Day Eleven, Israel

My last few hours in the Holy Land. My relatives pick me up and we go out to breakfast to say our goodbyes. Today is Saturday, Shabbat, so the streets of Tel Aviv are deserted. But that’s nice, very calming. All the guide books said Tel Aviv was alive with hustle and bustle, a vibrant, 24/7 kind of place. And while that’s not exactly untrue, compared to New York, where I grew up, Tel Aviv feels like a manageable, quiet city. And I like that. I have grown quite fond of the place. Tree-lined boulevards and cafes full of chattering hipsters. I will miss it.

We stroll down to the new port. There are restaurants, shops, right on the water. All of Israel seems to be on the beach today, bronzing in the Mediterranean sun. I wear a hat. That marks me as an American, but that’s okay. I think: all you Israelis will be wearing hats in ten years too. Skin cancer has a way of changing what you consider chic. We settle into a seaside café and drink lots of coffee. We chat about family, the trip, Israel, politics. My relatives are anxious to know if I had a good time, how do I feel about Israel, will I come back? Most importantly, will I bring my family?

So I tell them: it’s been a great trip. Fascinating. I’ve learned so much, explored so many places. But that wasn’t the main purpose of coming. First, I came to be with Bernie, to stand by his side when he needed me. I’ve tried to do that, not always perfectly. It’s been terribly difficult for him, and he’s been a trooper – as my mother would say – in his willingness to bounce around the country and show me the sights. So while he thanks me for accompanying him, I need to thank him for making it happen. Thanks B, and here’s to this all having been worth it. Get better. Soon. I want you around for a long time.

Secondly, I came to get a little mojo back in my writing. To that end, the trip has been a success. It has been fun traveling the country, but it has been fantastic writing about it. The hour I spent blogging at the end of each day has been golden time for me. I said in my first post that I wanted to find my voice again, and this trip has started me down that road. It has been breathing pure oxygen to just sit and write and not worry about studio notes or themes or character arcs.

Just as glorious has been reading everyone’s reactions to the blog. You have all been so supportive, so encouraging with comments, emails, facebook posts. When you read my work and liked it, you told me, and for that I am eternally grateful. (I suppose I’m equally grateful to all of you who read it, hated it, and said nothing.) So thank you, all, and Shalom. Next year in Jerusalem.

Day Ten, Tel Aviv

The trip is winding to a close. I leave tomorrow, on a midnight flight back to Newark, then on to Seattle. Bernie is spending the day resting – he is still recovering from two months worth of radiation treatment, and now a steady drumbeat of chemo drugs – not to treat the cancer, but to soften up his immune system for the vaccines and cell therapy to follow. It is slightly ironic that I came with him to Israel to hold his hand through the rough spots, and now that I am going home the rough spots are about to begin.

But Bernie’s mom is coming to take my place, arriving Sunday after I will have already left. I am glad he will not be alone. It is just too hard to be sick and under treatment 10,000 miles from home. Just too hard.

Today, I walk Tel Aviv. For hours. Up and down the side streets and boulevards, stopping in cafes and window shopping the boutiques and department stores, ambling through the parks and plazas. When I landed in Israel, my first thought was Holy Shit, everybody here is a Jew. Every cop, cabbie, dock worker, waiter, flight attendant. It’s a wild concept for someone who grew up in a place where Jews make up less than five percent of the population (okay, more in New York and LA, but you get the idea) and where they are overwhelmingly white collar and middle class.

I walk past open air restaurants, stare at the people, and I can’t help but think : Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew. And you and you and you. But after a day or two, I get over that. The idea fades. I didn’t go to Italy and think, hey, every one of these people is Catholic. They’re Italians. And the more I meet people here, and understand the culture, the more I realize that while these people are Jews, for sure, they are also Israelis. In fact, most of them are Israelis first, Jews second. (Or third, or fourth.) There is a strong national psyche, a shared sense of purpose and hard-earned survival. An ex-pat American told me each year he is surprised at how on Israeli Memorial Day the whole country comes to a complete stop to honor their war dead. Trains stop, buses stop, nobody talks. Silence across a nation. That’s powerful stuff, and proof of a national glue holding a people together. I wish we had that more in America.

Israel is very distinctly a European-style country. Even though you hear American accented English everywhere, and America is a presence that looms large here, Israel looks to Europe for its ideas, culture, arts and way of living. And why not? If you were building a new civilization, would you model your cities on Barcelona or Dallas? Vienna or Cleveland? (Maybe that’s unfair. Try London or New York? Even that’s a tough call.) The founders of Israel were all European Jews, and they brought with them whole swaths of European life. When we visited Jordan I realized that the only thing keeping Israel from being a Southern extension of Italy or France is the presence of intensely hostile Arab neighbors. Arab culture serves as a necessary counterweight to Europe here.

All of this makes me wonder about the unwavering support of American Jews for the State of Israel. AIPAC and Neo-cons and Hillel on college campuses. Why is their support so strong, and at times so uncritical? This is not America, after all.  These people are Israelis. As I said, they are a different breed.

I believe there are a number of reasons. For me, one of the most potent is the Israeli macho ethos. Tough, uncompromising, unapologetic. We will not get pushed around by anybody. For a slightly soft, middle-class people (face it, how many American Jewish brick-layers do you know? Or firemen or coal miners?) that Israeli cliché is attractive. It’s nice to know there are Jews out there who are tough as nails. And they are. I’ve seen them at the border with their rifles and shaved heads. They are spooky. But is that really necessary for American Jews? And why can’t we be tough for ourselves?

