Jaffa

I just spent ten days in Israel, courtesy of Taglit-Birthright, a foundation that sends Jewish young adults to Israel to connect with their heritage as well as modern Jewish culture. My motivation was more about free travel than heritage -- I am somewhere between a nominal and secular Jew -- but I discovered my motivation didn't preclude having a profound experience. My brother was very worried about Zionist propaganda from the funders, and while I thought such content was likely

-- whether explicit or subtle -- I decided a trip to the Middle East would yield a much greater understanding of the culture and politics there regardless. It's worth saying that my understanding of information transfer from the perspective of social psychology suggests that I would be unable to resist some of that bias, even if I were aware of it during its presentation.

I hadn't been on an organized international trip since my studies abroad in college. This was different for many reasons, some unexpected. First, we 33 Americans were all 25 and 26 years old, intentionally escaping the crowds of college-age Jews on Birthright getting drunk for the first time and generally screwing around. The social vibe was playful and fun, but it was clear to me that I was traveling with adults. Birthright incorporates Israeli peers on their trips and we had six or seven traveling with us, mostly soldiers. Almost all Israelis go into the Army after high school and stay for two or three years, so these soldiers -- several of whom were carrying large rifles -- were actually younger than we were, and sometimes I felt annoyed at their antics. (I'm quickly becoming a crotchety old man.) We also had a traveling tour guide, who gave several lectures a day on anthropology and history explaining each site that we visited. She was excellent, thorough and pluralistic, and the perpetual context of her presentations made the trip intensely educational. I can't even remember what I thought about Israel before I left. It has been supplanted by a wealth of knowledge about the founding of the state of Israel (why? how?), the regional wars of the last hundred years, and also how that history is palpable on the city streets in a way American history is absolutely not. One effect of war, then, is that it sharpens perceptual boundaries, and reminds ethnic or geographic groups of their differences.

We started our tour in Jerusalem and quickly traveled north to the Golan Heights, the Sea of Galilee, and the ancient holy city of Tzfat. From there we explored the Judea desert and then Tel Aviv-Yaffo for several days. Israel is about the size of New Jersey and half desert, which makes for quick travel between sites. One morning we woke up in a Bedouin-style tent, hiked up Masada for sunrise, played at the Dead Sea, and went back to Jerusalem to tour underneath the Western Wall. Our time on the bus was enjoyably spent playing group question-and-answer games and talking with the Israelis. Our group was pleasantly non-cliquey. There were some social clots, but more than any other group I've been with, my habit of choosing different seats every day was well-received.

Traveling in Israel didn’t feel like any country I’d ever visited before. As a nominal Jew, I was welcomed by Israelis in a deeply personal way. I’m used to being seen as a walking dollar sign in most foreign countries, but when Israelis talked to me about their homeland they used remarkable pronouns: “we, yours, ours.” I have never been so welcomed. It is a heady feeling. I was aware that it’s not color-blind: if I were a different race or ethnicity, it would not have been the same. I was surprised to hear what Americans would consider blatantly racist language from some of my Israeli peers. It’s not the same culture, so I caution a hasty moral judgment; nonetheless, it’s obvious in Israel that race is very salient.

The social experience of the trip was transformative for me. It's always strange to cast yourself into a new social network, personality unforged, and navigate the resulting friends, acquaintances and can't-remember-her-name's. My friends through volleyball, poker and the ivory tower are in their 30s and 40s, and I'm unused to my own peers. Naturally, everyone manufactures some of their personality in order to be more likable. As I get older and act more maturely, I am more comfortable with myself and I manufacture less.

For security, our group was kept together almost all of the time and when we had free moments there were defined boundaries where we were allowed. This chafed a little, given my age and unusual breadth of travel experience, but it was okay until the final night in Tel Aviv. I was contacted through the hotel by a Israeli woman, Drora, an old friend of my mom's. (It was a delicious hotel note, horribly transcribed and addressed to KEMERON BRIK). I took a taxi to the very safe university district where Drora lived. There I met her again (apparently we had met in 1985), to hugs and kind promises of hospitality, and she reintroduced me to her daughter, who I quickly gathered had been asked to spend the evening with me. "Are you sure you want to hang out?" I said. "You don't even know me." She didn't hesitate. With her boyfriend and several friends, we attended a fancy piano concert, ate at a good Italian restaurant, and walked around the center. Kindly, they spoke English much of the time so that I could participate. Later in the evening, she confided that she worried that I, a random American, might have been "into clubbing," which was obviously not her scene.

This experience is notable for the crucial separation from the group and resulting better integration in Israel, with candid discussions over good wine.

Let's talk a while about the war in Gaza. I'd like to touch on two changes in my perception. This last violent chapter erupted a few days before I flew to Tel Aviv, and indeed seven of my tripmates canceled because of the war. The first change I feel is that making a moral judgment on the Israel-Palestine conflict now appears to me very complicated. I hesitate to accept either extreme: that the war is wrong or that it is right. I'm tending towards a cynical "it is," and from there, how to prevent it in the future. Before I left I was more fervently pro-peace. It was likely the conversations I had with Israelis themselves (they speak excellent English), coupled with my greater understanding of the ping-pong of violence in the region, that makes this military action appear in context to be more reasonable. I'm not saying it's proportionate or justified; you can decide. I'm explaining that my perception has become more nuanced by detail, and that broadening I welcome.

