Morning musings...

Last night I went to dinner with some old friends and some new ones.  We were all, bar one, Jewish and all not religious.  The discussions of the evening seemed to be about Israel, the politics, the country and our feelings about this puzzling nation.  One of the party lived part of the year in Israel and this is what prompted the discussion.

I remembered the one and only time I had visited Israel.  This was in July 1968.  I wasn't terribly keen to go there, but I wanted to travel for a few months on my own.  I was only nineteen and the only way my parents would even consider letting me go thousands of miles away alone and partially funding my foreign travels was if I started off in Israel staying with some cousins.  Trying to recall the events and my impressions of Israel over forty years ago was a bit of stretch though a few events and places do standout.

I stayed first with my dad's nephews and my aunt in Hadera, a place about 25 miles from Tel Aviv.  I remember that they kept chickens, it was horribly hot and I went to the cinema to see a French guy called Johnny Hallyday in an unknown movie.  My overall impression was that the wholeplace was terribly provincial and looking back, I see that I amust have seemed an insufferable little snob.  I felt, and presumably acted, quite superior to the Israeli teenagers I met and felt American and modern and different.  My cousin's friend wanted to go out with me and I think he wanted to get very serious very fast in order to get to the USA by any means, but I was above all of that. It was also the first and only time in my life I got around by bicycle and this meant that I was more than a little nervous most of the time.  i am a very wobbly cyclist!

I do remember being delighted by the city of Haifa, the old city of Jerusalem and a few other places, but mostly it was hot. Now I look back and think about how much of the trip was wasted on me.  I looked down my nose at so much and refused to enjoy myself.  I was a fairly recalcitrant child and a budding ugly American abroad.  Because  of this and the sense that I never really visited the Israel I would now like to see as an adult means I am considering a trip there in future.

I have no connection to Israel  as a homeland.  Well, actually I do, but only in that I would not like to see harm come to this nation of Jews.  On some level, they are connected to me, but only historically, rather than religiously.  When I was there in 1968 I remember being  overwhelmed by the fact that everyone was Jewish.  It was as if the world had suddenly become safer for me, but this changed to normalcy when I realised that just being Jewish doesn't preclude unpleasantness, or idiocy, or any other character traits held in common by people.  We were no more the same people than those I meet in London or Holland.  We had religion in common and a history of persecution.  Not exactly the basis of a life long love affair. 

Now I am willing to give this country another go.  I am willing to see Israel as a Middle Eastern nation filled with culture and history.  Tel Aviv has some of the best preserved Bauhaus architecture in the world and the sun shines, there are great museums, markets and pretty good food.  All these things combined with some new Israeli friends and some re-connections with distant family and maybe we have a holiday destination.

It's time for me to drop my ancient prejudices against the Zionist imperative and give the country a chance.  I keep waiting for things to become more peaceful there, less dangerous, but it's no more dangerous than any other big city nowadays.  So who knows, maybe in the Spring it'll be time to visit.

I am not writing anymore today.  My arm aches from a flu shot that I had this morning in a moment of fear. I think I will go to sleep.  Bliss...