In was 5AM in Istanbul and we were on our way to the airport to leave for Tel Aviv. We were a bit nervous as, for a couple reasons, we expected to undergo intense questioning upon arrival there. One guy who made the mistake of carrying a book about Israel-Palestine was apparently questioned for 9 hours. I must admit, though, that I was oddly excited to face an Israeli security grilling just to see what it would be like. Hence my disappointment in Tel Aviv’s airport when we were asked “where are you staying?”, our passports were stamped, and we were through in less than a minute total. Then we finally saw our close friend Nurit and we were excited! Nurit, whom we met during our recent years in Ann Arbor (where she was doing her residency in internal medicine), is an Israeli-American who now lives in New York. We had been organizing this visit to Israel with her for a couple months, and now we were in her kind hands with no plans, guide book, or any such thing.We went to the home of her aunt and uncle, Mrs. and Dr. Friedman, who were our gracious hosts for 4 of our 7 nights in the country. We were immediately fascinated by the profusion of excellent modern paintings and sculpture in every corner of the living room as well as by Dr. Friedman’s enormous collection of old books. I read the first couple pages of “Paradise Lost” only because the book was so beautiful. One of his Jewish Bibles is almost 500 years old. He is a professor of economics and dean of a school of business that he just founded! He formerly worked in the Israeli government in various roles, including leading a committee on the political issue of Jerusalem and its divisions.
Unfortunately he is currently suffering from a severely herniated disc in his back, so our discussions that day ranged from Jerusalem to the Israeli medical system (with which he was mildly frustrated) and many things in between. Memorably, at one point he asked us “Do you know the only place in Israel where Jews and Arabs mix in relative harmony and with minimal discrimination?” We had no idea. “The hospital”, he replied. Amazingly, two days later the headline and subheading of a Jerusalem Post newsmagazine article read the exact same thing. We couldn't help but feel some pride about our field of work. Nurit, Madhavi, and I headed out to see the city. We started in Jaffa, an ancient port town on the Mediterranean Sea. Now essentially a modern neighborhood within very modern Tel Aviv, it is a great place to just lose yourself on a breezy afternoon. We walked through small streets with cute boutiques, ate decadently good date-banana-fig and hazelnut gelato, and wandered around the charming maze-like alleys of the artist colony (where everything was closed so we’d just peer at works through the slivers of doors). Walking up a short hill and looking along the coastline we realized that Tel Aviv is a stunning seaside city with marvelous weather and wide sandy beaches. On that day the shore waters were full of windsurfers and their colorful sails. Another striking aspect of the city was its ethnic diversity – Israelis hail from almost every European country as well as the entire Old World, hence we saw every skin tone from Nordic white to Ethiopian black. We met a young carpet seller whose parents are from Esfahan, Iran and who dreams of being able to visit that city one day. We spent the night on the patio of a popular Italian restaurant (that’s another thing we loved about Tel Aviv – the outdoor eating options are endless). There we dined with Nurit’s friend Mariella and her own eccentric friend Yaron, a former dancer who now heals people using a centuries-old Jewish theory of illness – for example, he said that asthma is caused by conflict with one’s mother. The conversation was lively.
The next day we made the one hour drive to Jerusalem, on the way picking up our tour guide. We started with a view of the whole city from the south, which really gave us great perspective of its hilly plateau landscape. Then we walked through the streets of the Old City, one whose fortress walls enclose a 1 square kilometer area so deeply layered in ancient history. We started at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where we saw the place of Jesus’s crucifixion, his coffin, and the shrine over the legendary cave where he was buried and later resurrected. Watching pilgrims from all corners of the world (Korea, Brazil, Italy, U.S., etc) prostrated before his coffin or quivering as they stepped up to the shrine of resurrection could have felt voyeuristic. Maybe it was. But throughout our lives we’ve all been so surrounded by the mystique of the monotheistic religions, especially Christianity, that standing in that church we felt something real ourselves. At least it was the thought that here, one small time in this one small place real events occurred, real people watched and listened as the most powerful cultural phenomenon of all time was born. After a break for lunch, we headed to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. We approached the Wall (male and female sections, respectively), the holiest site in the world for Jews, and watched for a few minutes as people rocked back and forth in prayer and some stuffed wishes in folded paper into the wall’s crevices. At least one orthodox man was not happy with my presence there, so I didn't stay too long. We ascended the Temple Mount, a site so holy to Jews that they’re not even supposed to see it and one that is also the third holiest site for Sunni Muslims, as it contains the religion’s first dedicated structure (Al-Aqsa Mosque) as well as the famous golden Dome of Rock.
