Uncertainty

It's been a loooong time since I've posted...three months by my count. So much has happened in this time. Kara and Beruria came and went, Carl and Sue as well. It's been some time since I've been to the archives, but I've collected enough material for a good couple of years of productivity.

Now is a time of a bit more loneliness, a bit more contemplation. Toby's doing fantastically at school. As his friend Natan's mother, Vered, pointed out to me one day while watching Toby play basketball with the other kids, "you know, he's fluent in Hebrew. If you made aliyah now, he'd be one of the success stories." I'd like to say I never doubted it, but I was terrified when we first got here that Toby'd have a terrible time, would get picked on, be sad, depressed...maybe even have to go home. I now almost feel like I'm doing him a disservice by taking him back to the states...but not quite. I think he's as anxious as I am to go home.

It's a strange thought going home. I am frustrated by my Hebrew as always, but I do think if we were here for a more indeterminate stretch, it would click and be fine. I'm working on translating a couple of my talks into Hebrew, and I think it's a great help. I can't help but wonder at -- admire -- the friends we have made here who go on, day after day, accepting that living here has its ups and downs. If there is anything that actually makes me contemplate seriously aliyah -- although my aliyah would be different than what we're doing now; for one thing, I'd live either in Tel Aviv or in the Galil -- it is knowing that my friends here just keep living and going on, undeterred by the problems inside and out.

Looking around, I'm worried. Not really about mine or Toby's safety...the chances of something happening (בלי עין הרע) to us are quite slim. But the bombing on Wednesday, the first one in three years, one which I heard the concussion (and I'll never forget that sound...nor my thought, just as I heard it, that I hoped it wasn't a bomb), has shaken me a bit. Shaken, perhaps not the right word...more, disturbed me. I'm sorry for the narcissism of that comment...it's not meant that way. More than that..in combination with the rockets landing in Sderot, Ashkelon, Ber Sheva, Ashdod...Ashdod! If you look on the Atlas Zahav, you'll see that Ashdod is a full two pages north of the Gaza Strip, and I feel just...helpless. Disgusted, tired, helpless.

I feel like I'm watching a slow motion catastrophe. Not that I feel like being here longer or shorter would make it less of one; no, this is a catastrophe that will be unfolding for some time. As more than one person has said to me, on the right and the left, the status quo can exist for a long, long time.

But it's not just the violence, as bad as it is. I feel like I'm watching a disintegration of a country that, even though I've only spent a small part of my life here, I love deeply. Most people weren't paying attention, but two days ago the Knesset passed a law, in my opinion relying on the fact that people were distracted by other issues, that allows for the creation of exclusionary covenants in communities in the Galil and Negev. Communities of over 400 citizens will be able to screen and exclude those who might wish to live in them (read: exclude Israeli Arabs).

We are better than this. There really aren't any legitimate reasons for excluding citizens of this country from settling where they want. For the most part, Israeli Arabs want what Israeli Jews want, and that is the chance to have a happy and comfortable life, living in peace with their fellow citizens. I have heard the explanations and justifications for this law, and I find them utterly unconvincing. This is but one of many, many tests of the true mettle of our miraculous little state, but it is an important one. It matters to me, because I am a Jew and a Zionist but also a believer in democracy and civil rights. I believe that Israel, if it is to every aspire to the goal that it be truly the "ראשית צמיחת גאולתינו," the first flowering of our promised redemption, has to, for God's sake, come down on the right side. In my opinion, we need to rise above what our deep, and in the case of Israeli Arabs, largely irrational (if not racist) fears would have us do. Israel, like ALL democracies, is only as good as it treats its most disadvantaged citizens, be they Ethiopians, Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Russian olim, on and on.

We must be better than this, or else what are we living (and, sadly, dying) for?

Well, on that, goodnight. And if I have any readers left, I promise to post more regularly!