A second reason for support is the eternal idea of Jews as refugees. If it all goes bad, as it has so many times in the past, you can escape to Israel. Most American Jews have persecution somewhere in their past. My mother fled France as the Nazis marched in. Her Grandmother left Ukraine with Cossacks on her heels. That idea of safety is a powerful one. But then I ask myself – have I ever suffered for being Jewish in America? Of course not. In fact, it’s the opposite: I trot out my half-Jewishness regularly as an unspoken  signifier of intelligence, creative ability or compassion. Bullshit or not, it works. People love the brainy, sensitive Jewish guy. Does that mean Jews are forever safe in America? I like to think so, but forever is a long time.

Finally, for me at least, there is support for the underdog. Countless wars, bombings, hijackings. Israelis have certainly suffered. There are a billion Muslims, most none too happy with the existence of Israel, and five million Israelis. Those are bad numbers. But unfortunately, Israelis have lately inflicted their fair share of suffering on others too, without a whole lot of introspection, guilt or apology. Thirteen hundred Palestinians killed in the latest Gaza incursion is not reaching for the high moral ground.

So why do we support this country? In part, I don’t. That is, I don’t support Israel more than I support Sweden or England. I would weep if Tel Aviv were blasted off the face of the earth, but the destruction of Stockholm or London would be just as horrifying to me. But the chances of Stockholm buying it are slim. Tel Aviv is another matter. I walk down the street and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before something apocalyptic happens here. As I said to Bernie as we flew fifteen minutes from the Western coast of the country to Israel’s Eastern border – this is one small ass country.

But I support Israel as well, and I understand now the reason. Because Israel wants me. And it’s very seductive to be wanted. The signs are everywhere: Make Aliyah, learn Hebrew, get in touch with your roots. My relatives ask me when I’m coming back? Will I bring the family? Maybe you could move here?

Because of the Law of Return, to be Jewish, anywhere in the world, is to have the right to be an Israeli citizen. My children too. Even my wife, who is not Jewish. I pick up signs of this in the way Israelis treat me all the time, as if the subtle, underlying message is – you may live in America now, but tomorrow, you could be an Israeli. In fact, you sort of already are one, you just don’t know it yet. No other country wants me that badly. Hell, not even America. That’s probably my biggest complaint about my home country – it is so often utterly indifferent to my fate. That can be heartbreaking.

That said, I am an American. Through and through. I love my country, its people, its huge, unwieldy chaos. I may dream of living in exotic Madrid or Rome, but I will always come back to the US. Its laws, spirit, openness – it’s crude quality and vulgarity too – these things feed me. They are the air I breath. After all, I am just as much an Irish Catholic and an old Yankee as I am a Jew. That’s good. That’s what America is all about. To paraphrase dear old Walt – I contain multitudes, get used to it.

So, I support Israel, but I support America first. Always. And I am troubled by American Jews who sometimes seem to be more concerned about the fate of Israel than of the US. I chafe at a dinner party where the guests are deciding whether to vote for Obama based on his stance on the Palestinian question. Or a movie business friend in LA who admits he would march off to die for Israel before he would for his own country. Being here, in Israel, I can safely state that this is misguided. It does Israelis no good, coddles them, allows the government to get away with murder – literally murder, let’s call a spade a spade – under the protective umbrella of American power. They don’t need it and ultimately they don’t want it.

To American Jews I now channel the voice of the Israeli airline pilot, the ausim, gruff and speaking in heavily-accented, barely comprehensible English: “You. America. Everything fine. Don’t worry so much. I am Israel. I take care of myself. You go figure out your own problems.”

Day Nine, Eilat, Israel to Petra, Jordan

Standing in the No Man’s Land between Israel and Jordan, ringed by barbed wire and watched closely by men with machine guns, I admit that I am nervous about crossing into an Arab, Muslim nation. How will they treat me, a Jew, an American, crossing from Israel? With disdain? Hostility? Something worse? But as soon as I set foot in Jordan, I realize that I could not have been more wrong.

Jordan, and the Jordanians, could not be nicer. Or more accommodating, gracious and eager to have me love their country. And the country, while hot and barren, confounds all my expectations of a poor, Arab gulf state. It is modern, the roads are perfectly paved, everyone has electricity, cell phones, and they speak good English. And it feels very, very safe. Okay, yes, there are wild camels and Bedouins everywhere, but that only adds to the charm.

We drive out of Aqaba, North through the impossibly rocky and barren Shara Mountains. Jamil, our driver, explains about Jordan’s royal family. They are Hashemites – Hashem being the Great Grandfather of the Prophet Mohammed – and they come originally from Saudi Arabia. The royals aren’t even Jordanian, and the current King, Abdullah, spoke English before he learned Arabic. Jamil doesn’t care. He loves the King. In fact, every Jordanian we meet seems to loves their King, as well as his various wives and children. And it seems to be a genuine, unprompted love. Jordan is not a police state. There are no hushed voices of dissent, and any police we see seem to be there for the sole purpose of helping tourists.

After drinking two Turkish coffees loaded with sugar (me, I drink two, Bernie has none, clever guy), we hike down into the ruins of the ancient Nabatean city of Petra. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and no place I have visited is more deserving of the honor. Petra is simply one of the most beautiful, astounding places I have ever seen. The Nabateans began building Petra in the second century BC, and continued the job through the Roman era and almost up to the time of the rise of Islam. They fought the Macedonians to a standstill, and despite being conquered by the Romans still managed to run the trade routes from Africa to Constantinople. The town was eventually lost to the West, and stayed that way for centuries, only to be rediscovered again in 1812 by a wandering Swiss explorer. And what a thing it must have been for him when he found the place.

To enter the site, we walk almost two kilometers through a narrow winding canyon, with 500-foot cliff faces surrounding us on both sides. Slowly, caves and rock dwellings appear, adorned with intricate wind-eroded carvings. Then, we turn a corner in the canyon and step into a vast open space, now circled by 1000-foot rock walls. Carved into the middle of the opposite red rock wall is Al-Khazneh, The Treasury, a two hundred foot high façade that guards a series of caves. It is so impressive that I stare, mouth open, while German tourists snap pictures all around me. The place is beyond words. Or pictures, frankly. It inspires an awe that borders on feelings of faith. And I don’t have a lot of faith.