There too we felt some tension, and at one point just after our nervous guide told us to keep quiet and avoid drawing attention a Muslim guard brusquely ordered us to move away from the Mosque for no apparent reason. Towards the end of our tour we saw the great excavation of the 3000 year-old main street of Jerusalem, one only made possible when archaeologists used a beautiful ancient mosaic map of the city to guide them. Sadly we also passed by a huge menorah representing the ambitions of an orthodox Jewish group to destroy the Muslims monuments on Temple Mount to pave way for the building of “the Third Temple”, an idea which dismayed Nurit and our Jewish guide even more than it did us. After our tour, we crossed the Israeli security wall into the West Bank. Our destination was Bethlehem. On one street we saw a a group of Fatah loyalists riding in a caravan singing and waving the Palestinian flag. It was pretty surreal to see this staple of international television news live on the ground. We visited the spot where Jesus was born and watched a few minutes of mass in Latin. Then we ventured into town and ended up in an outdoor fruit and meat market. There we spoke with a gregarious Palestinian storefront worker who described how life was so hard in the West Bank as jobs were simply lacking. He, like any Israeli you talk to or any Jordanian, Iranian, and I'm sure any Iraqi, Sri Lankan, Somalian, and so on, just wants peace and a decent life. Hearing from the average person from any country is so much more heartening than watching the minority of hardened ideologues that drive world events. Nurit was quite affected by the whole experience, coming away with hope and guilt and so glad that she had gone.
The security wall experience was eerie and downright strange at times. The Israeli side of wall is clean gray except for a bizarre ministry of tourism sign wishing everyone peace. The Palestinian side is completely spray-painted with political statements like the familiar “no justice, no peace” as well as ones more inflammatory, all of which ate away a bit at that warm human solidarity feeling we were trying to leave with.
When we tried to cross back into Israel we were stuck because nobody seemed to be around to let us go – did the border just close or what? Finally we sort of looked all around and occasionally yelled until someone showed up and just looked at our passports from a distance before waving us through.We spent that evening, the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, walking around the Old City listening to prayer chants and watching all the American kids dressed up and hanging out like it was prom night. We spent the evening with a couple of young American Jews ourselves. They were in Israel on a “birthright” trip, which they described as an opportunity for Jews in the U.S. to come on their first-ever visit to Israel with full funding and tours all over the country in a party bus – this is their description, as these guys were pretty funny and had a disarming lack of pretension. To me this night showcased one of the greatest traditions of Judaism, that of education through dialogue. During Shavuot you’re supposed to stay up all night attending lectures and discussions before a prayer at dawn. The lectures that night didn't start until ~11PM, but us old folk were able to muster the energy to attend one session. There a charismatic rabbi talked and fielded questions about Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, for an hour and a half without losing anyone’s attention (except for the drunk frat guy passed out snoring in the corner of the room). After dismissing the popular overly personified image of God, he offered a memorable quote: “The God you don’t believe in I don’t believe in either.”
We headed to Yaron’s place (which he kindly offered us at dinner the previous night), where we crashed for the night. It had been such a damn fascinating day, one of those that makes traveling such a uniquely powerful learning experience. Perhaps we could never live in a city as religious and divisive as Jerusalem, but visiting it was truly a privilege.
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