Is It Me or Is Israel Calmer These Days?

My husband Ken and I just came back from Israel. It was too short of a time – only one week — but really quite wonderful. We spend time in Tel Aviv, Acco, Ginot Shomron and Jerusalem. In all of these cities as well as at the Ben Gurion airport, I noticed a calm that was so wonderful and encouraging. Perhaps, in terms of context, it was as a result of feeling the conflicted, fractured and difficult environment that I presently find in the United States. And yet, people still ask me, “Did you feel safe?” My answer is as close to an unequivocal YES as one can give in our world of today. It was comforting to walk through the old city, through the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Acco and see all of the Christians, Jews, Armenians, Muslims, people of different racial and ethnic groupings and just all doing whatever they were doing. This is much more often my experience of Israel than is the case for many who think about what goes on in this land, I believe. That is because I trust my surroundings and feel a kinship to other garbs indicating faith, not fear because of them or any need to retreat to horrible stereotypes.

I believe in this calm and in the many, many thousands of people that make it happen daily in so many dedicated efforts, programs and initiatives. In Israel, I know that there are indeed concerns about safety and security as there are in the rest of the world; but to be honest many of us who are often there tell stories of walking around all hours of the night, of sending our children off to play, and of so many markers of feeling that one is indeed safe and can have confidence in the other people with whom they come in contact in the vast majority of cases. To be sure, there are instances that do not support this sense, but coming back to the United States and to Philadelphia and seeing the news that now plays 24/7 here, is that sense really so strong in this country at this point in time?

I loved watching Muslim women shopping for clothes in Mamilla Mall, the throngs of people meandering through the streets of the Arab market and then through the Armenian and Christian quarters as well as the Jewish Quarter of the old city, and learning about the shared chapters of history and dynamics of the land as told through the stones of Acco and the narrated accounts of its sights. Learning about the music from so many lands in the new Kikar HaMusica (Music Courtyard) in Jerusalem off of Yoel Solomon again confirmed my sense that we as human beings share so much in terms of wanting to express ourselves and use our creativity. I always see this in the art, dance, music, theatre and so much else that Israel has to offer. I will parenthetically state that there were way too many tattoos in Tel Aviv that brought me up short, but apparently this is part of the scene there; who knew? Simultaneously, I noted there was less smoking, something I think that is a sort of unofficial barometer of the sense of calm or degree of stress at present in Israel. People were chatty, storekeepers sociable, and even the traffic seemed to be somewhat civil. I actually enjoyed being at the Kotel for the first time in what feels like decades.

There are certainly stark realities that confront you as well. Watching the lines of cars while we were waved through checkpoints was difficult, though I must state that we were stopped at one of the checkpoints and our car and its contents were checked. Driving through the countryside in our rented car or on our beautiful train trip from Tel Aviv to Acco, one could see some of the visibly depressed areas and these were difficult to consider. Yes, Israel is not all rosy and beautiful – it is a real country with beautiful aspects and challenging issues. It struggles with its dual identity as a Jewish nation and as a democratic state. Israel is challenged by different people, with their respective narratives, and claims to its soil. And of course, while these larger challenges loom, there are always those individuals who will act inappropriately and pose dangerous threats, thwarting the possibilities of what could be in this already amazing place. The important thing is to not allow these individual antagonists any more power when we consider Israel than one would when considering all that is good about the United States, while acknowledging our challenges alongside individuals and their aberrant behavior.

About a year ago, I ran a program for the Multi-Faith Council in which I am involved, called Israel: So Many Stories of Cooperation. It focused on those hundreds of thousands of people who are playing sports together across national, ethnic and religious lines; circus troupes that bring people together from those same groupings; cities of cooperation; organizations dedicated to environmental sustainability that involve all people and groups; cooperative medical ventures; a wonderful school system for Israeli and Arab students and their families; theatre groups that are sharing the narratives of so many different groups in Israel and so much else. I began the program by suggesting that all of the people in the room who were reeling as a result of what has been going on in this country take a few hours off from our reality and consider a much more peaceful and calm part of the world -- Israel with its Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Palestinian, Bahai, Buddhist, many nationalities, and its population that IS DIVERSITY of the highest degree. Israel cannot escape this diversity and the many claims on its soul to be what so many different people need.

Maybe at this point in time, people in the United States are feeling just a bit of this as we are being brought up short to acknowledge the different populations in this country and the need to interact with each other and heal the many deep rifts that come from not acknowledging each other. Maybe, just maybe, Israel has a thing or two to teach us about this and we, too, can hope to reclaim some calm in our lives.