And it continues. More canyons, more facades, cave after cave, temples and tombs. No one is entirely sure what the caves were used for. Living quarters? Sacrificial altars? Burial grounds? The secrets of the Nabateans are lost to time, but it really doesn’t matter. The place is mind-blowing. And we’ve stumbled upon it at a great time – tourism has flat-lined in Jordan. Petra’s not empty, of course, but it’s clearly not crowded. Jamil says high season, the winter, was a bust. And it’s only gotten worse.

It’s hot, and Bernie is feeling ragged. We see maybe half the park – it just goes on forever – before turning back. On the way back up the canyon boys harass us with trinkets, and older men badger us to take a camel ride. A horse bolts its master and tears through the narrow canyon path, sending tourists and locals alike scampering for safety.

We eat Bedouin food and haggle for souvenirs. On the drive back we pass Aaron’s tomb, a white dot on a distant mountain top. How anyone was buried up there I have no idea. Jamil tells us about all the other Patriarchs who are buried in Jordan, Moses being the foremost. The past is so completely alive here. And the culture is so different from the more Westernized Israel. I tell Bernie I can begin to understand Arab rage at the coming to the Middle East of the Zionist wave. Jordan (and I assume Syrian and Lebanon too) are so Arab, so radically different from European-like Israel. After emerging from centuries of white colonialism, Arabs must have chafed at seeing Ashkenazi Jews — another distinctly alien, white culture — come streaming into the Holy Land.

Bernie and I argue this for a while. After this trip I support Israel more than I ever have, but I can see plainly how the sudden emergence of a Jewish state must have come as a shock to the locals. Bernie and I agree to disagree, and we both thank the Jordanian soldiers profusely as we cross out of their country. We really like Jordan, I tell a guard. Thank you, he says, and please tell your friends to come visit. I will, I say, absolutely. So I’m telling you now. Go visit Jordan. It’s a beautiful, kind, fascinating place.

And it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Day Eight, Tel Aviv to Eilat

Bernie and I wake with a problem: we’ve got time to kill. Bernie doesn’t feel great from all the medication he’s been taking, but neither of us wants to sit around Tel Aviv for the next five days. We’ve been told that there are cheap flights to Eilat, an Israeli resort town on the Red Sea, and that while the town of Eilat is a little tacky, the surrounding desert is beautiful. So we book a flight, and we’re off.

The airport in Tel Aviv that handles domestic flights is tiny, smaller than all but the most remote regional airports in the US. And yet still, we go through four separate security checks: Passport please, can I see your eyes, ticket please, passport, are you carrying a weapon? Finally, we get to the mother of all security checks. My guard is a young, pretty Israeli women, not more than 22 years old. It starts normally enough. Where are you going? Eilat. Why? Tourism. How long have you been in Israel? A week. Then it gets progressively more personal.

Do you have family here? Yes, in Jerusalem. And near Haifa. What are their names? I tell her. Do you speak Hebrew? No. Well, a little. Where did you learn it? I don’t really speak it. But you said a little. Yeah, okay, I can ask where the bathroom is. Who taught you that? Nobody, I listened to CDs in my car. Where did you get them? I checked them out from the Seattle Public Library. (At this point, I am laughing. It’s got to be clear to her that I am not a terrorist. But she persists.)

Where have you been in Israel? Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc. Can you tell me some of the things you saw? (Now I’m beginning to enjoy myself, so I elaborate.) Sure, loved the Old City, walked the stations of the cross, had a long conversation with this Arab guy who tried to sell me a Star of David, then drank coffee in this little café near the Wailing Wall. I go on and on, really thinking about all the amazing stuff I’ve experienced. It’s been a rich, full trip. She stops me: Okay, okay, enough. You can go. “This has been really interesting,” I tell her. She laughs. Finally.

Waiting for the plane, I take a picture of the security checkpoint. Within seconds two airport guards surround me. “Did you take a picture?” I did. “Show it to us.” I do. “You must delete it. Now.” I think about arguing, but Bernie gives me a look and I delete the photos. And that’s why there are no pictures at the beginning of this post.

Our plane is an aging twin engine prop, covered in a thin layer of red Negev Desert dust. I can see out the window, but only barely. The whole machine is filthy. We take off out of Tel Aviv and head due East. I can see the Dead Sea and the border with Jordan. We inch closer and closer to the border, then hang a severe right and go South. The pilot makes announcements in Hebrew, then in heavily-accented, incomprehensible English. Bernie and I take turns making fun of him: “This is pilot. We go Eilat, get there soon. Why you need to know how long it takes? Don’t worry so much. Everything is fine.” At the time, this strikes Bernie and me as hilarious.

To say that Eilat is tacky is to vastly understate the case. It is an Israeli version of Vegas or Daytona Beach, only it is filled with Russians. Huge, sun burnt men and their thong bikini-wearing wives (women who were pushing it showing that much skin twenty years ago, and have absolutely no right to do it now). There are massive hotels, floating casinos, marinas jammed with boats, and an astonishing array of dance clubs. “Ben-Gurion would be pulling his hair out that they built a place like this in Israel,” Bernie says. Bernie is a bit of a snob. But I get his point.

And yet, I am in awe of the place. Standing on the balcony of my Thai-themed hotel room, looking across the three mile width of the very Northern tip of the Red Sea, I can see Jordan. It is framed in magnificent red mountains. I could kayak to Aqaba in half an hour. The very same Aqaba of Lawrence of Arabia fame. Looking slightly further South, maybe five miles, I can see the jagged peninsula of Saudi Arabia. Earlier I ask Tal, our cabbie, if tourists can go to Saudi Arabia from here. “They can go,” he says, “but they can’t come back.”

