jerusalem

A Mini Adventure

Living in Israel can be stressful. Though I live in Tel Aviv, which is dubbed a 'bubble' compared to the rest of Israel, the stress is still there - at least for me. Not only have I packed up and moved myself across the world, leaving my friends and family behind, but I've plopped myself down and made a cozy little impermanent home for myself right in the middle of the Middle East. That, too, has come with a bit of stress.
On a daily basis, my mind is often reeling. I struggle with missing my friends and family, I grapple with constantly feeling like an outsider as one of the few non-jews here,  I try to adjust to the bomb sirens, practice drills, and gas masks that act as a constant reminder that war is always a threat, I stifle the horror I feel when working at the clinic and am presented with terrible cases of torture and sickness from the asylum seeking community here, I feel physical pain in my body when I hear devastating Palestinian and Israeli personal narratives, and I sit in class several hours a week listening to lectures about torture, trauma, abuse, PTSD, traumatic grief and disaster.

 

Sometimes I feel like I just need to get away. Fortunately, Israel, despite the aforementioned, is also filled with places to escape, or retreat to. The other weekend I was able to get out with a few friends. We drove out of the city leaving Tel Aviv and it's bubble buildings behind. We drove for awhile through rolling, rocky hills, and deep green valleys. We drove through the land of Moses and Jesus and Abraham and Sarah. The second you leave the city, the fresh washes over you, calms you and cleanses you. We drove south of Jerusalem and hiked for a bit. We climbed the rocky hills, and explored ancient caves that were dug deep into the earth. It's easy to imagine biblical and present day history being made in the scenic areas of Israel. Occasionally we stopped and did some impromptu yoga. My friend was nice enough to capture me in a headstand moment. I think all the pressure and blood rushing to my head was really effective in making all those thoughts in my brain slow down. Before the day was over, I had even found a souvenir! My friend didn't want me to put it in his car....but I insisted.

We watched a beautiful sunset, and then headed to the Moshav to see some friends' of friends. A Moshav is a really tight community of families. Since it was Saturday night, we were able to celebrate the end of Shabbat with the community. There was candle lighting, prayers, songs, and more songs. It was a really beautiful experience and a perfect way to end the day.

Holidays in the Holy Land

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from the Holy Land!

The end of 2011 (and most of the year, really), has already brought so many changes and new beginnings for me and for the entire wold too. I can only imagine what 2012 will have in store for us all. In anticipation of the 2012, all the news coverage was recounting the front page headlines of 2011, a lot of them including the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements in the U.S. I can hardly believe that I was able to experience a glimpse of both with my own eyes!

Despite all my traveling this summer, my sense of adventure has not abated, which is why the New Year of 2012 finds me relocated in the amazing city: Tel Aviv! But while Tel Aviv is always full of excitement and adventure, the vivacious city that I now call home (albeit temporarily) is like living in a bubble. It is a bubble compared to the rest of Israel, and certainly a bubble compared to the Middle East. It is a beautiful, safe city where I can walk alone at night and not carry my keys between my knuckles like I did in D.C. It is a city that where I can haggle for the best vegetable prices at the Shuk (outdoor market) or stop by the "Mega" supermarket on my way back from class and pick up any groceries I need. It's a city which hosts and hides a lot of trauma and crisis (which I've been exposed to because of my Masters program at TAU: Social Work for Trauma and Crisis Studies) particularly in the south where there is a large asylum seeking community. It's a city where I can work with a woman who's been stabbed in the face while trying to cross the Sinai on a journey from Eritrea to Israel. It's a city where I can work with this woman and then decompress as I walk through the sand on the Mediterranean beach en route back to my apartment.

This city is a bubble that contains so much life, so much heartache, so much vitality, pain, suffering, beauty, and resilience. A bubble that contains so much that at times it seems it might burst.

So far I feel like my time in Tel Aviv has been a true gift, and every moment has been blessed. I was so thankful to arrive at the same time as my friend, Aziz. As a local, he was able to navigate the websites offering apartment rentals and I found a place to live within a week. This truly is remarkable in a city where even locals spend up to two months looking for a flat! Not to mention, I ended up in probably the best apartment in the city, with the best people in Tel Aviv.

I truly am lucky to have ended up where I live, in a beautiful apartment with a balcony attached to my bedroom, a huge living room, a dining room that has hosted more than a few large dinners, a teeny kitchen that I've gotten accustomed to cooking in, and a rooftop that accommodated over 400 people at our New Years Party. 

Not to mention I live with three lovely roommates who introduced me to their amazing friends. By amazing I mean the night before Christmas Eve, I came home from class and two of them had gone into the dog park nearby and picked branches off trees until they had enough to stick in a pot and make it look like a little Christmas tree - decorations included! Not only that but they accompanied me on an Christmas Eve trip to Jerusalem. They even let me drag them to midnight mass! Clearly these are friends for life!

Lucky. That's the way I feel at the end of 2011, and if 2012 brings half as much excitement and joy as 2011 brought, then it will be an amazing year!