Israel: Part Two

"You have to give them attitude, if you want their respect," my mom tells me.  So, when I'm in Israel, I'm insulting Israelis left and right.  First you have to break them, then smile sweetly, and then break them again.  And I don't make that many friends, but I command respect and get a black eye.

In Jerusalem, I reunite with long-lost cousins, Shalva and Simon and Michael and Jeremy and Batya (who likes Twilight, and loves Edward and Abercrombie and Fitch).  It's all a mind-twirl.  And late nights in Jerusalem, with soccer being projected onto white screens, and purple swirls of hookah smoke.  In Israel, you can drink in the streets, so you purchase the big bottles of Goldstar and sit on a high cement ledge, and let your legs dangle like a schoolgirl.  And there's the skateboarder who I keep seeing, who's always red-eyed and dazed, and he keeps falling off his board and scuffing his knees.

And after Jerusalem, there's Motti, who shows me around Tel Aviv, the nooks and crannies of this urban sprawl, with lots of Ping Pong on the beach and speedos and techno.  Motti shows me the ins and outs, the ropes.  This small kitchenette, misplaced between fruit vendors and a guy who sells Levi's knock-offs, is packed.  Minced meats with cilantro and garlic sizzling on the fry, as pasta's tossed.  This is the street food in Tel Aviv, hummus whipped like butter and doused in syrupy olive oil.  It's this thick smell of sweat and fry... and yes, malt beverages.  The next day, Motti takes me to Jaffa, where I pause for the next few days. 

When we first get to Jaffa, it's hot, but the Mediterranean Sea is turquoise and cool.  "I'm going to take you for the best food," Motti says and he parks on a steep hill.  Outside is dingy and inside is dingier with white walls and long picnic tables and, mostly, Arabic men speaking loud and soaking warmed pita into bowls of garbanzo and strange bean and oil, ornamented with chili flakes.  Is it Egyptian?  I think that's what he tells me.  And it's thick and sour and warm and, for the rest of the day, I'm stuffed.

Jaffa is brown ruins and blue sea and one tall clock tower.  And every so often, throughout the day, one mosque starts to sing through the megaphone speakers and another mosque, two blocks away, competes... and then a third... and a fourth.  And it's rivaling mosques with booming speakers and the city rattles.  And where do these mosques get their sound equipment?  Best Buy? 

I stay in a Moorish-type youth hostel, in my private room with private bath (how decadent).  It's yellow and green, looking down through a cathedral-type window, onto the broken down street.  It's beautiful; black-cobble stone charm, rough and tough, with flea market hustlers and strings of dirty rainbow-colored light-bulbs, twisting around the lamp-posts.  There's a skyline of the Tel Aviv metropolis.  It comforts me in some sick way.  There are the ruins of this ancient sea-port town, peeling pink buildings, Israelis arguing, and hostelers bonding (random, jigsaw people with no coordination and jagged edges), and the skyline.  On the roof of this hostel, it's very Moroccan and red and yellow and blue; there are mattresses to lie and chairs to sit... and a communal kitchen and constant music.  Sitting on the roof-top, on the edge, looking down at the twinkling lights of late-night dives.  The mosques are singing, cars are honking, a radio is humming, a plane is roaring, and a bell is chiming.  The end.

Israel: Part One

A Jerusalem Sketch

Israel's hot.  It's brown and messy with unpolished silver, hot tea sipped in glass cups... that kind of thing.

Israel's a big flirt.  Paris flirts too, but Paris is sluttier.

Israel's mystical and grungy.  It's four cardboard walls stapled together and somehow it stands straight up.

Israeli soldiers, in their muddy green outfits, red berets, pants tucked into their shoe-shined boots, and a rifle criss-crosses their chest.  And through all my traveling, never have I met people more devoted to their country.

It's mismatched, biblical ruins on the street-sides and shawarma.  It's quartered and sectioned-off and there's no real explanation to this controversial parcel of land, the approximate size of New Jersey.

It's Israel... and it is said that my father's father stood on a corner, in his Eastern European shtetl of Antepol, Poland, and, way before 1947 and the Six Day War, he spoke passionately about returning to the homeland.  And in these shtetles, Hebrew was the language you studied, but Yiddish was the language you spoke, but he defied that, on a soapbox, in the middle of the square, speaking in Hebrew, telling the people to go to Israel.  And that's what Hilda says.  Hilda said, "he had a million dollar brain with a ten cent screw."  He spoke in Hebrew, a little before Hertzl, and he never went.

I come from seven or eight generations of Rabbis, this lineage of clergymen... it's the family business.  And then my father, with five daughters and no sons... no Rabbis to continue the familial tradition.  I go to Israel with Birthright, at first, one week and a half, and then travel this country for about a month after wards, maybe a little less.

And there's Jerusalem.  It's the biblical city with white buildings that look like chalk, dotting brown mountainsides, and old patchwork stones.  Clotheslines zig-zag in the distance.  And Old Jerusalem, the tour-guides with their red flags and the tourists with fanny packs and orthotic sandals, is over-crowded. Sight-seers and religious zealots jam-packed into this small city.  It's extremism to the max with black burkas and white tzit tzit.  Of course, it's overwhelming and it gives you a panic attack to stand in the center; your clothes cling to you, drenched in sweat, as swarms of people swish past.