We bicycle down to the beach, and our view widens slightly. Now, not only can I see Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but Egypt too. An Israeli naval vessel bobs up and down in the sea, just a kilometer or so away. You immediately get how hemmed-in Israel is by its often hostile neighbors. We had considered traveling into Egypt, but a friend warned us off: there are Al-Qaeda cells operating in the Sinai. It is no longer safe.

I swim in the Red Sea. It is warm, lush, incredibly buoyant. Black and purple tropical fish swim underneath me. My feet brush up against a coral reef. Yes, Eilat is tacky. Beyond belief. But I get why it’s here. The setting is incredible.

We decide we will flee Eilat tomorrow and try to go to Petra, in Jordan, to see the ancient Nabatean city carved out of stone. I’m a tad anxious about going off into the heart of a Muslim country. We phone Mohammed, a guide out of Jordan who was recommended to us. We settle on a price. He assures us everything will be great. “Just keep calling me on my cell phone if there is trouble.” Now I really am nervous. Trouble? “No, no. No trouble. But call me anyway.” Okay, I will. I feel better. “Fine,” he says, “See you tomorrow. And… good luck.”

Wait, huh?

Day Seven, Tel Aviv

Back in the big city. We’ve rented an apartment on Dizengoff Street, the main shopping strip of Tel Aviv. There’s boutiques and bars and hipsters wandering beneath our windows at all hours. You could swear you were in Barcelona or Paris. But we don’t have time for strolling this morning, because it’s off to the clinic for us.

Yesterday Bernie got another dosing treatment. Today we return, hoping to hear that the next phase of the treatment – a cancer vaccine – will begin soon, if not immediately. But nothing is that simple at the clinic – or in Israel for that matter. The doctor, Prof. Slavin, isn’t available. In fact, he’s two hours late. Which is always the case. If he’s not late, then he’s in China. No shit, last week, China! But that’s life at this clinic. There’s no sense of order or rational process. When we arrived with luggage we needed stowed, it took three people ten minutes to decide where to put it. I’m learning that’s sort of how Israel is as a country. Nothing is easy. Everything’s a big drama. It’s part of the national personality.

Nobody ever says to you – I’ll take care of that for you. If they do, you’re sure they’re trying to rip you off. Making a hotel reservation can take half an hour. Why? Scarcity of resources? The sense that you might be car bombed at any minute? I do not know. But it’s maddening. The doctors tell us the rest of Bernie’s treatment will not start until Sunday, five days from now, because no one ordered the vaccine cell cultures to be grown. That’s a blow. Bernie wants to get back home to see his kids, his wife, but now he will have to wait.

At loose ends, we tour Rothschild Boulevard. It’s a grand, tree-lined avenue, where the first plots of land in Tel Aviv were auctioned off (Tel Aviv is only 100 years old), and many of the oldest families built their mansions. Walking North, there are fabulous Bauhaus apartments, built by German immigrants who arrived in Israel in the 20’s and 30’s, bringing modernism with them. Many of the buildings are neglected now, which is strangely appealing – they are not prissy monuments to a dead design movement, but living, changing structures that people actually use every day.

Unlike Paris or Barcelona, however, Israel has no consistent architectural style. In fact, in the visual sense, Israel is as chaotic as Prof. Slavin’s clinic. There are so many ways of life competing for airspace here that the country is not so much a melting pot as a bunch of separate ingredients swirling in a very tight cauldron. But they do not mix.

That in mind, I spend the afternoon taking an inventory of Israeli personal style. I wander the boutiques of Dizengoff Street, talking to owners and clerks, and searching for a Meta-national look.

The easiest to categorize are the religious types. The Chassidim are obvious in their black hats, long coats and white shirts. Next come a group of people the Israelis call “Knitted Kippas.” A kippa is another term for a Yarmulke. But Knitted Kippas wear theirs all the time, not just at Bar-Mitzvahs or Passover. And unlike the silky yarmulkes you get at temple, the knitted ones are, well, knitted. It’s a sign of their faith.

The Knitted Kippas are strongly religious, but they still try to accommodate the modern world, meeting it halfway. They pray, have lots of kids, but stop short of the the Black Hats – the Chassidim – who reject modernity completely.  Knitted Kippas can dress like pretty much anyone. Often, they grow beards, just not Rip Van Winkle ones like the Chassids.

The Russian immigrants are easy to spot because they look so…Russian. They wear big sunglasses and slick black suits, and you absolutely know them when you see them. Plus, they talk really loud. In Russian.

Next come the Army Kids. Some wear their uniforms like a badge of honor, but most – women especially – slouch around in theirs like they are olive green burlap sacks. Women let their fatigues slide down their hips, like gang-banger pants, in what I suspect is a Fuck You gesture to the Army. Or maybe it’s just that the pants rarely fit well. The funniest thing is seeing a female soldier in uniform with a nose ring, tattoos, smoking a cigarette, talking on her cell phone…with an Uzi slung around her shoulder. Fashion is Hell.

There doesn’t seem to be a classic female Israeli look. One shop owner tells me that it’s jeans and an expensive T-shirt. I do a quick survey and realize she’s sort of right. It’s rare to see anyone done to the nines here. But there are plenty of hippie girls, who another clerk referred to, dismissively, as Kibbutzim who can’t find their way back to the farm.

There are also hippie men, and businessmen (rarely in suits), but the one men’s style that stands out is the ubiquitous “Don’t Mess With The Zohan,” shaved head tough guy wearing a T-shirt two sizes too small. They crack me up. You see these guys everywhere. Sitting at cafes, driving cabs. Always yelling into their cell phones. A dress designer says the Hebrew word for them is auseem. Rough guy. She snorts; “Not the best representative of Israeli culture.” Are they real tough guys, I ask. She shrugs: “Maybe a little. But you talk to them, and pfft, they still love their mothers.”

