It dawned on me at breakfast today that I am having a much different reaction to Jerusalem than some of my peers in the group. I think this is largely that, because I am not Jewish (or affiliated with any other organized religion with claims to the region), Israel does not offer the same potential significance to me. I have little place in the narrative of Israel, no one is going to call this my homeland and, despite and to some extent because of, my struggles to feel legitimate as a non-jew with a special affinity with certain strains of liberal Judaism (circles in which conversion is not necessary to be a welcomed participant and where criticism is the Israeli government and some zionists is commonplace), part of me resists attaching special spiritual meaning to being here. I may stumble upon that meaning anyway, but I feel that unless I attach myself to the humanitarian efforts surrounding the conflict, I’ll always call some other place home. For me, to fall in love with Israel would be for me to fall in love with those who express decent against the policies of the Israeli government and to make myself vulnerable to attacks of anti-semitisim (which are all the more painful to think about because of the above mentioned affinity). For the Jewish people in the group, the boundaries of citizenship are much more fluid and thus, for some of them at least, their way of interacting with the country is different.
For one of the girls on the trip, interacting with Israel is interacting with Israel as someone who is considering making aliyah. For her, being here is about waying the pro’s and cons (including security concerns and her own criticism of some aspects of Israeli society) of living in Israel.
For Molly, on the other hand and side of the political spectrum, being in Israel is about seeing Israel through the eyes of other Jews who live here and imagining how she would fit into Israeli life if she were ever to live here or adopt some of the nationalist narrative as a diasporic cultural Jew.
While the girl considering making aliyah is eager to fall in love with Israel and Molly is surprised by the extent to which she already has, for me, full appreciation of the beauty of this place must be paired with falling in love with the disenting aspects of Israeli society, aspects that we have only caught glimpses of so far. When hypothesizing about positioning myself in a society who’s narrative I do not belong to and who’s governmental policies I have some serious problems with, the only space I can imagine myself in is one of resistance. I couldn’t see myself being comfortable working here in a non humanitarian, non archeological/historical, or non political job because I would feel somehow complicit in the policies my politics oppose. Admittedly, though to a lesser extent because it’s already my home, I feel exactly the same way about living in America but as we’re talking about Israel, I just wanted to express my musings and my worry that in the non-hypothetical realm, my attachment to the dissenting aspects of Israeli culture may be influencing my ability to process my experiences here and my evaluations of people who, in not being politically involved, I can’t help but see as somehow complicit.
Hunter King