New Archive:

April 2001 Issue

Israeli Rituals, Old and New

By Mati Milstein

JERUSALEM--Regular as clockwork, like some sort of sadistic Levantine ritual, another morning comes.

Throw my alarm clock across the room. Hear the radio news broadcast: Father of six shot to death by Palestinian snipers as he drives to work. Mortars launched from the Gaza Strip land near a kibbutz in the western Negev. Bombs explode all over the country.

I hide under the blanket.

I'm supposed to actually get up on a day like this? Isn't there the Middle East equivalent of a snow day? When things get this obscenely horrific aren't people allowed to stay at home munching Bisli and watching TV movies in their pajamas?

No. This day is every day and, of course, I have to get up.

I hadn't expected this desperate desire to flee from my new home.

The idealism that brought me here is quickly vanishing in the wake of army service and in the face of the hourly news. Much like the conflicting urges one feels when passing a gruesome car accident, I feel a strong pull to listen to the hourly updates while simultaneously knowing that really I shouldn't.

I am 26. I moved to Israel from New Mexico about two and a half years ago.

I didn't come here because of Zionism. Well, not directly. I moved here because that there were so many things wrong with this place that I felt compelled to try and fix at least a few of them. Maybe this is post-Zionism of the constructive--rather than the more common deconstructive--variety.

Human and religious rights, environmental issues and reconciliation with the Palestinians made up just part of my short list.

Less than two months after my arrival in Israel, I was drafted into an infantry unit and got a grand tour of the pretty little corners of this land--Hebron, Gaza and places that had mud and rocks and rain but no particular name.

Then, in a whirlwind of chaos, I was released and went off to fend for myself in the other real world. I found a job, an apartment in Jerusalem and a well-stocked corner store open till midnight.

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost my List of Thing to Fix in Israel amongst piles of army notices, municipal bills, and unread newspapers.

I work for an English-language newspaper's website writing breaking news stories. All day I monitor Hebrew radio and the government beeper service desperate to catch wind of the latest disaster. My life is an endless stream of second-hand shootings, bombings, dead and wounded Israelis and Palestinians. I experience the daily Middle East conflict in real-time but once removed from first-hand reality.

I overdose sometime the latter half of every day. To maintain sanity, I simply turn events into indifferent words. Into pretty, concise poetry about the death of normalcy.

I don't care what happens in this place. I don't think about the tragic fate of the father of six or the morning shoppers blown to bits on the sidewalk. If I did, I would go insane--a state which I am studiously determined to avoid.

Take cover! Incoming reality! I try and leave this place every chance I get.

I am a journalist. This used to be my hobby as well as my trade. I was always reading some journal or newsmagazine. But all that has changed. Six months into the 'Aksa intifada' and I can't take anymore.

When I exit the newsroom at the end of each day I completely and utterly ignore what's going on around me. I plug into my Walkman and saunter past the soldiers, bomb squads and bulletproof public buses in central Jerusalem without a second glance.

Tel Aviv could be wiped off the map by Scud missiles and I wouldn't find out till I arrive at work the next morning.

This is a common phenomenon amongst Israelis; friends have been telling me for almost a year now that they don't watch the evening news or read the papers anymore.

We are all working on our communal Houdini impression.

Someone, long ago, had given me a copy of James Joyce's The Dubliners to read during down time in the army.

The dark, dreary rains of the British Isles seemed absurdly incongruous in the midst of arid desert maneuvers and the sun-baked sand dunes of Gaza. I stopped reading after ten pages.

But now another summer is about to crash down on the Holy Land and I beg for stories of far away places.

Pop music icon Kobi Oz sings to me:

"The mail comes today, in a red postal car. Maybe he'll bring me an airline ticket to overseasŠ To see the world…To flee from everything. To run from yesterday."

Apparently, I am not the only one.

The only thing I can reasonably expect to arrive in the mail is an emergency order to report for reserve army duty. I ain't gettin' no airline ticket to the Far East.

Everyday I check the papers for the cheapest flight to anywhere. Whatever the destination, I say to myself, I'll take it. Budapest? Cold, gray, grimy Eastern Europe? Why not! Let's go!

English comforts me. Hebrew is reserved for the tragicomic real world, for crackling radio reports and terse military commanders. English is the language of naivete and celebration. A relic from long ago, far away.

So why do I religiously listen to the radio every morning? Maybe because the hour is early and I haven't yet reached my daily bad news quota. Maybe because in this damaged and torn national community of ours, I still feel the need to know if my neighbors are okay.

For all my big talk, I'm not going anywhere. This is my home. It's my home when I think I need to escape and it remains so when I realize that sometimes I really can confront reality.

I'll continue to wake up every morning and listen to the news. Just as escape is the new national ritual, so it is a very old and much more entrenched ritual to care about one's fellow citizens.

Mati Milstein immigrated to Israel from New Mexico two and a half years ago and served in the IDF's Nahal parachute battalion. He now lives in Jerusalem and works for The Jerusalem Post and The New Mexico Jewish Link and does whatever freelance writing he can scrape up.

---

lifestyles | fiction | politics | daily buzz | relationships | culture | social action | spirituality | chatroom | J-TV giude | win stuff | e-postcard | about us | archive | disclaimer