Day Five, Caesarea to Kerem Maharal

It’s Saturday, Shabbat in Israel, and Bernie has a second day off from the clinic. Everything closes in Israel on Shabbat, so for the first time on this trip, I sleep late. Not well, but late. Jet lag is sapping my spirit. I knock on Bernie’s door, waking him, and the two of us rush to the hotel restaurant to get breakfast before it closes. But there’s no hurry. Guests are still streaming in for the enormous Israeli breakfasts they serve here. There’s all types of bread, fruit, eggs, nuts, salmon, herring (lots and lots of herring), hard cheeses, soft cheeses, and a series of trays filled with casserole-like vegetable/sauce/cheese dishes that are inedible. There’s also deserts – breakfast deserts – which I think is a culinary innovation that needs to come to the States.

The guests are a mix of Israelis and Americans. The Americans climbed off a tour bus yesterday morning. They are all Jewish, prosperous-looking, well-fed and happy to be in the Holy Land. They seemed an optimistic bunch of people. Which, I am learning, is in direct contrast to the natives. Today shows me that Israel has grown gloomy.

I say goodbye to my right wing family and we travel North, up the coast, to a bedroom community outside Haifa named Kerem Maharal. Kerem Maharal is what’s called a Moshav. Or at least it used to be one. Moshavs are semi-communal farms in Israel, where farmers own their own land, but pool resources and machinery. They’re not as communal as a Kibbutz, but American farmers would call them downright socialist. This Moshav, strategically located near the bustling city of Haifa, has experienced a real estate boom (with the bust following on its tail). So now it is dotted with fancy homes, owned by hi-tech workers who commute into Haifa every morning. The farms are still there, but the McMansions are closing in.

Bernie has friends who live in Kerem Maharal: Michelle, a sociology professor at the University of Haifa, and her husband Amos, who teaches math at Israel’s best technical college. They have invited us to a barbeque, along with another Israeli couple, a tech worker and his wife, a social worker from the center of the country. They are classic left-leaning intellectuals, and having just spent two days with my Likud relatives, this is a chance to see what the other half thinks. I immediately start in with the questions.

What is the state of the economy in Israel? Not good, they answer. The economic crash has hit Israel hard. It’s not just the stock exchange that has taken a beating – Israel’s economy is heavily export-dependent, and right now nobody around the world is buying. Exports are down 45% from last year. Businessmen are starting to panic. The country is nowhere near the bottom, they say.

What is middle-class here? The median family income in Israel is just above $30,000 (as opposed to $46,000 in the US). And life is not cheap here. There is a 100% tax on new cars. That means a $20,000 Honda sells for $40,000. What we would consider a compact car is called a “family car” in Israel. And the average Israeli family has three kids, not two. Yes, health care is free, as is education, but real estate is pricey, and most goods have to be shipped in, usually from a long way away. Also, every 18-year old has to join the army for three years, so they delay starting college until they are 21 or 22, and then they usually take a year off to travel the world. Most kids don’t even get their bachelors degrees until their late twenties. Advanced degrees can take them into their 30’s, cutting into their productive working years.

But it’s not the economy that preoccupies the average Israeli. They are much more worried about politics. The left is worried because Benjamin Netanyahu won the election, and his government is promising a hard line on peace. The right is worried because Obama won in the states, and he is signaling an impatience with Israel’s leadership. This leaves the citizens predicting gridlock at best, a meltdown at worst.

Amos, the physics professor, is the most pessimistic: “In the past, there was a framework for peace – the Oslo Accords, Camp David – but those got us nothing.” He thinks those who hold out hope that peace talks can be arranged are fooling themselves. The Arabs, he says, will not come to the table. His cousin, the hi-tech worker, adds: “But if nobody from the outside pushes Israel to negotiate, then nothing will happen. It will just be more of the same. Violence, unrest, a little peace, then more violence.”

Well, I ask them, do you have a vision for Israel’s future? Long silence. So much, they say, depends on where the Arab world goes. If fundamentalism continues to gain followers and power, then life will be very hard for Israel. (And for Europe and the US, they are quick to add.) If a new Sadat can rise in Syria or Egypt, then things could change quickly, but that leader has yet to emerge.

But their biggest worry – and this holds true for everyone I’ve spoken to in Israel – is Iran. Israelis are obsessed with Iran and its budding nuclear capability. Even the lefties at the barbeque fear the Iranians. Right now, Iran represents a collective nightmare of potential annihilation. Every park, school and business has a bomb shelter. And while they don’t necessarily advocate a strike against its  nuclear facilities, they are unified in believing the government must do whatever it takes to keep Israel safe.

So, all of this piled together, gives you gloom. And it is pervasive. A national state of mind. Only the social worker, who deals with Israel’s downtrodden, was optimistic. She summed it up like this: “People in Israel should stop worrying about trying to change the world. They should just live their lives. And be happy for every day.”

She is the daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor. I guess she has a point.

Day Four, Jerusalem to Caesarea

It is hard to fully describe how omnipresent religion is in Israel, especially once you leave Tel Aviv. Even in the most ordinary places – a generic hillside, for instance – you find a biblical tomb. There are mosques and synagogues, and the clerics who tend to them, in every corner of every town. The place is infused with a living history of worship. And nowhere is that more prevalent than in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is like Disneyland for the observant. The Old City is jammed to bursting with holy sites: temples, churches, mosques, caves, tunnels, reliquaries. The streets wind, maze-like, through the four quarters of the city – Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian – and each quarter is packed with religious trinket shops for tourists. Hawkers bark at your from their stalls, trying to sell you crucifixes or knit kippas or shawls.

