Stranger in the Strange, Holy Land

Saul finds Israel a real challenge. He comes back to the smoking, but I think he uses that to make concrete other things he finds difficult. As we drove from Hashmonean to Tiberias, he told me, “It’s hard when everyone around me is speaking Hebrew and I don’t understand.” In that conversation I told him several times over the past few days I’ve tried to imagine how Israel looks to him. I told him I remember the first time I went to Europe, when I was 16, I was amazed at how much smaller and more crowded everything seemed. The roads were narrower and smaller, the cars were certainly smaller. I told him I have the advantage of speaking Hebrew, and of having lived here for more than a year and of having visited. So it’s easier for me to feel more comfortable. Plus, speaking Hebrew to me is a kind of a game, to see how much I can understand and express.

He’s also challenged by the tumult and intensity of the Israeli public spaces he’s seen. For instance, he left his favorite face soap at our first hotel, and he needed more. And he was intimidated by the idea of having to venture out to find a store to find a replacement. So I offered to go for him. I had a blast asking the desk clerk which store might have something, (Superpharm), and then conferring with the sales people there to find something suitable. But I get how that would be difficult for someone for whom this is their first trip abroad.

When I got back to the hotel, and then over dinner, Saul talked more about what was bothering him about Israel. He can’t understand why he doesn’t feel the same intensity he felt at the Kotel throughout the country. In my words, how could the whole country, the Jewish people’s holy land, not exist on the same spiritual level?
My first attempts to talk about Israel as a real country, or about the differences between a myth and reality worked about as well as you think they did. Our drive through Beit Shean – the town – (see below) became a good way to talk about the difference between real life and the holiest Jewish place. I told him as we were driving through I glimpsed the people walking the sidewalks and was struck by a strong kind of ‘no where-ness’ in the town. ‘No where’ in the sense that it seemed like the kind of town where many people might feel they were going no where. “What do you mean?” he asked me. “Have you ever heard of Bet Shean?” He answered he had, only because one kid at school mentioned it in a trivia game in which the winner had to name the most Israeli cities. “Exactly. Even in Israel there’s a very real and hard life.”

Saul’s challenges with Israel challenge me as well, on several levels. It’s a lot easier to bring your son here and watch him get charged up at the Kotel than it is to see him dealing with the realness – and meanness – of life. Parents like exuberance a heck of a lot more than disillusionment. There’s still that part of me that wants to protect him from every hurt and injury life offers now, as a young adult, just as I could protect him as a newborn.

I also realize we are, in essence, visiting two entirely different countries. Because of my language skills, however limited, I have a language for connection. Because my previous experience here and in general, I know how to navigate between that which is mean and that which is not. As I write this it strikes me in some ways he is having a more pure experience. He is really ‘in’ Israel, immersed in it and surrounded by it. Israel is more ‘in’ me, governed by my filters, biases and, perhaps, even a certain amount of denial.