From Jerusalem with Love

Rounds Abound

"Full circle" implies a return to the beginning, closure, or at least a doughnut. Yesterday I noted some full circles:

                                                 

I met with a Jewish day school from Boston as part of my PR work for Combined Jewish Philanthropies' Boston-Haifa Connection. Fourteen eighth-grade students are here for the annual Israel trip, and walking to their hotel I wondered if I would know two of them who were in my third grade Sunday School class in Boston five years ago.

Sure enough, Abi and Leila were there, a lot taller and with better vocabulary. I asked every student to share their impressions of Israel and smiled when Abi talked about the difference between learning about Israel for nine years in school and actually being here. I thought about my class five years ago, and an "Explore Israel" project I did where each student researched a different city or region. These kids are now post-bar/bat mitzvah "adults," and can explore on their own, for real (with intense adult supervision and a rifle-toting security guard, of course).

                                                

This weekend I watched many hours of my favorite Israeli soap opera HaAlufah (The Champion), which returns for a second season tonight. I had never seen the final weeks of the first season because I was in the US. As with any soap opera, scheming and plotting and cheating abound, except here it's all in Hebrew.

Some - but not all - of the stories came full circle. The best was the story of Rani and Rita. Mid-season, Rita was blind and dated Rani until he couldn't deal with the blind thing anymore. Soon after breaking up, Rita went to Switzerland for pioneering eye surgery that restored her vision. Just as she was starting to see again, Rani was injured in a terror attack at the soccer stadium, losing his own eyesight. In the final episodes, they get together again, with Rita promising to teach Rani "everything I know" about being blind. Rani's response? "I only wish I had seen you naked before losing my eyesight."

In Your Face

Now that I am allegedly planning to move back to the US this summer, I wax nostalgically for Israel all the time.

Did I write already that a friend of mine accused me of liking Israeli kitsch more than actually living here? She was kind of right. Israel is vision turned into reality, and - as is well known - reality can be rough around the edges. Like many transplants, I have a long list of complaints about living here, and as it grows so too does my connection to Israel deepen.

The "rough around the edges" nature of Israel is what I like most about living here (next to Zionist pioneer era kitsch, of course). Last night I went to see the new Israeli movie Beaufort, about the evacuation of a strategic mountain fortress in Lebanon by Israel in 2000.

Much to my surprise, surrounding me in the first few rows were a host of 12-13-14-year olds. This was not the crowd I expected to see at a serious army drama, much less on a school night. These kids did not stop talking and laughing and shining cell phone lights on each other for two hours, soliciting a few rebukes from adults further back in the theater.

Throughout the movie, Israeli soldiers - 18 to 21-year olds - are killed by Hezbollah missiles and rocket attacks, almost on cue every half hour. "Society and Politics" student that I am, the connection between these deaths and the rowdy junior high students was not lost on me. Israeli kids have run of the country here, apparently because soon they will be on the front line in wars, anti-terror operations and dangerous borders.

There is not a widespread discourse of "respect for elders" in Israel, as (anecdotally) evidenced by teachers being called only by first names here and the abject poverty of many Holocaust survivors. As a demographically young society and "new" country founded on the notion that the "ghetto" Jew of old must be transformed, Israel worships youth. Seniors have been so abandoned that in the last election, they formed a political party and captured many seats in the Knesset (parliament) from which to improve the lot of Israel's elderly population.

The kids sitting around me at the movie were incredibly obnoxious and loud, yelling out "pussy!" and "homo!" and other choice words throughout the movie, jumping up and down, screaming at each other, etc. In the US, I would have expected a manager to deal with them after a few patron complaints, or at least a couple of adults to get in the kids' faces.

In Israel, however, the kids run the show. In just a few years, these same kids will be in the shoes of the soldiers depicted in the movie. This is what their society expects of them. There's not an expectation to behave during movies, even ones about the destruction of Israeli youth by local enemies.

(My photo, from Independence Day celebration last year in Jerusalem.)