Old Arab men in suits try to hustle you into tours of their little corner of the city. One guy follows me onto a rooftop, going on about how Jesus walked here, Mohammed ascended from there. Then he holds out his hand and says “Now you show me I love your beautiful money.” I flee.

That’s not to say that Jerusalem isn’t stunningly beautiful and doesn’t have a real and powerful aura of history and the sacred. I keep happening by chance on various stations of the cross – spots where Jesus set down his burden as he carried the cross to his crucifixion – like they were Starbucks on street corners in Seattle. Oh look, another monument of mind-blowing religious significance. No biggie. But I walk out of the Old City at noon pondering Israel’s relationship with the faithful.

Bernie spends the morning resting in the hotel. The dosing treatments have been hard on him. He naps. At noon, my relatives pick us up and we drive North along the Eastern edge of Israel. We pass the infamous border fence, looming on our right. But it isn’t particularly impressive. At times it looks like the walls of a prison, but mostly it resembles those concrete barriers that California cities construct around highways to keep the noise down. Bland. Non-threatening.

My relatives, however, are very careful not make any wrong turns near the West Bank (they just call it Judea and Samaria). “We go right there, we end up in Ramallah. Not good. Not Jew-friendly.” The driver has an admitted problem with left and right. I watch the highway signs very closely.

We arrive in Caesarea, an ancient Roman port and garrison. King Herod built the town as a tribute to his Roman patron – Caesar – and later, in the 13^th century, the Crusaders used it as a walled citadel to keep the local Muslims at bay. After that, it fell into neglect. But the Israelis have dug it up, revealing a spectacular hippodrome, arched promenades and crumbling fortifications.

And of course there are tourists. This time it’s Americans. Five busloads of evangelical Christians from Chattanooga, Tennessee. They are touring with Precept Ministries. JB, a guide, explains to me that they spend 14 days in Israel, stopping at all the significant sacred spots in the country, and teaching the bible at each of them. Why Caesarea? “Well, we’re teaching Acts here. Peter came to Caesarea, Paul too. It was here that the first gentile – Cornelius – was converted to Christianity.” She couldn’t be sweeter, offers to pray for Bernie  and tells me to look her up if I’m ever in Chattanooga.

American evangelicals have a complicated relationship to Israel. They are big supporters of the state, and pour a lot of money into the economy. They believe the Jews have to live in Israel in order for the Messiah to come and the Rapture to begin. But they want the Jews to convert to Christianity, and if they don’t, then they believe all Jews are going to Hell. So basically what they’re working towards is a vision of a destroyed Israel.

I find that troubling. My Israeli cousin, however, does not. At dinner that night, in an ancient stone house on a hilltop overlooking vineyards and a lush green valley (which belongs to another cousin that I didn’t know I had), we argue Israel and American evangelicals. She actually works to get evangelicals to come to Israel and donate money to her particular causes, specifically women’s rights. She sees no contradictions in current evangelical support of the state and their End Times desire to see the world Jew-less.

I say: but don’t you worry that Israel is making a devil’s bargain? Isn’t their money bad faith money? And doesn’t that taint the goals of your good works? Not to her. She is practical, hard-headed, focused on getting it done for Israelis today, in her lifetime, however that looks. And anyway, she says, if the Messiah shows up, we’ll renegotiate.

In this country, this secular, democratic, hi-tech country, it’s all religion all the time, even when it’s not.

Day Three, Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Today is a day that reveals to me all that can be troubling about Israel.

I wake up late, still struggling with jet lag. Bernie and I pack our bags and head to the clinic for the first day of dosing and real treatments. Bernie is anxious about needles and drawing blood, and I don’t blame him. He’s been poked and stuck two or three times a month for three years now. Last time doctors drew blood it was so painful he fainted.

Samirah, a nurse at the clinic, says she will make it all right for him. She tells him: I will sing for you when we draw blood. I often sing to the patients. It calms them down. Samirah is young, pretty, dark-skinned, fluent in English, and charming. I assume she is a Sabra, a native-born Israeli. But I’m wrong. She tells me she’s Palestinian. She was born in Haifa. Her family has been here for countless generations.

Bernie is clearly anxious. Samirah sits him down, kneels at his side, and sings to him, beautifully, staring him straight in the eye the entire time. She does it without embarrassment, full of compassion. And best of all, what does she sing him? A Whole New World, from the Disney movie Aladdin. Embarrassingly enough, I am moved to tears. And the singing works. A second nurse draws Bernie’s blood during the song, and the dosing treatment begins without incident. I am eternally grateful.

The therapy over for the day, we catch a bus to Jerusalem to meet my cousin. The bus is full of Israeli soldiers. That’s how the soldiers get around in Israel – they crowd onto public transportation the moment they get weekend leave. The soldiers are all young, scruffy, nonchalant about the numerous weapons slung over their shoulders. And they all have weapons. They bang into you with their M-16s, knock machine guns on tables, sit on their rifles. Their weapons are never allowed to leave their possession. Never. They eat with them, pee with them, sleep with them. If you’re caught without your weapon you can be court-martialed.

Jerusalem is astonishing from first sight. Gleaming buildings of white stone, hillsides dotted with boulders and scrub just exactly as I imagined. Literally like a verse from the bible. It is overwhelmingly beautiful, ancient and powerful. My cousin meets us at the bus station. She is a little older than me, a lawyer, pushy and yet warm, strongly opinionated but also loving and funny. We get along great. She is a fourth generation Sabra. Her family was living in Israel back when it was still Palestine.