My second awareness was felt by the whole group: we were perfectly safe. It's hard to imagine that being in Israel is safe, as the tour organizer director said, given the war-torn images on CNN. We landed at a modern, bustling airport and proceeded into Jerusalem to sightsee, with no indication that this country was at war. The conflict is geographically small, and conflicts are well-known to Israelis, and life continued as normal. Certainly the group spent far more time complaining about being cold than talking about the ongoing war. Which, it's interesting to note, several Israelis asked us to call a "situation." Here as always, semantics are powerful, dividing terrorists from freedom fighters and wars from situations. I will choose sides on this one and call it a war.

A pivotal moment in my trip was a coexistence conference between a single Palestinian and a local Israeli as well as the soldiers in our group. The purpose of the talk was to explore modern coexistence, but in the context of the current war and very hard feelings on both sides, the discussion became heated. Our Palestinian presenter, a psychologist, was visibly uneasy and said he felt mixed about meeting with us. In times of conflict, the already tenuous links of his cross-cultural job become more difficult. He expected difficulty from his peers because of his dialog with us. He spoke calmly about the occupation of the West Bank, within Israel's borders but Arab and surrounded by a wall and military checkpoints, about the economic difficulty of traveling for work through multiple checkpoints even within the West Bank, and the social humiliation of the process. He also spoke about the history of Arab expulsion by the Israelis, notably in Jaffa where we were sitting, a majority Arab city previous to the independence of the Israeli state. I was intrigued by his distinction between negative demands (e.g., stop the rocket fire) and positive demands (e.g., provide citizenship, human rights, free flow of food and medicine). He answered questions with some glib bridging but it was just a normal conversation until one of the Israeli soldiers asked a barbed question about Palestinian rocket fire, a destructive question, and our Palestinian guest chose not to rise to the bait. Even as he answered the next question, two members of the Air Force (remember, younger than we are) hotly talked in Hebrew, stood up, and left the room. Suddenly everyone was paying attention. Our presenter remained calm, spoke a little more, we thanked him and he left. The two soldiers returned to the room in great agitation and lectured fervently, asking us to discard the Palestinian's "lies" and to know "the truth," for our own good. Such extremist talk is not unusual, but it was different to hear from a peer, and see how profoundly they believed it. I do not. I think both sides presented truths, historical and cultural, and I did not like being told what to believe. To their credit, my comment saying so opened a dialog from their lecture.

We left the room tense and buzzing from this glimpse into why the Jewish-Palestinian conflict is particularly intractable. I'm resisting the temptation to write a brief history of wars in the region (thinking of you, Spaceman), but if you want to understand the why of the current conflict, it is vital to read about the intense aggression Israel has experienced throughout its history. Israel exists at all because they took the land by force, and their awareness of where they would be without a state, i.e. spread out and frequently killed, hugely influences their current foreign and domestic policy. It's difficult to understand this from an American city that has never been under attack using a brain that isn't old enough to remember the threat of the Cold War, a war which still lacked the visceral impact of suicide bombings and rocket fire our Israelis peers have grown up with. Reading this over, I worry that it under-represents the Palestinian side. And that is a perfect demonstration of the ideological brainwashing that I did experience: nothing terrible, nothing extreme, just a lot more info about the Jewish side and more contact with Jewish people and with those things, more understanding and compassion. I didn't step foot inside the West Bank or Gaza, and so I can't speak about it. One note about the Holocaust Museum: we had a preparation seminar and then spent four hours inside of the excellent compound, bringing the history of persecution of the Jews to the forefront of our consciousness. Because of their awareness, it was then strange to see ignorance and disinterest when we asked questions about the Armenian genocide, sharing so much in common with the Holocaust. Israel does military exercises with Turkey, so maybe that’s why.

The war overshadowed our trip, but to be honest, it was not always in mind. We experienced Israel as tourists do, floating in the Dead Sea and marveling at Masada, and I only dedicate so much of this travelogue to war because it's worth talking about more than my touristy meals and sights. Briefly, I really enjoyed riding a camel in the desert, hooting and hollering, and eating fresh hummus and flatbreads with novel spices like zahtar. I'll finish with my journey home. We left Tel Aviv-Yafo at midnight, landing in Newark at the lovely hour of 5:30 am for the longest flight I've ever taken (12.5 hours). I spent the day in Manhattan with an old friend, wonderful to see him, and flew that night to the west coast. Somewhere in the air I realized I hadn't slept horizontally in almost 50 hours -- I had slept on planes, yes. Crusty and tired, I arrived home and passed out, waking up to the familiar symptoms of a post-flight cold. A week later I'm feeling myself again.

A few more pictures:

Our excellent tour guide, Noa Gihon

Shells underfoot at the Sea of Galilee

A delicious meal outside of the boundaries

Traveling in a gaggle makes it hard to integrate

Playing at a military outpost bordering on Syria

Cemetery of the second aliya

Torah scribe and artist in Tzfat

See that square? That’s a Roman fort. Roman! Near Masada in the Judea desert

The Dead Sea is an astonishing 30% salt

It’s true, one floats on the surface in a crazy way

Typical salad fare at dinner

A political sculpture in Jaffa

I had a profound time in Israel: it felt like a month instead of ten days, and I have grown significantly as a person because of the education I received and the valuable discussions with my Israeli peers. I’m grateful to Birthright for the gift of the trip. My interpretation of news on the Middle East has changed a lot since my return. It’s my personal opinion that The Economist provides an informed and fair perspective on the causes of and possible solutions to the ongoing conflict.