What Israel means to me – Lisa Doob, March 2015.
The first time I set foot on Israeli soil was in the spring of 1977. My parents, younger brother and I had driven there from the Netherlands in our little VW hatchback, and taken the ferry from Athens to Haifa. We visited ruins and beaches, slept in tents, cabins, and budget hotels. We went to the Western Wall, ascended Masada, and swam in the Dead Sea. We celebrated Passover with distant cousins, and ate falafel in downtown Haifa on the eve of Israel Independence Day. The memory of that first trip has colored every subsequent visit to Israel, be it for a week or for a year. Israel is part of the fabric of my childhood – and part of my family’s story.
Over the past thirty years, I have had the privilege of revisiting many places I saw as a child, as well as experiencing new things. I have participated in religious services from across the spectrum of Jewish practice. I have stayed at kibbutzim and hostels, sampled good vintages at Israeli wineries. I have seen temporary matzah-making factories in action, grappled with politics, and dune-hopped in the Sinai desert. I have bought countless pairs of sandals, and made many a humorous mistake as I spoke my French-accented Hebrew in the streets. I have discovered that pizza tastes better with chili flakes and za’atar, and that coffee is at its best when it is strong and cardamom-scented. Israel is the far-away place that also feels like home.
What I do to support the Jewish state
I feel that one important thing I can do is to discuss Israel with those who have not lived there, and together gain insight on the similarities and differences that exist between the day-to-day lives of Jews in North America and those of Jews in Israel. Israel is a complex place –as is the United States, for that matter – and I believe that we owe it to ourselves to dig below the surface of how Israel is presented in media sound bites.
What you can do to support Israel
Seek out multiple points of view when learning about Israel. For every opinion you seek out, there will be three more that contradict it! As members of a Reform Jewish congregation, I would encourage us to learn more about the growing Israeli Reform movement, and the ways in which Jewish practice is evolving in Israel. We are all Am Yisrael – the People of Israel – and as such, owe it to ourselves to get to know one another better.