She has two sons, the younger of whom takes me on a tour of the Wailing Wall, the last remaining vestige of the second Temple, the holiest site in all of Judaism. In the plaza above the wall, there is a ceremony going on. Israeli combat units are graduating their soldiers from basic training. Now they can fight. There are hundreds of soldiers there, all ethnicities – black, white, brown – male and female, all young, all joyous. They crowd into groups and sing their combat unit songs at the other units, taunting them, but also just singing happily. It’s infectious. I want to chant and sing and jump. Hell, I want to be in the Israeli army. It looks like fun.

Oh yeah, the Wailing Wall is pretty impressive too. It is littered with prayers. I say one myself, but I won’t tell you what it was because then it might not come true.

My cousin also has an older son. He’s in the army, but he’s already been through his combat training. After we see the Western Wall we decide to go to dinner. Bernie has been convalescing at our hotel, so we head back to get him. A word about the hotel. We are staying in The American Colony Hotel. It’s a fabulous relic from the 1880s, battered and grand, with a courtyard covered with fig trees and rooms with Arabic tile and arched ceilings. Winston Churchill stayed there. And Christianne Amanpour. It’s also in East Jerusalem. That’s the Arab Quarter. The staff of the hotel is all Arab. So is security. I assume that ownership is too.

Bernie’s too tired to go out to dinner, so I ask my cousin, her husband and her eldest son, all with me at the time, if we could cancel plans to go to a restaurant far from the hotel, and instead eat at the American Colony’s dining room. It will be easier for Bernie. Everyone agrees. And that’s when the trouble starts.

Remember, my cousin’s son is in the army. He can’t leave his gun behind. He has to bring it with him. Into the hotel. The Arab staff are not happy about this. Security says he can’t come in with his gun, and he absolutely can’t eat at the dining room with it. Formerly deferential, now they are adamant. My cousin’s son argues. It gets heated. His father busts in. They yell. It’s all in Hebrew, but I don’t need to understand the language to know what’s being said. Security in the form of half a dozen bulky Arab men in windbreakers – clearly concealing weapons – appear in the background. They look very tense.

My cousin runs up. She is enraged. She’s also a former ministerial adviser to the Likud party, a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and not someone to be pushed around. There are threats made, more security, and finally, after five agonizing minutes, my cousin, looking at Bernie and me, realizes this is a battle that can’t be won in front of American guests, and backs down. She tells the staff she’ll never recommend the hotel again, and we go back to Plan A and head into the Old City for dinner.

As we pull out of the hotel a phalanx of sullen Arab men glare at us, hands tucked menacingly into their jackets. And I’m thinking – Shit, I still have to spend the night at this place.

At dinner, my relatives are furious. They say: That is not East Jerusalem (what the Arabs call it). It is just JERUSALEM. Part of Israel. Our country. Run by rules. And the rules are clear – soldiers carry their guns everywhere, no exceptions. I understand their rage. The Arab staff was behaving as if Israeli law did not apply to them or to their establishment. A slap in the face. But in my family’s attitude there was also an insensitivity, even a touch of arrogance. The air seemed thick with “How dare you behave that way to us?!?” But maybe my family is right. Maybe I am just a weak-kneed American peacenik. Or maybe it’s all those guns. They make me uneasy.

Later, back in the hotel room, I think about Samirah and her singing that morning. It was so lovely. I almost cried. By nightfall I was in the middle of a budding international incident. How do you reconcile those two events? I don’t know. I don’t have answers, it’s late, and I am very tired.

Maybe tomorrow will provide them.

Day Two, Tel Aviv

The only good thing about jet lag is that I get to watch the sun rise over Tel Aviv. It’s purple, orange…spectacular. Right below the hotel, surfers pull up to the beach on Vespas, boards slung onto the side of their bikes, as Muslims step around them to file into a mosque for dawn prayers. It seems a fittingly contradictory first image of the day.

Today is clinic day. Bernie and I go the Tel Aviv Medical Center to meet with Dr. Beni Gesundheit. No joke, Dr. Gesundheit. I wonder if he got beat up a lot as a kid. He’s nice enough, speaks English with a clipped Swiss accent, and quizzes Bernie for an hour about the history of his cancer. I sit there thinking, man is Bernie brave the way he dispassionately gives a biography of his disease: when was I diagnosed, first surgery, first hormone blockade, latest pathology report. And on and on. He speaks of his prostate cancer as if it were both a part of him, and yet separate from his body. I keep thinking of the title of that book: I Am Not My Cancer. It’s a duality I’m beginning to understand.

Next Doc Sneeze lays out treatment options, a bewildering (to me) array of drugs and therapies. But Bernie keeps it all straight in his head, and by the end is clearly happier. Relieved might be a better word. He was afraid these doctors weren’t competent, that the whole operation was a scam to prey on desperate cancer patients. But they seem to know what they’re doing. I think the hope they offer is real.

We celebrate with food. I have what I can only describe as thick, double crusted pizza stuffed with ratatouille and crumbly cheese. It’s fantastic. I would eat it everyday if I could find it. I would also bust my pants.

We decide to tour the city. We take a lot of cabs. Ephraim, driver number one, wants to teach me Hebrew. Where did he learn his English? Brooklyn. Of course. “Two years, I lived there. I can’t tell you how I made money.” We press him. “You might be CIA, come to get me. Okay, I tell you. I buy two cars, cheap, insure them under different names, crash them into each other, collect insurance on both, take to body shop, fix, sell them to myself, do it again. I make enough money to come back to Tel Aviv and buy a house.” He says it was justified because insurance companies charge him so much money, now, in Israel, which strikes me as Back To The Future logic, but I say nothing.

