Shalom(Hello),

I just returned from a 10 day trip to Israel. For some, Israel is the land of falafel. On my trip, an educational trip sponsored by Taglit-Birthright, Israel was supposed to be the land that can be the home for any Jewish person from all across the world. My brother says that a good song is one that is happy and sad at the same time. In the experiment that is Israel, life is full of beauty, pride, passion, and love, but behind every single citizens smile seems to lie an ocean of heartbreak and concern. This is my trip to Israel.

 

So, I have a couple dollars to my name. I love to travel. My traveling has consisted of me driving through the US, Canada, and Mexico. One time I got lucky and was hired to play drums on a cruise ship and they flew me out to "de Islands." That was pretty good luck.  Europe, Africa, Asia though....out of the question. I have always wanted to go, except money doesn't grow on trees. But, there was this one thing I heard about. I had heard about this trip called Birthright. I had heard from people talking here and there that if you were Jewish in any way, and between the ages of 18 and 26, you could get a free trip to Israel. Yes, I am Jewish and I love to travel, but of all the free places to go, I actually didn't really care to go to Israel. I can't explain why. Maybe it was because our media in the US showing me bombs dropping on both sides there every day since I was a baby. Anyway, so I am 26 and met the requirements. My older brother had gone and loved it. Old friends from school and camp went and loved it. I guess one night I was playing music at a gig, got pissed off at my bandmates for something and got to thinking. When I get upset, my thoughts turn to,"what am I doing with my life and why have I not just stuck out my thumb and left." So, Birthright, a trip I had no intention on joining suddenly popped into my head and I said screw it, I am taking me a free trip to Israel.

 

I got home and started doing research on this organization. I read peoples blogs I found randomly through Google, to see what this was really about. It seemed that it was true. If you had a Jewish cousin, or had a Jewish friend growing up and you went to their seder dinner a couple times as a kid, that was Jewish enough for you to take the trip. I read all sorts of testimonials. Most though, were your standard bar and bat mitvah'd Jews, or kids who had Jewish parents but weren't very religious. I had a Bar Mitvah, but as I always say, I am a Dr. Seuss Jew, meaning everything I need to know about being Jewish I learned from Dr. Seuss. Basically, I am not religious. So, I did the research, provided all the information needed, did the phone interviews on why I want to go, bla bla bla, couple weeks later I get accepted. They send me my flight information, tell me to be at JFK on whatever day, and tell me to bring $300 for spending money. Everything else was covered. Everything. Crazy.

 

I registered in February and June 20th, my departure date, came as fast as February left. I board the plane, meet some nice folks, read up a bit on Israel and the culture, history, geography, and try to get some sleep. I don't get any. The itinerary is 10 solid days of activities. They say we are supposed to be getting off the plane, meeting our tour group leaders, and going hiking. So, we get off the plane, meet our tour group leaders, and go hiking. On the bus ride to the hike, we are introduced to the 7 Israeli soldiers who will be joining us for the 10 days. This is my first exposure to the heartbreak and beauty I mentioned in the opening paragraph. They are soldiers. They are kids. I am older than all of them and I feel like a kid myself at times. They are not carrying weapons. There is a 21 year old Israeli working for a private company who is armed who is also joining us for the entire trip. The Israeli soldiers are dressed in civilian clothes. They are 21 to 25 years old. They are smiling, happy, ecstatic people. They are swarming our group of 50 young Americans with greetings. These are card-carrying Israeli soldiers and they look like they just got back from the beach. Some dark skinned, some light, some with thick hair, some going bald. Girls  and guys. All well spoken. All very youthful. All very passionate.

 

Note: This is a very tough article for me to write. I know personally, as an obnoxious at times, very opinionated jerk, that there are sides to what is going on over there. You cannot write a travel article about Israel, at least I can't, without acknowledging the fighting, just like you wouldn't omit the cities and cuisine. As the reader, I am asking you to hold off on opinions. I will let you in on my stance now in case you are impatient. I left Israel firmly believing nobody, unless you live there, should have an opinion on the situation. We do not share the same culture as either side. We cannot understand their mentality. They are different. They have an upbringing, both sides, that we CANNOT understand. We can try to learn and observe,  but we cannot relate. So, Pro-either siders, please just hold tight.

