rosh hashamadan

as ive mentioned before, the office where i work (sadaka reut) is in an old bombshelter. although the air is a little stale, ive found a comfort zone in this basement. it creates a safe little bubble, yet a bubble which extends beyond the concrete walls.

the night before the beginnings of rosh hashana and ramadan (which happen to coincide this year) the six members of the post-high school arab-jewish volunteer commune hosted a party to celebrate the arrival of these holidays before everyone scattered to be with their families. it was a candlelit, potluck dinner on a beautiful rooftop in yafo. we climbed up into the almost magical setting using a clunky wooden ladder and passed the food through a circular hole cut into the ceiling. dinner was delicious and complete with wine (which the muslims partook in, but insisted was for rosh hashana, not ramadan).

as we ate, drank and laughed together (jews, muslims and christians), i almost forgot my anger and frustration of last weekend in west jerusalem when i further internalized how invisible the arab community is to many israeli jews. questionnaires filled out by jewish high school students in preparation for a sadaka reut workshop on identity, tolerance and dialogue reported that only 30% of the students had ever met an arab. and while trying to figure out how to get to lunch on saturday, annie and i realized that the arab community is so far from the consciousness of so many west jerusalem residents that even streets in east jerusalem don't exist on the map of jerusalem which she purchased to help get her directionally-impaired self around the city. (for more on this, read annie's eloquent blog).

even before the map realization, annie mentioned that she feels like jerusalem is like an amusement park while tel aviv is more organic. i thought she was crazy- tel aviv, with its skyscrapers and traffic, is about as organic as metal jungle gym. but last weekend, during a walk through west jerusalem's map-marked streets, invisibly roped-off from the "do not enter" portions of the city, we returned to the discussion and i understood what she meant. and while perhaps this theme park of a city with its segregated neighborhoods creates a safety bubble for many of its residents, it challenges me and my beliefs to the core.

the wonderful space that i have found in yafo, which is not roped-off by the physical borders of the bombshelter or even the city, represents, for me, optimistic possibilities about what the future of this region could be. however, the safety and comfort created for me in this small, unique, diverse community, makes it even more difficult to step outside of it and experience the attitudes and opinions that pervade throughout the majority of the country.

yet despite my many frustrations, i still feel at home in many places here. and although my grandparents commented on the irony that after 35 years of living in israel largely without their children and grandchildren my family and i will all be here for significant portions of this year, it is really almost coming full circle more than ironic, because they laid the foundations for my relationships and homes in this country. without them, i may still be ringing in the jewish new year in the shadow of the golan on kibbutz amir, but with distance relatives, not with close cousins who ive grown up with. i certainly wouldnt have been offered a place to stay in hertzeliya for my beach frisbee tournament this weekend before i even had a chance to ask. and if not for them, i might not have even had the interest and commitment to finding peace for this region that brought me here in the first place.

for this year i hope we all find new comfort zones, expand old ones and try to find the places where they overlap with others. to do this we must try to step beyond the boundaries of what feels safe, into unknown, and sometimes even unseen, territory, in order to find common ground. wishing everyone a shana tovah and a ramadan karim.