Rishon Rishon

Exciting Israel

Bjørn Stærk writes a thoroughly entertaining post on his Baltic travels. Among (many) other things, he relates his meeting with a 16-year-old Israeli girl in Denmark:

To her, the tension has become part of the background, part of what's normal. She had moved to Canada once, but found it boring. With all the tension gone, far away from the big conflict, life became suddenly too quiet, too bland. Something was missing, and Israel was her home anyway. So she returned, and intends to stick with her country, even if she has no hope for peace. In a year, she's off for two years of military service.

I share this girl’s sense of excitement about living in Israel, and I think I can assure Bjørn that it doesn’t come from the danger. In fact, I feel much safer living in Israel than I did living in West Philadelphia, where I lived for four years while I attended university. (In fact the worst part of the city is North Philadelphia, West Philadelphia being only moderately bad.) I was afraid to walk the streets at night, and it wasn’t great during the day either. I understand that crime rates in the US have plummeted since I left (I had nothing to do with it!), but I was recently warned to be careful about kidnappings, so I see that worrying about crime is still part of daily life there. Israelis don’t worry about crime. Muggings here are unknown. Murders are almost always crimes of passion. Except for the last two years, and ending a few months ago, I’m quite sure that the chances of dying by violence in Israel are lower than in the US and much of Western Europe.

On the other hand, it’s hard for me to put a finger on exactly what does make life in Israel exciting. Here are some possibilities:

Openness – Israelis are very open people. Meaning is exciting. One of the things that gives life meaning is your relationships, and it is far easier to have a meaningful relationship with the average Israeli than with the average American or European. Now, it is true that this same characteristic can often be annoying – there are a lot of people out there whom you’d rather not know – but on balance, I think, it’s worth it.

Variety – Variety is the spice of life. I think it’s exciting. There are a tremendous variety of Israelis. Not just Arabs and Jews (and some others, like Druse), but also within the Jewish community. You can look at the political parties to see some reflection of this. There are some contributing factors to maintaining this variety. First of all, within the religious community: remember that Judaism is a traditional religion. It requires Jews to maintain their own traditions, while mandating respect for all Jewish traditions. The result is a lot of different Jewish traditions. The Israel school system supports this – each community maintains its own school system. In fact, any sufficiently large group of people can start a school to teach according to their own values.

Jewishness – If you are Jewish, it is tremendously meaningful to be in Israel. Of course, if you are religious, Israel is the Holy Land, and has intrinsic spiritual significance – even Jews who are not nominally religious usually feel this way to some extent. But it is also exciting to feel at the center of things. In the US, I often felt like an outsider. Don’t get me wrong, I do feel a great connection to the US, and to the values it stands for. But in Israel the feeling of connection is that much greater. Its history is my history; its holidays are my holidays. I don’t have to explain myself – not that Americans ever ask for explanations, such openness is not considered polite, but being understood is exciting!

Does all this add up? I don’t know, but it’s what I can think of at the moment.

Posted by David Boxenhorn at July 23, 2004 02:28 PM