 

Back to the trip. We're driving. Lots of driving on the trip. I am trying to think what the land looks like. The desert. Not the sand dune kind of desert. More like the dry, rocky, dusty kind of desert. The word arid comes to mind. Most of the bus is sleeping. It is about 8 AM. Our hours are backwards. We left NYC at 10AM and got into Ben Gurion Airport at 6AM, and the flight was only 10 hours. I am awake and full of questions. I thought I might be quiet and slightly an outsider because I thought the whole trip was going to be propaganda, but actually I was pretty darn comfortable from the moment I got into the country. The American perception of the country was absolutely shattered minutes after we arrived, so I figured I would throw my preconceived notions out the window as well and chill out and have a good time! So, we are driving. What's that? What's that? Who lives there? That is an Arab town. That is a Jewish town. That is a fence separating the Israelis from the Palestinians. That is a pack of cute 18 year old girls carrying M-16's. That is a camel. That is an irrigation system. That is a kibbutz.

 

Who lives in Israel? Around 7.5 million people. Mostly Jews. What is a Jew? Good question. There are about 1.5 million Arabs. What is an Arab? Another good question. These are questions that the answers seems much more difficult to answer after visiting the country, so I will skip that for now. Those are the basic numbers. Interpret them however you want.

 

So, there is a Jewish town over there, a Muslim town over there, and Christian towns over there. They all looked the same. They were either very, very modest or were at one time very modest, now even more run down than before. The structures all look like they get beaten by the sun, which they do. Muslim home, or Jewish home, they were all generally smaller than what we live in, and they looked like, as they were, desert dwellings. I did not see a single mansion. In fact, the home I grew up in was easily bigger than just about every home I saw. I saw just about nothing fancy. The only luxury cars I saw the entire time were in front of the American Embassy. I did see one beat up Mercedes near the Dead Sea. The only difference between a Jewish neighborhood and a Muslim neighborhood was that you could spot a Minaret, the highest part of a Mosque, in the Muslim towns. Besides that, not to sound like a snotty American, they all looked like worn down, desert villages. Obviously, the whole country did not look like that, but I would say the majority did. Even the areas where there was more sophisticated irrigation systems, aka more green, the houses were tiny, they just looked a little cooler in the shade.

 

We get to the hiking spot. To tell you the truth, the land was beautiful, but it was land. It was amazing scenery, some of it breathtaking. But, for me, it is about the culture and the people. The activities of hiking the mountains and valleys, walking through markets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, swimming in the Jordan River, et cetera, were just means for me to learn about different people. I am a bleeding heart liberal. I wanted to know why there was a separation fence. I wanted to know about the check points that the Israeli military setup for Palestinians to move between town to town. I wanted the answers. Why couldn't they get along with one another! The 20 something year olds tried to answer. They tried to explain, and I tried to understand, though I think I have learned that they can't explain it, and I cannot understand it. Some of the Israeli youth are more pro-Israel then others, in the sense that they believe military action is absolutely necessary. Some debate the actions of the government. Some believe in staying in disputed lands. Some think it is illegal to do so. All are ridiculously well educated on the history of their country and the region. They all know every single major conference, every war, every politician. Dates, players, allies, enemies, history, history, history. Another example of the beauty and pain. Why do they know this? And the extent of what they know. They are not on our trip to be tour guides. They are on the trip to be themselves and show us what a normal 22 year old is like. What is it like to live your life living in the times of history in the making? Have I ever lived like that? Far, far, far from it.

 

Many of the nights we stayed on a kibbutz. What is that you might ask? Well, I thought it was a commune, and that is what it is, but I thought it was like a hippie commune. This was like a communist commune. They were communists. I was living and sleeping amongst communists. I have seen some hippie villages in the US, but no offense, they are rather small-scale and I can't imagine anyone actually relying on one for their entire life, let alone their children's lives. These were fully functional communistic villages. We visited a few throughout the trip. The typical kibbutz seemed to incorporate about 120 families into their way of life. This wasn't the rainbow gathering where you take acid and smoke pot and share a grilled cheese sandwich. Everyone took part. They had farms, factories, gardens. They even had guest quarters for groups like ours to visit. They had dining halls, so that meant chefs and young girls to clean the tables and boys to dish out the food. There were board members who made big decisions on families who were allowed into the collective and methods to generate income, what crop to farm, and there were your average families looking to be part of a support group, willing to milk a cow for their work. They were communists!!! It was great. What an annoying statement we have all heard our entire lives; "yea, it looks good on paper, but it doesn't work in reality." Well, they do it in reality. Some of the kibbutz's have adopted some more capitalistic approaches, but some are as traditionalist communist as when they set them up in the first half of the 20th century.

