I Have Israel on the Brain!

My first year mourning on Tisha B'av has passed and I've recently ordred tickets to Israel from Oct. 27 to Nov. 6 (I got a really great deal.) I've also heard from friends in the holy land, I'm learning Hebrew at least once a week (sometimes twice and studying on my own of course) and news of the disengagement pops up frequently. (The Jerusalem Report, one of my favorite magazines, recently offered their take with a "Disengagement Countdown." I've got Eretz Israel on the brain lately, and my constant thoughtso of our holy land aren't going anywhere fast.

With that, I'd like to offer highlights of my various trips to Israel within the past 5 years (three visits and counting, fourth one on the way) and how each and every moment in the land has impacted my life.

There's nothing like seeing a Jerusalem sunrise. I remember seeing my first sunrise in Israel when my birthright group got up at 5am to climb the hills of Masada and shouted "Sababa!" over the cliffs as we watched the hot, magic fireball find its place among the skyline. But really, there's nothing like seeing it on your own for no particular reason. During my stay at the Jewel (Jewish Women's Education League) house through Aish last year and waking up one morning around 6, getting dressed, and stepping outside for no particular reason. The back of our house in Ramat Eshkol faces the breathtaking hills of Yerushalayim and I stood there taking it all in, the sun climbing towards its place among the heavens, the houses built of Jerusalem stone, one on top of each other. Our land, the land of the Jewish people. I felt at peace, at home, at one with Hashem. It's just not something that would ever happen to me in America. It just won't.

My first taste of Mizrachi music occured simultaenously with my first taste of devout Israeli nationalism in Eilat in 2000 when my mom, sister, and I took a Russian tour bus to the hot beach city in the south of Israel. We were staying at a hotel waiting for the rest of the tour group to come down for dinner and took our seats in the hotel lobby where it appeared some kind of hotel show was starting (there was a dj, a keyboard, some synthesizer equipment.) Behind us, young Sephardi sabra boys with piercing blue eyes and spiky black hair, each pointy end gel-slicked to perfection) were playing cards and joking with each other in their raspy native Hebrew tongue. Suddenly the dj setting up the show put on a classic Israeli tune. It was Lior Narkis and Shlomi Shabat singing "Lechol Echad" (Everyone Has) The song was incredibily popular at the time, on all the radio stations, and all the Israelis loved it. I didn't know it at the time, but I soon found that out as the boys began belting out the tune, off-key but loud, rambuctious, together, as if they were singing the Israeli national anthem itself. I still remember their voices ringing in my ear..."Ve'at haneshama hametuka sheli, hayechida shemadlika oti. Ve'itach ani kol haolam, ve'itach ani kol hayikum." Later, I was walking through an Israeli mall with friends from Kiryat Motzkin when the song came on again and I cried, "What is that?! What is that song?! I have to have it!" I was told what it was and I bought it that day...but I will never forget the pride I felt when I heard those boys sing it themselves.

I was on Ben Yehuda street with my mom and sister during that trip fresh from having heard and been overwhelmed by Musica Mizrahit, this classically Israeli, oriental music that was so popular in Israel. I couldn't understand the words, but I just loved the beat, the darbuka, the bourzoki, the Arabic, Mediterranean, and Greek influences. I walked into your ordinary Israeli music store and stared at the different singers, none of which I knew, none of which looked or sounded familiar (and in fact, they weren't popular in America.) "Can I help you?" the young saleslady asked me in her thick Hebrew accent, knowing f right off the bat that I was American. "I'm looking for a good CD, something popular in Israel, something like this," I showed her another CD I had just bought, influenced by another salesperson at a different store. "Oh, then you will like this," she told me, and placed into my hand my first Sarit Hadad CD. It was "Ein Kamocha Baolam" and it hooked me harder and faster then Zehava Ben had with her CD of that year. That was it. I was instantly smitten. Sarit Hadad continues to be the "Britney Spears of Israel," the most popular singer in the country, and ultimately my favorite singer of all time. And I still can't understand all the words!

My friends in Kiryat Motzkin (my mom's best friend's son Sagi, daughter Ilana, and their friend Amir) introduced me to shwarma in Aug. 2000 during that second week of my first vacation to Israel. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but Amir urged me, "You have to try it! Everyone eats it here." That week, they also showed me a Haifa pub, the ocean, and the spot where a Iraqi rocket hit Haifa but injured no one (a miracle, as if Hashem didn't let anyone get hurt that day.) My favorite spot was a quaint, but busy Middle Eastern bistro where Amir and Sagi deftly ordered and out came plates of humus, beets, tahini, other sauces, and piles and piles of pita bread. Not one person used his silverware that night. I would very rarely visit a place like this in America, but it was classic Israeli fare and that's what made it special to me. It was interesting and different. It was an experience.

