Brief Notes on a Short Trip to Israel

Went to Israel for 4 nights and 5 days for a friend's wedding. My first time there since 1981 when I lived there for 6 months. My 2 closest friends from that time are a) in Chicago and b) couldn't be found. My Hebrew language skills have drifted and disipated almost into oblivion.

So I can't really say that I'm a terribly good source for much beyond "pseudo-cosmopolitan" reflections, as a certain correspondent would say.

The depressing part was Jerusalem. We stayed near the Central bus station - a good ways from the famous religious neighborhoods where secularistas like us have been made to feel unwelcome. To my surprise, ultra-orthodox Jews were everywhere. Our first evening, we went for a walk around 10 PM. Yeshiva students were on their way home, a few couples were out for a snack - the men in skullcaps and fringes or with blackhats and sidecurls, the women in wigs and/or headscarves and with the "modest" outfits of the orthodox.

We stopped in a small urban mall with a 1970's feel, which had kosher pizza and a pastry & coffee counter in the center. I had shorts on and got dirty looks from the other customers. Nicole was dressed reasonably, I thought, but she's 8 months pregnant and not shy about showing it. She got dirty looks too.

The chocolate cake was egregiously bad. A sin against good taste, a betrayal of the supplicant's most simple longings. I marvelled that such awful cake was possible in a Jewish country. For this you brought us out of the desert? We seemed to be the only disappointed customers however.

The next day I studied the faces on the street and on the bus to the Old City. I could have been imagining it, but I thought I felt hostility and even contempt almost everywhere I looked. The orthdox seemed to sum me up in a glance: secular scum, superficial twit, pleasure-obsessed ignoramous. (The kind of idiot who comes to the Holyland expecting to eat good cake).

In the Old City, I sensed a different kind of hostility. Apparently, I look Jewish. I hadn't really confronted this fact in a long time. In Germany and Austria, no one - at least without knowing my name - ever guessed I was Jewish. I'd come to think of myself as Jewish-looking only in the subtle Paul Newman/Kirk Douglas rather than the transparent Adrian Brody/Woody Allen sort of way.

Well, my Semitic cousins see it differently.

Walking through the Arab suk, I experienced none of the bonhomie that I remembered from 25 years ago. Even people who were eager to make a sale, looked at me skeptically, impatiently. I should buy something or just keep walking. Don't linger. Don't stay to talk. What is there to talk about anyway? Here I was obviously a tourist (and tourism is way way down) but even the traditional traps were gone. No questions, no chatter about the gangsters in Chicago, or a cousin they have in Detroit.

On the "temple mount" it was worse. An older man offered us his services as a guide, when I politely declined, he turned on me. "What are you Jews doing, coming up here?" He stormed off.

Arab women and children sat under olive trees picknicking. I could smell the cucumbers from a distance, but tried not to look. I didn't want to be rude. Israeli soldiers were ringing the plaza, sitting lazily but ominously in the shade. An Arab boy was kicking a soccer ball by himself and began kicking it vigorously against the Dome of the Rock. No one stopped him. I took his picture. I felt I had to take his picture, but I felt suddenly like an invader and an idiot for even being there. I was relieved to discover that tourists (for whatever reason) were not being admitted to the mosques.

We had a fantastic lunch in East Jersulaem, just across from the Damascus Gate. The portions were generous. The service was perfunctory.

My friend's wedding was beautiful and uplifting. I was amazed at how at home I felt with the other guests. These Israelis were highly educated, sophisticated, charming, and well traveled. Seemingly everyone spoke English, and those who didn't took great pleasure in helping me rediscover my Hebrew.

It all seemed so comfortable, so familiar, that I began to wonder if this was in any sense the "real Israel." Wasn't I just in some funny island of the elites? We ate barbecued goose, tempura, greek salad. The whiskey was Irish. The wine was....I don't know....something really good. Man oh, sure was not Manischevitz.

The music was Brazilian, Spanish, American soul, hip-hop, North African, French,...you name it. Everyone danced. It was a beautiful scene.

At some point they played an Israeli folk song. For a moment the women formed one group and the men another. I sat down with Nicole and expected to see the kind of elaborate folk-dancing i remembered (and had tried to learn) during my visit to Israel years ago. But that's not what happened. No one knew the steps. The women and men just sort of danced chaotically,holding hands in a circle. It was like some random assortment of Americans who happened to have seen Fiddler on the Roof once or twice, boogying with a touch of yiddishkeit to "If I were a Rich man." It was like seeing Americans dancing at Oktoberfest.

The next song was an Irish jig, and the crowd transitioned seamlessly. It even seemed that a few people knew the steps. And everyone was just as happy dancing to this music as they had been a few moments before.

Funny place today, this "Jewish" state.