a while, however, since I flew El-Al, the national airline, whose JFK flights are notoriously known for their high concentration of orthodox Jews from Brooklyn. True, all man are created equal, and yet my own informal statistics show that these guys are --by far-- both overweight and over fertile, much more than the general population. They beget like rabbits and eat like pigs, and they pray every 6 hours or so, so they are constantly in motion, and the extremists among them, get this, would not seat next to a foreign woman, because women are unholy enough for them. So you can imagine that having 300+ of these penguins in their black shtreimels and fur hats in a condensed 747 is no picnic by any means. Just getting the seating arrangement is in itself a human sudoko puzzle for the mathematically inclined, and the gazzilion babies, which are crying in the background, don't make it any simpler.

But this is just the beginning. In what other country will the uniform-clad, audible bubble-gum-chewing, 50 year old passport control officer full with her purple-red hair, call on you. “Darling, your passport is about to expire, baby”? I guess I just got too used to American formalism with its overstated MRs. and SIRs to feel comfortable when officers call me 'baby'. Although, truth be said, I'm was little flattered, I must admit :-)

I go on a tour to the north part of the country with my parents and my in-laws. We decide to stop at the famous Kineret cemetery, which kisses the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s only sweet water source. Several of the country’s forefathers are buried here. More than water emanates from here to the rest of the desert. First among these is the famous poet Rahel. Like many other great biblical figures, she too, in the public memory and on her simple white tombstone, has no last name. As we approach, I see that nestled under the palm trees that graze both the sky and the ground a poem book is attached by a short metal chain to the tombstone. A young man is holding it with his hand. He wears simple cloths, his sun-glasses are shifted off his eyes on onto his black curls, and his cell-phone is dangling from his neck. “Would you like me to read you a poem?” he asks as we approach. “Sure, why not, what poem will you read?” I play along, after conquering he initial surprise. “I’m not sure yet, why don’t you guys stand here for a few minutes, and I’ll get your vibe and decide”. We stand there for a couple of minutes while he absorbs our vibe. “OK, I’ve got just the thing for you” he finally concludes, and starts reading a sad poem on page 76

Do you hear me, you who are
So far away from me, my dear?
Do you hear me crying aloud,
Wishing you were well, wishing you were near?
The world is vast, its ways diverse,
Brief meetings, partings long,
Men, with unsure feet, post on never to return, too weak
To find the treasure they have lost.



“Do you come here often?” I ask. “I try to, it’s the force of habit, my parents used to come here a lot”. We go on our way, but I keep thinking of that man for the rest of the day.

Every time there I’m afflicted with the same disease: a version of the Stockholm syndrome overtakes me after a few days. Less than a week into a homeland visit my captive's eye becomes blind to the aesthetics of evil, to the soiled buildings, to the smell of cat urine that is so typical of Tel-Aviv, and to the aggression of the drivers on the street and the headlines in the newspapers, and instead identifies with the Levantine architecture, and the mild weather and the middle-eastern hospitality and family rumble. Tel-Aviv is everything that Brooklyn is not, and vice versa, and yet there is something heartwarming about this place at the end of the world (local think it's the middle of the world), a sort of sense of home and security that is hard to explain to anyone that was never there. Something in me craves it. The tension can tear me from the inside.