 

On my particular trip, I was with 50 other people. You are on a bus with one another making jokes, or sitting on a farm discussing life, or walking through markets silently observing your surroundings. You get to know each other. It is a beautiful trip. It is an experiment, just like Israel is an experiment.....we often forget, at least I do, this is a country that has been around for just a little over 60 years. Anyway, you talk and inevitably bond. You share your thoughts. You tell jokes. I told some horrible ones. You forget that you are a stranger in a strange land, as they say, and you embrace the moment. You improvise.

 

We were driving through the country side and one of the Israeli soldiers told us that the kibbutz he grew up on was a few miles ahead. The tour leaders gave the okay and off we went to another kibbutz. We had only seen the guest areas of other Kibbutzim,(plural for Kibbutz.) We had yet to actually see how they sustained their lifestyle. The young man who grew up there, Ben, had been pointing out things for me to eat off the trees and from plants already, so he was excited to know the home turf and point out more food for me to eat. It was beautiful. The landscape was incredible. Through unheard of methods of irrigation, they had turned a once dead, dry plot of desert into a blossoming oasis. There were fruit trees, olive trees, wildlife. I felt like I was at a zoo, to be honest, in Miami. Odd description, but it was a far cry from the desert surroundings. These conditions did not exist and we learned about how the land was cultivated from the very beginning stages of the first Zionists. Millions and millions of trees had been planted in an attempt to change the landscape. In the kibbutz, a more controlled area, they achieved that.

 

After walking around and seeing the land, farms, cows, et cetera we sat on a field of green grass to listen to Ben's father, one of the higher-up's on the kibbutz. We had been told that sometime during the day there was going to be a military siren test throughout the country. This was the siren that they would sound if there were some sort of rocket/missile attack. We knew it was going to happen. They said there was no cause for concern. The man is speaking about Russia, communism, capitalism, why they live like this, how they will change with the times. The siren goes off in the middle of a sentence. It rattled my bones. It entered my body through my eardrums and my skin and my feet and my head. The sound was terrifying. It sent chills up my back and all I could think of was the true meaning of why this alarm was ringing. Holy god. This was like hearing my Mom's stories about having to hide under a desk in case a nuclear bomb was dropped on her 3rd grade classroom.  What the hell are these people doing living like this. Insanity, I thought. The siren stopped and the silence afterwards was just as loud. I glanced around, wondering if anyone else go ast shook up as I did. I wasn't scared of the physical threat of a bomb, I was scared at the symbolism of the siren.

 

More miles. A stay at a hotel. A night in the desert sleeping with Bedouin Arabs. Hitting on a great girl from Chicago here and there. A swim in the Jordan river. Jokes with some of the soldiers, scolds from others. Debates, discussions, opinions a plenty.

 

A quick detour into the land of Israeli food. How can you go wrong! A story about ingredients. We stopped into a mall type shopping center. I go to the bathroom. To tell you the truth, I don't always wash my hands, but when I am traveling, it is rule #2, after a mandatory morning shower.....you can be a much more successful hobo if you get a shower in a creek every morning. Anyway, wash my hands. The container is clear and the liquid inside looks like something I would find in a gourmet cooking oil section of a market. Turn it around and read the ingredients. Plants, herbs, greek and latin genus and species. It was real. It wasn't some coloring or chemical fragrance. It was real and it was the freaking hand soap in the mall. I gladly used it. The rest of the country seemed to be that way too. The food was real. Each morning we were greeted with beautiful homemade salads of beets, cucumbers, tomatoes. All the different locations we stayed at all made their own cheeses, milk based products, yogurts,. There was nothing mayo based. Lots of vinegar based salads. Some fermented pepper and pickle salads. The humus was amazing. The consistency was alot thinner than here, but it still kept its integrity. And how could I forget! There was a huge bowl of tahini. And the squash and eggplant salads! In the markets you could get shwarma and falafel. By the end of the trip I was bargaining with the street vendors. I was getting 3 falafel per 1 shekel. That is basically 1 falafel ball for 30 cents. Factor in that I bargained with the pita guy to get 5 pita's for 2 shekels. That is like 3 good falafel sandwiches for 3 $, with 2 spare pita's to pick at here and there. And the baklava in the desert! I have had baklava before, but this baklava must have been steeped in this delicious, thin, warm syrup. I can't imagine anyone not thinking the food would be great. It was delicious, natural, and healthy. I was in heaven. My hair and skin looked great!

