Eshchar continued

I realize now that I left out some critical information from the last post! I wrote a great deal about the fact that Joel and I talked so much, but I didn’t say a lot about what we said. That actually is somewhat by design. First of all, it’s really hard to remember the details of something that we immersed in all day long. Second, a lot of it somewhat personal. 

That said, I do want to make something clear. One of the reasons it was really important for me to see Joel was to see somebody who is in love with Israel but who does not fit the mold for most people I know. Joel and I talked about what it means to be in Israel because they want to be on a kibbutz and what that means practically, politically and ideologically.  We talked about what it means to be in Israel because it means belonging to the community in a unique way as a Jew. We talked about how hard it is to learn Hebrew but how doing so makes the difference between transplanting American communities into Israel in a way that, frankly, looks kind of colonialist, versus actually working hard to use the language to become Israeli. We talked about how Joel found Israel to be an answer to a lot of questions DESPITE a lot of pro-Israel rhetoric that Joel was averse to. 

If you've read through my other posts through this trip, you'll know that I've really wanted to have a relationship with Israel, but that a lot of things have stood in my way: language, mis-guided PR, and more. I haven't even addressed directly the work I've been doing so long trying to lean into learning Palestinian narratives and history. But meeting with a friend who now lives in Israel and who thinks so radically out of the box has helped me start to open a path.