When we first settled in Jerusalem (haha I could make so many jokes about us “settling”, but I won’t…), I really hated living in this city. I missed the “Israel” that I knew, that was free of the conflict and people lived their daily lives without much mention of the politics going on around them. Besides the fact that we were living in a tense city (and it was my first time doing so; I have only lived in Haifa before and it is one of the few mixed cities that actually has some semblance of peace/at least co-existence), we were also learning everyday about all the politics that revolved around the city and how the three majors religions interacted. I longed to be in Tel Aviv, the “sin city” as some religious Jews call it, where we would be able to go to the beach every day, and clubs at night. Yet, I was living in Jerusalem, so I had to get used to it somehow, and get used to it I sure did. I grew to love my bus ride through the Arab and then Haredi neighborhoods (see earlier post), and I appreciated the fact that there were so many people in this city “outwardly” displaying there religion, unlike in America, where I feel like it is a sin to stand-out, especially for being religious. I loved the fact that no matter where we went for dinner, I could almost always be positive it would be a kosher restaurant; if not, I could walk about ten feet to find a restaurant that was kosher and that I could eat in, and then I could meet back up with everyone. I loved trying to figure out how religious a person was just by looking at them, and seeing that in some of the most unexpected places—such as the Biblical Zoo or the Mamilla Mall.
So, when Bess and I went to Tel Aviv before she left, I found myself in quite a shock at how different it really was for Jerusalem. I couldn’t believe how few religious people there were! It’s interesting how something that seems so foreign and different to us at first eventually becomes the “norm”, and what we thought was normal becomes something quite different.
-Katy