In the trees
August 7, 2006
A day of orientation, ropes courses, team building jargon, interspersed with some terrific conversations with the other fellows. While I’ve done a fair amount of rock climbing, the experience of climbing outside is so entirely different from climbing indoors. The height of the ropes outside, the trees rustling overhead, and mostly the torrential rain as I finished my climb made for an experience quite different from Metro Rock. I walked the ropes overhead, quiet in the trees while my compatriots kibitzed below, peaceful in that state of almost-falling and yet confident in my ability to stay steady.
At the end of our jargony day, one bright spot was a brief conversation about the matsav, the security situation that’s rapidly encroaching upon the country. While I expressed my mother’s mundane fears—“how will you find an apartment with all these refugees from the North?”—others spoke movingly about their insights on the situation. The picture they painted of life in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is on the one hand, of business as usual, but also of cities where everyone knows someone called up for reserve duty, where giant screens are set in the streets to broadcast news of the bombings in Haifa. While I’m still not nervous for my safety—and I have no reason to be, I think—I am realizing more and more that I am actually walking into a war zone, far away from the front lines but as much an unsettled life as the life my parents lived in 1973. I worry that my presence as a tourist for a year will be more disorienting than nurturing, more voyeuristic than helpful. I guess in a way my integration will swing one direction or the other: either I will be an integrated part of Israeli society, feeling the casualties of the war with my adopted country, or else I’ll be another American in my little Anglo world, comfortable and sheltered by my stipend and American passport. Which to choose?
A day of orientation, ropes courses, team building jargon, interspersed with some terrific conversations with the other fellows. While I’ve done a fair amount of rock climbing, the experience of climbing outside is so entirely different from climbing indoors. The height of the ropes outside, the trees rustling overhead, and mostly the torrential rain as I finished my climb made for an experience quite different from Metro Rock. I walked the ropes overhead, quiet in the trees while my compatriots kibitzed below, peaceful in that state of almost-falling and yet confident in my ability to stay steady.
At the end of our jargony day, one bright spot was a brief conversation about the matsav, the security situation that’s rapidly encroaching upon the country. While I expressed my mother’s mundane fears—“how will you find an apartment with all these refugees from the North?”—others spoke movingly about their insights on the situation. The picture they painted of life in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is on the one hand, of business as usual, but also of cities where everyone knows someone called up for reserve duty, where giant screens are set in the streets to broadcast news of the bombings in Haifa. While I’m still not nervous for my safety—and I have no reason to be, I think—I am realizing more and more that I am actually walking into a war zone, far away from the front lines but as much an unsettled life as the life my parents lived in 1973. I worry that my presence as a tourist for a year will be more disorienting than nurturing, more voyeuristic than helpful. I guess in a way my integration will swing one direction or the other: either I will be an integrated part of Israeli society, feeling the casualties of the war with my adopted country, or else I’ll be another American in my little Anglo world, comfortable and sheltered by my stipend and American passport. Which to choose?
posted by S. @ 8:21 AM
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