It’s four a.m. and I’m sitting on the curb
outside the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. It’s not the safest place to be
waiting for a sherut (shared taxi) to start running so I can finally get home.
“Coma dakot?” I ask in the general direction of an Israeli who looks like he
might have some sort of authority on where and when the sherut’s operate. “Coma
dakot!” He shoots back.
I’m confused
because I asked, “how many minutes,” and it sounds like he made my question an
answer and I should just accept it. I look over at the metered taxis, I already
failed negotiating a price from 40 sheckles to 20, so I continue to sit
stubbornly. An African man speed-walks past me, what does he have to be anxious
about? The Central Bus Station is his territory.
Exhausted,
frustrated, a bit defeated, I need to reflect on why I put myself in this
situation; and why I continue to seek out potentially dangerous, ill-planned,
mostly solitary adventures. Hours earlier, I was in a pressure cooker of
excited, frenetic, Jewish Zionist enthusiasm. I was shuttled from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem with 80 other participants of my paid-for, all inclusive, five-month
program in Israel. All of us had paid a decent chunk of change to pretend to
feel like real people on this program, living and working in Israel, but with
the comfort of an organized group. It is the opportunity to assimilate into
Israeli society without the full commitment of making Aliyah or without the
stress of finding work. Going about my everyday business in this country, I
really started to feel like I was fitting in. But a shadow continued to follow
me. It's the shadow that says “You fell right into their hands, build the
Jewish state, you are doing exactly what they want.”
I had kept the
shadow behind me these past couple of weeks, shopping, working, seeing friends,
I was starting to feel like I fit in. But walking into the MASA opening
festival, all my insecurities of being an American Jew in Israel were thrown
back in my face. I was confronted with the reality of who I am and the
stereotypes I fulfill. I am the drunk teenager, exploring and testing my
limits, feeling untouchable. I am the easily impressed American, swooning at
the sight of an IDF soldier. I am the desire to come to Israel to be closer to
Judaism, a sense of solidarity among Kippas and religious songs. These things
are part of me, I just didn’t want them to define me. Even worse, to watch them
reflected back to me in a hot mess of MTV styled video testimonials. A reworked
pop-musical performance to mention Israel, Zion and Jews complete with backup
dancers and a smoke machine.
I was overwhelmed.
I needed to reassert my independence. I needed to show that I am not a blind
follower. All I kept picturing was a situation-style room with a round table of
rich Jewish American’s plotting how best to grab hold of the minds of the
youth. “Let’s make Judaism and Israel the hottest club to get into. Strobe
lights, house music, dancing. The only stipulation to the bouncer at the door,
they have to be Jewish, everyone else gets turned away.” I never was one for
the club scene.
Eleven p.m.
Jerusalem. Shuk party. When do you ever really hear those words? Walking
through the Shuk at night is like being in an empty theater. The vibrations and
energy of the day can still be felt in the discarded cardboard crates littering
the floor, or the bruised pears too far gone to sell, too much effort to throw
away. It's the feeling of being able to be behind the scenes, that the sets are
an illusion, and the actors are stripped down of their makeup and wardrobe. I
wanted to get back to the real Israel, not the Zionist reality TV show I felt
was my life. The bar we went to stood on its own in the empty alley. We sat on
milk crates with cushions. I ordered a small stout beer and the DJ played indie
tunes from 2004. As far deep as I had traveled into Jerusalem-hipsterdom, the
conversational circle I inevitably found myself in was like-minded American
Zionist Jews. The boy-girl couple next to me was studying at the Yeshiva. She
had been here for four months and hailed from Seattle. Minnesota was home to
the boy, go Vikings. Across from us, a young beautiful girl sat, she had
converted and just made Aliyah. Sitting next to her was her friend from Taglit.
Coming to join in on our circle, a young man, who resembled a 90’s heroin
addict with a confusing neo-nazi haircut sat down and started rolling a
cigarette. He may have been drunk, also overly excited, he had just come from
the same event as me and was totally jazzed on the music and feeling of Jewish
connectivity. He was also on a long term program, working on a farm not too far
outside Jerusalem.
The image of the
people before me wasn't me, but the familiarity of why we are all here was
still present. It’s the reality of being an American Jew in Israel. The
decision to come to Israel is a conscious one, laden with subconscious desires.
I can’t deny that birthright shook me and awoke a desire to explore myself and
people like me more. I also can’t deny I fit within this stereotype of
impressionable, excited Americans. It's a stereotype because it contains a
nugget of truth.
At 2:30 am I sat
in a sherut waiting with three other people, they were two Israelis and an
Asian girl. We were waiting because a group of young, drunk Americans were
trying to decide if they could handle splitting their group up to go on the
sherut back to Tel Aviv. They were loud, they were indecisive, and they were
interjecting American-accented Hebrew in their English. The Asian girl leaned
into her Israeli boyfriend and complained as to why we all have to speak in
English even though we’re in Israel, as she said this in English. I leaned over
and asked “What language do you want to speak in?”
“Any other
language,” she continued to whine.
I was losing patience with her. The
kids outside the sherut continued to argue amongst themselves, their speech
drunkenly slurred. Even though these kids represented everything in the night
that I wanted to distance myself as far away from, I knew that I was part of
them. We are loud, we are annoying, we travel in packs. But we are here to
explore the Zionist and Jewish dream, and want to have fun doing it at the same
time. I can critique, judge and second guess myself, but I’ll never apologize
to anyone for being me.