One of the last nights of my first trip to Israel, my mom's best friend, her husband, her parents, and Sagi and Ilana took my mom, sister Niki, and me to the most popular restaurant in Kiryat Motzkin. It was a classy place, but looked something like a NYC diner in Chelsea. We had chatted, feasted on schnitzel and pita of course, and enjoyed the night. The next year, August 2001, I was working at the Jewish Studies Dept. at Rutgers University for the summer when I received a mailing of headlines and editorials that I regularly receive from a friend of mine through e-mail. I normally erase the e-mails, sometimes without looking at them, but soemthing made me look at that one that day. It read, "Suicide Bombing in Kiryat Motzkin!" I was nervous, the neighborhood wasnt that big and I wondered where exactly the bomb had gone off. I forwarded the e-mail to my mom who soon called her best friend in Israel. Her best friend told her the bomb had gone off in that very same restaurant, that an employee had realized the suicide bomber was about to detonate and stopped him but injured himself (only the suicide bomber himself was killed.) It was the very same restaurant we had eaten in a year before...

Other scary moments? Getting driven home by a Palestininian cab driver who tried to hit on me profusely on the way home from the Israeli bus station...Being in the center of Netanya with my Birthright Israel group on Dec. 31 2000 and hearing of a bomb going off in the same area the next afternoon, a few hours after we had left the city...In the West Bank (Gilo) visiting family friends last year (my father's godson, a religious Russian Jew who married a Sephardic Israeli) and learning that how Palestinian gunfire had gone through the wife's parents' house during the intifada...the My first view of an Israeli soldier toting his gun on his back in a local Ben Yehuda bar as he held a drink in his hand. It's allowed in Israeli society...

Israeli clubs are something else. During my month in Israel last June, my friends and I constantly hit up Ben Yehuda street and we always made it our duty to talk to native Israelis, whether they spoke English well or not. One of our friends spoke Hebrew really well and she decided to chat up the guy who had just walked in with a gun on his back, we had never seen anything like it in America and wanted to know what the official rule was about carrying a gun into a local pub. The guy turned out to be David, a soldier with time off who told us it ok under Israeli rule to carry a gun into a pub if you were an Israeli soldier as long as you were licensed to do so and wouldn't do anything stupid with it (which most Israelis are not stupid and they would be careful not to let anything happen.) He introduced us to his friends Gobi, Dudu, Natan, and others I can't remember. They decided they wanted to show their new American friends a good time so they took us to this club Live or Fine, I don't really remember the name. I just remember it was really fun and that I danced all night to trance with Gobi. Ironically, he wasn't all over me like most Americans are when they grind with girls, he was cool about giving me my space and we just danced and raved and laughed. I notice that's how most Israelis are. Their lives are constantly in threat, their quality of living isn't what you'd expect in America and so they tote the simple side of life and look for the good in every moment. Nothing is taken for granted. It's all about having a good time for them, before they go into the army, and when they are on breaks. I just love that kind of mindset.

That's how Gobi was anyway. I remember him telling me later he is was on a two week break from the army and just the week before, he had been in Gaza and the soldiers had charged into an Arab man's home looking for a bomb the man said he didn't have. They found it of course and detonated it before the man had a chance to use it in Israeli territory. Gobi was 21, a free spirit, a good soul, and a true sabra. Perhaps one good thing comes out of this disengagement, he won't have to be in Gaza any longer. I wonder where he is now.

Being holy in the holiest place on the continent is something else. The first time I held a siddur (prayer book) at the Kotel (Western Wall) I remember feeling this rush of air inside me that left me breathless as I touched the cold temple wall and recited the Shema and Shemonai Esrai. And then there was my first Shabbos in Isarel only a year ago. We stood on the roof of the Aish Hatorah building overlooking the thousands of people who were davening and chanting as they faced the wall, the closest spot in the world a Jew is to G-d. There were Jews with kippahs and without, in white and in black, tall and short, fat and thin, man and woman...but we were all one that holy night. I remember davening and looking out at this beautiful picture and tears came to my eyes...

There's something about Israel that's truly awe inspiring and magical. I can't wait to be there again!