written April 2018
It happens that American or South African Jews in their older age
Discover the beauty of Israel
And so they decide to make aliyah, to live here
If they are religious, they might choose
the mystical hill region around the spiritually loaded town of Zefat
Most definitely they will choose some place in the lush green pastures of the Galilee
There they never really learn the Hebrew language spoken in this country
and live off the wealth
Their former careers overseas secured themselves
A good life.
Now I am just a foreigner
But as far as I can figure it out
To be Israeli, you must:
serve three long grinding years in the army
While you are still so young and so full of yourself
that serving anything or anyone in repetitive duty, day in, day out, for years,
is surely the last thing you’d choose;
protecting fragile borders and keeping calm in a frantic land at age 19,
bored to death on some army outpost
or challenged upon life and death in some clashing zone –
then just wish to break free and
break out of this claustrophobic country, where everyone seems to know everyone
– the claustrophobia of kibbutzim and moshavim
and military bases and someone’s sacred site and countless memorials for all the dead, all the fallen, all the lost ones
– and travel the world for some time, South America, or India.
When you return, you must
struggle with money, with the expenses for housing and food and affording a car, working long hour shifts, all your life,
and fight with some kind of heritage, all your life:
a religious heritage, or a secular heritage, or: survivor’s children,
or: having no heritage, like an orphan.
You must fail in nine out of ten projects undertaken
And always get back on your feet again
Until you succeed once: supposedly in a specialty
You had to invent, make up
Along the way
And that is quite unique, exceptional, like:
No one leads a family pack of seven through the crowds
at Manahe Yehuda market, West Jerusalem, on Yom Shishi
like you do
No divorced woman in all the land of Israel, providing for herself
through working all week long in a factory,
recites Modeh Ani, a prayer of thanks to God,
with such grateful eyes and lips during the daily coffee break
Or the way you prepare breakfast at 5.30 in the morning after not enough sleep
You must, maybe at age 33 – longing to escape your fate, longing for peace
Choose to live in exile in Berlin
A city that keeps fascinating you
And basically the only European city where you can exist. Complex enough.
You needed a break from Israel once again,
but you are too old now for Tel Aviv in all its frivolity, and superficial beach fun
And in Berlin it is cold, you need a jacket, and you need hot chocolate,
and you actually like it that way.
The city has hints of your origins and scars all over it, just like you
And you are part of the creative minority, not the ruling majority, again.
And every time you are home for the holidays
You feel torn. And at some point you realize that you cannot escape your fate.
Whether you are here or in the diaspora.
To be Israeli,
You have to be willing to live several lives throughout a lifetime
In fact, you have to be willing and ready
at every moment
to die and be reborn
And the young American and European Jews, in their 20s, early 30s
Who choose all of this voluntarily
Are beautiful souls
They are my generation, and I am proud of them. Like the founding fathers
They come with nothing.
May they always live
A human life.