What a Welcome!

I arrived into the airport yesterday to see a large Israeli flag planted in the ground outside the airport. I couldn’t help but smile looking at it, as it really sank in for the first time that from that moment forth, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of in being Jewish.

I arrived just in time to catch Sukkot (more on Sukkot later). I walked outside of the airport and I saw a few Orthodox Jews literally running around with the Four Spices of Sukkot (lulav, hadass, aravah, and etrog). Now this was just plain funny. Every time I’ve ever traveled to a foreign country, I saw scammers and dodgy people hanging outside the airport, preying on the tourists. Here I saw Orthodox Jews praying for the tourists. They were running around to people offering them blessings and lending them their Four Spices so they could make the blessings of Sukkot if they so chose. They didn’t want money or anything; they just wanted to welcome people and help people fulfill the mitzvah of saying blessings for the holiday. How about that for culture shock?

I jumped in a sherut and headed for Jerusalem. [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”] I arrived at my Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Machon Shlomo, and was welcomed very warmly by my fellow Yeshiva Bochurim. Everyone offered to help me carry my things, get my room set-up and settled in, etc. The one person who couldn’t be there to greet me went so far as to write a thoughtful, one-page note saying he had heard about me and was looking forward to learning together this year. He added an apology for not being able to be there when I arrived. This should give an idea as to the caliber of the guys I am studying with here. All of them are from the US, so having made the trek out themselves they knew exactly what was on my mind: “You must be starved and exhausted.” So my choices were to go pass out or to leave immediately for dinner with a Rabbi in Kiriyat Sefer.

“Wow,” I thought, “I’m not even here 15 minutes and I’m already packing into a sherut and headed to a settlement in the West Bank.” [Sherut, Hebrew for “service,” is an Israeli collective taxi equivalent to crowding 15 people in an 8-seater van; more accurately described in Turkey, as they call it a dolmuş, meaning “stuffed.”]

Since it is the Jewish holiday Sukkot all week, we ate with Rabbi Lessen outside in his sukkah. Besides taking the opportunity to get to know the Rabbi and his family, I had a chance to chat with them a little about living in a settlement. I could tell we were coming from very different worlds. His children were particularly interested in the fact that I spoke Arabic; apparently they rarely meet Arabic speakers. The kids said they were interested in learning. I naively asked, “Don’t you have any Arab friends?” and one of the daughters gave me a petrified look [the type of look I imagine you would get from a flight attendant by saying ‘bomb’ on an airplane].

-Jacob chimed in, “Don’t you realize people here are scared to death of Arabs?”
----I lifted my eyes brows and said, “Do they really think all Arabs are out to kill them?”
-“Yeah, they do. You might have had a different experience because you’ve met Arabs from all over the world. But realize the only Arabs people in the West Bank interact with are the Palestinians throwing stones and blowing up buses.”

I naively thought to myself, “I’m sure people here would be much less afraid of Arabs if they actually met them.” My idealism got the better of me and I suggested to the Rabbi’s young daughter that she make some Arab friends. She seemed genuinely perplexed. She took my advice to heart but wasn’t sure how to act on it. “So I just go to an Arab town and try to make a friend?” –at which point someone interjected, “Whoa! What are you telling her? Are you trying to get her killed?! Now she’s going to think it’s safe to just run around and try to make friends with any Arab.”

I’ve tried to stay far away from the Israel-Palestine debate for as long as I can remember. On my first evening here I received a jolt of realization that there’s no way to avoid it here. At least here I can bypass the intentionally misleading “reporting” that we are hand-fed all over the world (and especially in the US). I am finally going to get a first-hand perspective from both sides and see the truth behind what’s really going on without the veil of the profit-driven, pop-media.