Driver number two, Henry, comes from Egypt. Is he an Arab? No, he says, a Jew. He fled Egypt in the 50’s, when the British pulled out, now he drives a cab. Tel Aviv used to be great. Now? Eh, it’s no Cairo. Cabbie number three has no English, can only say, loudly: Tashkent! Uzbekistan! We get the point. Israel is like that. Everyone comes from somewhere else. The nurse at the clinic is from Texas, the concierge at the hotel from Greece. There’s no need to assimilate, hide your origins: you’re Jewish, you stumble through Hebrew, that’s good enough.

We stroll the open air markets of the Yemenite Quarter. They smell of spices and flowers and dried fruit. There are sacks of beans, teas, candies. The sellers bark in Hebrew: Friends, please, come! Friends, please! The market is relaxed, not frenetic at all. It’s oddly comforting.

I am fascinated by the local graffiti. It’s in Hebrew, so I don’t always understand, but it’s obviously political, with maps and photocopied pictures of Kibbutzniks or Theodore Herzel. Bernie says it’s Chassidic in origin, so we ask a passing Orthodox man. He speaks a little English, explains that “Am Israeli Chai” (a slogan that’s everywhere) means, broadly, We, Israel, stand alone. “No US. No England. No Belgium. Israeli. Us. Alone.” I frown. No Belgium? Did I miss a day’s paper? We thank him. Before he leaves he adds: “I love Kosher Pizza on Fairfax. Very good.” At least he didn’t mention Brooklyn.

It has been a good day. Bernie is buoyed, less anxious. Tomorrow, the regimen of drugs begins at the clinic. Then, if we’re feeling strong, we catch an afternoon bus to Jerusalem and see what adventures await us there.

Day One, Israel

Even before I set foot on the flight to Tel Aviv, I feel as if I am stepping into another world. A buff Israeli man is arguing with the woman at the airline counter in Newark. He wants to sit next to his friend. He has to sit next to his friend. Why won’t the airline help him? So what if the plane is full? He refuses to move. The growing line of irritated travelers behind him means nothing to him. Apparently his personal dissatisfaction encompasses the entire universe. Is this what all of Israel will be like? I grow nervous.

Ten Chassids form a minyan and start praying. Right in front of the elite access boarding line. They continue praying on the plane, gathering near the bathroom and rocking back and forth, at least one man praying for every minute of the entire nine and a half hour flight. No one but me seems to notice.

My seat neighbor, Joe, a 300-pound Chassid from Brooklyn, tells me his first language is Yiddish. When I mention that I didn’t think anyone spoke Yiddish anymore he is aghast: 400,000 people in Brooklyn alone, he says. How can I not know that? Where have I been living? Where, indeed, I wonder. He’s American, goes to Israel four times a year, but he’s never been to California. The farthest he’s strayed from New York is Boston, and he hated it. Too much traffic. In Israel, he says, all the ice cream is Kosher, so the choice is easy. He loves ice cream. Brooklyn-Israel, Israel-Brooklyn. Like a subway stop.

We arrive in Israel. The Holy Land, at last. I’ve been flying fifteen hours. It is warm, sunny, humid. Tel Aviv is more Third World than I would have imagined. Low slung, concrete slab architecture predominates, interspersed with dingy-looking corner grocery stores and gravel laden parks. Downtown, in the distance, seems modern. I will go there tomorrow. The traffic is Third World too: narrow streets, insane cabbies, parked cars wedged half on the street, half on the sidewalk. But the smell of the salty Mediterranean is seductive, calming. I sit on a bench at the foot of the ocean and watch the sun set.

One thing I was wrong about is Israelis. They are not gruff or unsympathetic. On the contrary, they are incredibly accommodating. One goes out of her way to find us a great hotel, another makes sure we know exactly how much the cab fare will be from the airport, a third is unfailingly apologetic because we’ve waited two minutes for our hotel room keys. My cousin from Jerusalem is bending over backwards to tour us around the Old City. Has the country lost its edge? Or was that more myth than reality? To be determined…

My traveling partner, Bernie, is exhausted, needs his rest. He didn’t sleep on the plane, instead watched Valkyrie and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Big mistake. Tomorrow, we go to the clinic to begin treatment, and we will find out what the next two weeks will look like. So much to explore. I can’t wait…

a trip of healing

I am traveling to Israel on Monday. Why? My dear friend Bernard has prostate cancer. He has had surgery, and then radiation, but still there is some disease left in his body. There is a respected clinic in Tel Aviv, where they offer a new and experimental cancer therapy. Bernard is taking a chance on this therapy, and he asked me to go with him, to hold his hand, and I said yes.

So this is a trip of healing. And not just for Bernard.

I have never been to Israel, but I have flirted with the idea. In my 20′s I signed up for an Ulpan program at a Kibbutz, but never went. During the first Gulf War I considered covering the conflict from Tel Aviv, but again, I backed out. Israel holds an allure for me, as it seems to for all Jews. It is exotic, war-ridden, busy, angry, rude, noisy, but also beautiful, tranquil, spiritual, enchanting. Healing. And yet, I don’t know any of these things first hand. Those are descriptions I have read or heard. Now I will experience the place for myself.

But why me, why now? Because I also need to heal. I am a writer, for the movies, for television, but lately, not for myself. I seem to have strayed from the voice and vision I once held so tightly. I fret about family, money, responsibilities; they all weigh heavily now on my creativity. What will be my next job? For what studio? How much will I get paid? I worry myself into a straitjacket of timid choices, when what a writer really needs is to be bold. Without boldness, I am not worth reading. Or hiring. It is painful to admit, but as of late, I have not always been so bold.

I need to find my voice. Find it again. I need to listen to the voices of others, let them talk through me. I have a skill in this world; I can take people’s lives, their fears, their desires, and turn them into stories. That skill is a muscle that must be exercised, and when it is working, and working well, then I get great joy, and when I have joy I do good work. And one of the reasons I am alive on this earth is to do good work.

So…Off to the Holy Land. To look, to talk, to listen, to write. To heal.