 

A bit about the weather and the land. The region has been in a drought for 3 years. I checked the 10-day forecast before I left and there was a 0% chance of rain, and they were right. The country, from its inception, made the land a major, if not the most important priority to its existence. They are attempting to change the region. The JNF, Jewish National Fund, is an environmental group that basically owns half the Israeli land. They have planted something ridiculous, like 50 million trees. Almost all of the water, is derived from the Sea of Galilee in the north. The Jordan River runs north to south through the country. The water from these two is pumped into the different regions. The irrigation techniques they use, though still very rugged, are supposedly some of the most innovative in the world. When you are walking on the outskirts of a kibbutz.....the desert.....and you see a tree, you will see a tube running near the trunk. Millions of trees are watered this way, through a sort of drip system. As for the heat, I loved it. I enjoy the heat and there was no humidity. Also, on a personal note, I have psoriasis, which is dry skin. The Dead Sea region is notorious for being one of the greatest places on Earth for its healing qualities. The waters of the Dead Sea are concentrated, something like 150 times more than your typical ocean water. The minerals and salt content in the sea are so dense, that you float. It does not feel like water. It feels like baby oil. Also, because of the elevation, or lack of elevation, there are points of the UV spectrum that are reached at the Dead Sea that are not reached anywhere else on Earth. Some also say that because of the elevation being so far below sea level, you cannot burn. I stayed out in the sun with my shirt off for 2 hours. I got lots of color, but I did not burn. No sunscreen. Because of the sun and salt, the Dead Sea is a mecca for people looking to heal the ailing bodies.

 

Okay. So, if you made it this far, good job. To be honest, I was taking my good old time getting to this section. I know that what I write in the next couple paragraphs will not be an adequate description of what I saw, or how I feel. I would much rather stress the importance of being neutral. We are American. We choose sides. We root for a team. We like the Cowboys or the Eagles. We have American idol and turned singing into a competition. We watch the talking heads. We vote democrat, republican. We want a side to be on. We have to to take a stance. Well, I am telling you that I can't have a stance anymore. This isn't our fight to relate to. They do not think like us and we do not think like them. We can observe acts of war, or acts of peace, but we are computing it as Americans. We can fill our minds, but the heart of the Israelis and Palestinians is one we can never understand. Only a person who has grown up in the culture can understand why it is they do what they do. I have seen the segregation. I witnessed the tension. I saw the separation fence. And my mind is completely boggled because I know that I cannot feel what they are feeling.

 

 

I visited many holy sites. We sat on a rooftop in Jerusalem and looked out over the Old City. You could see where Jesus was supposedly crucified, where Mohammed supposedly ascended to heaven at the Dome of the Rock. You could see Jews bowing and praying at the Western Wall, and hear the Muslims chanting in the Muslim quarter, being led by a man over a loud speaker. That was interesting. I learned. But, to tell you the truth, it did not touch my heart. I thought to myself, man o' man, these people figured out all these great things. They have these beautiful, old cities. They have such rich traditions. Why did they forget just a few basic things, like how to get along with one another. They can make a desert flourish, but they can't get along with their neighbors. So, the holy sites were these historical places for me, where I couldn't shrug the feeling of disappointment. I wasn't going to relate to any of these people, because it wasn't me. It wasn't who I wanted to relate to. I respected alot of the things every group in the region did, but it wasn't who I wanted to be. I didn't stand for what they stood for.

