First Impressions of Israel (Heaven Without an Asterisk)

Remember those physics problems for an object at equilibrium?  Different forces are pulling from all directions and you need to figure out the final unknown force to keep it all from falling apart.  Israel is like that.  It is high contrast.  It is contradiction.  It is vegan cuisine.  Fine, I'll say it, they even read backwards.

Israel is the interface of the visible and the invisible worlds.  Consider two cities: Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  Tel Aviv is a city of cranes.  A thousand drills and jackhammers singing in unison.  It is a city that spontaneously erupted from the sand one-hundred years ago to serve as a foil to Jerusalem's history and restraint.  Far from the monument to hedonism as many choose to describe it, Tel Aviv is simply a monument to "the New Jew," and it comes with a side of bacon.  Where Jerusalem was built by slaves dragging limestone blocks, Tel Aviv was built by bright-eyed young idealists with cinder blocks.  Free from the encumbrance of history, the city defines itself as a home for intellectual and social capital.  It is a home to art, music, and fine dining.  It is the Silicone Valley of the east.  It is a safe place to show some skin. 

That said, Jerusalem is infinitely more interesting.  Where Tel Aviv represents an aspiration, J'slem is firmly grounded in the inescapable reality that this country exists because of a very long history, and in spite of endless conflict.  If Tel Aviv is a city of cranes, then Jerusalem is a city of walls- walls that keep people both in and out.  The old city is surrounded by a wall that binds Armenians, Jews, Christians, and Muslims together.  Although it dates back long before the common era, the wall that we see today is a relic of Suleiman the Magnificent, a relic of a time when kings, not just clowns, were magnificent.  Here, the streets are polished by a million footsteps over thousands of years.  Even the buildings are smoothed by so many lifetimes of movement.  It is, perhaps, the worlds most throroughly lived-in city.  Worn in, to be sure, but not worn out.  Whether physical or spiritual, it is a home to most of the world.  Now, climb above the street traffic, above the bearded lunatics, above the flashing gawkers cameras and the glow-in-the-dark Jesus posters.  Scale the ramparts to where the only landmarks are topped with crescent moons, stars, and crosses- the great constellations of monotheism.  Now, casting a gaze to the east, there looms and even larger wall.  Forty vertical feet of concrete stretch as far as the eye can see, literally cutting neighborhoods in half.

Nobody believes that the security wall is a solution.  Nobody.  While eating a cheeseburger on the beach in Tel Aviv it is easy to forget that it exists.  Unfortunately, Jerusalem does not have this luxury.  This disputed capital begs that you ask about the condition of the world's only Jewish state.  Is it stable?  Is it even possible?  Dig down a couple of meters and you will find different people asking the same questions.  Dig down a few more meters and you will find the same people asking the same questions.  History is stratified here.  Like an object at equilibrium, there are a thousand balancing forces pulling in all directions.  Like a physics lecture, I cannot fully wrap my mind around this place, but I continue to enjoy the beauty and complexity that labors to hold it all together.