The Kotel, this Western Wall, King Solomon's temple, the ideal Masonic form, with pigeons cooped inside gaps in the wall, looking down and cooing.  Folded paper crammed between the slabs, and green moss spilling over.  It's still chaos because there's singing and praying and people walking backwards.  Squat women with long black skirts touch it, their head turned down, bawling.  It's the people, rocking back and forth.  It's the plastic white lawn chairs and it's the pigeons.  First, you wait in line and people cut in front of you, but you wisen up and elbow your way up to the front.  You face the slabs of weathered stone and you're so close you can kiss it.  You look up at this wall and marvel, "This was in the Bible."  (I never read the Bible; I studied it, but that's it.)  And when I'm at this wall, which I studied for countless years in grade school (with pop quizzes and finals), all the sounds hush and I squeeze my folded paper into a crease between two stones.  There's this buzz, like a television set to mute, and this static.  This is my moment with the wall, white pigeons staring down.  When I'm done, I walk backwards because that's what they tell me to do.  "Never," they say, "have your back turned to the wall."

And there's the shuk, the public market, with dates and fruit and nuts, haggling, no plastic bags, and no standard health practices.  The orthodox and the secular, scrambling for last-minute deals, before the Shabbos.

And there's the Dead Sea, it burns your scabs as you float.  Sulphur baths that smell like rotten eggs.  You pay for entry and then you take a shuttle, but I walk because the shuttle just left... and there are signs, water-marks where the sea used to be, and I walk past "1999" and "2000" and then, as it gets closer to the stinging water, "2009" and "2010."  It's too much salt for life to exist...the lowest elevation on this planet.  It's a good 15 minute walk.  And soon, this narrow strip of water will dry up.  You finally reach the water, and people float by you.  And just across the way, not so far-off, there's Jordan.

So, it starts with birthright, traveling alongside forty-or-so Jewish young adults, still gangly and still baby-faced.  It's ten days, going from one place to the next, sitting in an air-conditioned bus, as this massive vehicle snakes around narrow cliffs.  It's hyper-accelerated and it's like speed-dating.  There's no time to sleep or really connect or process.  This is the Wailing Wall and this is the Dead Sea and this is King David's toilet.  And it's a ten day blur of name games and icebreakers.  There's the girl who, every two days, is with a different fellow, and she leaves a messy trail of boys in her wake.  And there are two religious kids and there are cliques.

With no time to waste, ten days later, after beckoning my fellow birthrighters farewell at the airport, I'm hopping trains to Haifa with Tzlil, the armed guard.  It's Goldstars at the pub and the next morning, just before she drops me off at the bus station (where, for the first time in ten days, I'm all alone and my bus is late), I meet her grandma.  She's a holocaust survivor from Hungary and she can't speak English and I can't speak Hebrew, but I like her.  She feeds me fiber cereal.

Why I Hate Betsy Ross

Last minute, Birthright has an open space.  Somehow, I have to get to Philadelphia in four days.  I buy my ticket and Philadelphia is the scariest pace I've ever been.  After my 5AM plane arrival, I shuttle to downtown.  The air's thick and curdled.  There's no wind- nothing; it's still and flat and hot as hell.  I manage to be there for, maybe, half a day, and, in that time, I sleep on a bench, get the stink eye from Betsy Ross (that "patriotic" cow), and become a charity case for a Chasidic family, living in the outskirts of this terrible city.  Shlomo picks me up in his silver minivan and he drives me to his air-conditioned home.  They offer me cold pasta and orange juice and water and bed and shower and I'm ever so grateful.  And thank you.  Thank you.  And their five children and mother and father and in-law and so on and so on.  It's bazaar, but this is Philadelphia.  They drop me off at the train-stop, and I shuttle to the station.  And on that train, I sit next to this Jordanian Jew with frazzled ringlets springing down his back, who happens to be on Birthright also (and for the next ten days, we end up being seat-partners on the bus).

So, that's all I have to say about Philadelphia.  It's a hell-hole, but I appreciate Shlomo and his family.  And yes, I understand the historical relevance of this god-forsaken city.  Yeah, Betsy Ross, I'm including you.  You did a beautiful job with the American flag.  You're stellar.  Good for you.  And although you gave me the coldest, dead-on glare, I'll give you credit for being able to operate a sewing machine.  Or was it hand-stitched?  Regardless, there's needle and thread.  Good going Betsy. 

Anyways, it's from Philadelphia, that I embark to Israel.  It's ten days with forty coming-of-age strangers (and two Rabbis)... and after that, it's three months of something else.  But, it's the beginning that explains everything.  From the beginning, comes the middle, and then the end.  So, this is my beginning.  This is my account of what happened after I encountered that hand-stitching Betsy and Benjamin too, who happens to be a pretty nice guy.  It's my three months abroad, with my squeaking New Balance nine-nine-threes (and why do they always squeak, like I was just walking through the rain...it must be the inserts) and my buckled gray backpack. 

And it begins in Philadelphia.  But, in Israel, it gets a little better.