 

We took a walk, venturing deeper and deeper into the Old City. We enter into a fairly large courtyard. We are observing some building when we hear in the distance, singing. It gets louder. A group of kids turn a corner. There is maybe 15 of them. One older kid has a guitar. They are singing what must have been a standard Israeli kids song. The courtyard was bustling. Unspoken, the kids realized that they had an audience in my group. They formed a circle and start dancing and running in and out of the circle, singing loud. The soldiers in my group, along with any other person who was born there, knew the songs they were singing. Our soldiers joined in with them. I have no idea what they were saying. The holy sites didn't do it emotionally for me, and I didn't know this was going to either. What started getting to me was that there were kids of every shade and color. Asian, black, white, dark skinned, green eyes, brown eyes, curly hair, straight hair, stocky, and thin.  These people were all different, but they were all Israeli. The circle was erupting with song. A group of girls in the courtyard formed their own circle, as aggressive as the boys. Then, about 20 yards away a group of musicians broke out into a song, dominated by a hand drum and soprano type sax instrument. The courtyard was now full of maybe 300 people grabbed hold of by the music and energy. The many circles of people were now going round and round, in and out. Clapping, cheering, singing. The boys were jumping up and down. It was foreign. We don't celebrate like this. The musicians in the distance were now marching through the courtyard gathering onlookers and demanding their clapping to the pounding, consistent beat of the drum. If you were not jumping, dancing, or cheering in one of the 5 or so spontaneous groups to form, you watched in amazement. I ran between the kids singing and the musicians playing. I wanted to see it all. As a musician/artist, I was experiencing what I call emotional overload. Senses heightened and alert. This is where you find inspiration. I stopped in the middle. The music and cheers were still going on, but there was silence in my mind. I started to get pretty choked up, the kind of choked up you get when you catch the glimpse of good in a otherwise very sad film. Why is this how it has to be? Tears filled my eyes. Why can I not understand who is right and who is wrong? I am witnessing absolute beauty and truth in front of my eyes. I watched as these people from every corner of the world celebrated their lives and displayed this ultra-pride I have never felt. They were strong and weak, powerful and vulnerable. It was heartbreaking and beautiful.

 

I couldn't make sense of what it must be like to grow up there. As an American, who has had it pretty good, I didn't really believe the idea of Israel as a state for persecuted Jews across the world. I thought it was PR. But, it wasn't. There was every kind of person living there. They have a policy that if you are Jewish, you can move there. This policy is not some law that was used in the 40's and has since gathered dust. No, there are still people flocking there every day. I guess the latest mass "exodus," for lack of a better word, was a group of around 20,000 Ethiopians Jews, who came a few years ago under the country's "law of return" which says that Jews anywhere in the world have the right to Israeli citizenship. I realized, right or wrong, these people were not fighting with the Muslims over religion or differences. They were fighting for their one spot on the globe. It's not my spot on the globe. I have never been persecuted. I don't know what it must feel like to want to fight for my land, but that is what they are doing. The people there are descendents of, or themselves people who have been kicked out of countries everywhere else and they are now fighting to not give up land they have decided they want to be their home.

 

I asked why they couldn't get along. Many blamed the government for being corrupt. I asked why they didn't bypass the government and do things at the grassroots level. No good answers. I remember a quote I once read by George Washington that sayed, "I am a soldier, so my son can be a farmer, so his son can be a poet." We, as Americans, are fortunately alot further down that list. They are not. We are interpreting the situation over there from the poet end of the spectrum, the analytical end. Nobody over there, seems to be ready to understand the events of the region through the eyes of the poet. Instead, they are viewing it from the eyes of a soldier, a brother or sister of a loved one who died, the same as the Palestinians feel.

 

The land is beautiful. The people are all beautiful. There is so much pride, and passion, and life, and culture. There are cities and towns. Malls and communes. Nobody over there is a monster. This is an unfortunate conflict between human beings and the violence committed on both sides should not be condoned. But how do you tell that to the people who live there? How do you make that make sense for them? I didn't know the answer. That was what I learned.

 

I highly recommend taking a trip to Israel. If you are looking for shops and restaurants and clubs, sure, they have that. But, if you are looking to get a glimpse into a different way of life, a different kind of passion, this is the place for it.

 

I would like to thank Taglit-Birthright for providing me the opportunity to travel to Israel, as well as the tour guides, soldiers, bus driver, and other participants for challenging me.  Also, I would like to thank Goindie.com for giving me the chance to attempt to sort out alot of my own thoughts.

 

Shalom! (Peace!)

Colby Wallace