My mother wants me to come home. I’ve been calling her every day, and she wants me on a plane immediately. She has been watching the news and following events as they unfold here in Israel and she is very understandably concerned for the well-being of her child.
I understand how the news looks — this unfolding situation of tension and conflict. But I can tell you that life here continues in all the ordinary ways one would expect. It’s not so different from living in Kansas, where the threat of bad weather, especially tornadoes, is very real. You know when to take concerns seriously, when to take shelter and how, the difference between a watch and a warning, and when you need to get in the basement and stay put. But you don’t spend all your time worrying about tornadoes.
Is it dangerous to live in Kansas because we get severe weather? Or do you understand that it is part of life there, but not all of it. You learn to watch the weather and how live with it, even if sometimes dangerous winds blow. Dangerous winds are blowing here in Israel, but it’s not clear where this is going yet. I am here, and nothing in my life has changed, but I know that change, real and significant, might be ahead.
As I am writing this, the citywide siren went off — like the tornado siren I’m used to at home. I call a couple of friends who offer advice about staying away from glass, going into a stairwell, checking with neighbors, etc. Concern for sure about what it means, but after a few minutes, it’s clear that nothing of significance is happening, and we then just go about our business.
Since I first arrived here on May 5, the eve of Yom HaAtzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, Jerusalem has been a haven for me, willingly offering up her glorious insights and opportunities and connections at profound levels, revealing in ever richer and more nuanced ways just what exactly it can mean to be Jewish and what Israel is about. I am not at a point of conclusion on any of it, but these are a few thoughts along the way.
It is not possible to be here without understanding that there really is no such thing as peace in the Middle East. There hasn’t been, and maybe won’t be, and this isn’t just an Israeli-Palestinian issue. The history of the Middle East is a history of conflict and war and tribal strife and aggression, and I simply do not understand the conversation that puts Israel at the middle of all of it, that rests the responsibility for creating peace on the shoulders of this one small state. I keep asking myself, why, when so much of the Middle East is in turmoil, the world’s focus keeps coming back to tiny Israel as THE problem to be solved.
It is also not possible to be here and disregard complexity. We want a simple story, one that is just about Israel versus Palestine, or good versus evil — something we can easily grasp and figure out where we align. But there is nothing here but complexity. This isn’t an abstract political situation. This is about neighbors with profoundly different understanding about the essential nature of reality trying to come together to survive, and the fight for survival equally critical on both sides, and in the same place and at the same time. There is life on the ground here that you can’t dismiss with political rhetoric or philosophical ideology. You have to factor in reality here, not just a hoped-for reality.
And what I see here in Israel, is all of it. You can find the entire spectrum of understanding and belief here, and with intensity and passion and conviction, because most of all, we really care ... about each other, about Israel, and about life, and living in a way that is true to who we understand ourselves to be EVEN in the midst of great military and political and moral and economic and religious and social challenges.
So if you’re wondering what things are like in Israel right now, I think they are like they are most of the time: ordinary, wonderful, rich, spiritual, intense, complicated, confusing, uncertain, and profoundly meaningful.
Celeste Aronoff was expected to return to the United States Wednesday, July 16, after two and a half months in Israel studying Hebrew and Torah before beginning rabbinical school at Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles on Aug. 24.