Holy Land shares all

Jeffery Gross

Jeffery Gross

By Jaron Birkan

Long flights are not my forte, especially those spent in coach, in the last row. Nonetheless, I accepted my situation because I did not have to worry about paralyzing the fellow passenger whose luck had thrown him behind me. And I’d just taken a sleeping pill.

The latter had failed me so I was forced to stay awake and assuage my mixture of excitement and foreboding with my iPod and the person sitting next to me. His name was Jon, and he was different from most on my trip. He shared our common goal in finding fun and a spiritual homecoming in Israel, but he was not a denizen of the Chicago suburbs.

In fact, he came from Atlanta, and had happened to land with this particular group solely out of being in the proverbial right place at the right time. We connected on our excitement for the trip, but both of us needed the sleep for the coming frenetic pace so eventually we broke off.

There was time for organization, though. Even in such a pocket-sized country our group was able to glimpse a part of the world so often discussed but never experienced.

It was impossible to not be slightly political, (and our status as a Jewish group disallowed visits to some of the disputed areas) but we avoided it as much as we could. Instead we tried to live within Israel and immerse ourselves in what, to the surprise of many, is an actual functioning country.

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Our guides tried to immerse us in this society from our first moment in Israel. Literally minutes after stepping out of the airport we were whisked to a park in the center of the country, a beautiful tree-lined picnic area framed by red-streaked mountains. It was isolated, and, like most places, only about a half hour away from the main metropolis, Tel Aviv.

This park was, like most places, a yoking of the past and the present, a site where the popular story of David and Goliath occurred, but now a national park planted with donated trees.

The media has a limited focus and cannot convey any of this; a two-minute report on a suicide bombing or targeted assassination cannot convey the effect it has on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, or on the land itself. In the wake of this emptiness arises presumed hyperbole, a sense that these people are devoid of humanity and exist merely as pawns in a game over a parcel of land the size of New Jersey.

Being on the ground, we were given the opportunity to meet present and former Israeli soldiers who have been on the ground in the conflict, and whose harrowing stories gave perspective to the struggles.

As a Jew these people existed within the larger framework of my journey of self-discovery. Clich‚ as that idea might be, it was a driving force (other than a free vacation) for going on this trip. I was certainly not spiritually lost, but I needed to experience the sites of my religion and establish my connection with these places.

There was no possible means to establish this connection without the people around me.

Even though we were Jewish we were still in a country that barely spoke our language, and while the Israelis were incredibly giving and happy to have visitors where the streets had been barren of tourists just two years ago, this happiness was unable to transcend the language barrier.

Together we were also able to connect with the notion that had been instilled in us for years of Hebrew school: that this land was our country, our homeland.

It was hard at first to reconcile myself with this idea, but it grew on me through the hikes up waterfalls, the dinners in the caf‚s and the “swim” in the Dead Sea, an experience of constant fumbling to get your footing (in a water body in which all you can do is float) while trying to achieve the twin goals of not cutting yourself on the salt-sharpened rocks and getting the painful water in your eyes.

Finally, it clicked, on a night only one with my circuitous luck could receive. Our group was staying in Jerusalem for the weekend, resting on the Sabbath, and was attending Friday night services at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

When we arrived at the plaza after a brisk walk in perfectly cool weather, the skies opened up and it began to rain. The kind of rain seen in movies, the kind only a rain machine could produce. It was cold and hard, seeping through the umbrellas and jackets and making our blood cold and our hair soaked.

We did not care. I prayed like I always had prayed, but there was something behind my praying. I was saying the same words, but I attached significance to them for the first time.

I was experiencing an epiphany of a sort I had never thought possible. For once I felt a part of a shared goal, a Jew. Sure I still loved Woody Allen, but any sense of self-hatred I ever felt had evaporated.

When I went up and touched the wall, put my hand where centuries of Jews had prayed and devoted themselves to the faith, I, for a moment, transcended and for a moment forgot about my troubles and the usury-like cost of the alcohol I had bought, and for once I became blank, unencumbered with pretensions, societal mores or existential problems. I will never feel this blankness again, but the experience was so much as to become my being, and as such unforgettable.