Why I’m Going Home

May 13, 2008 - 4:30 PM by

From last week’s Wall Street Journal, an exquisitely written piece…
__________

Why I Left Israel, and Why I’m Going Home
By SHARI MOTRO
May 8, 2008; Page A13

Today Israel turns 60. When I was growing up in Herzilya, people celebrated Israel’s Independence Day by shooting each other with toy guns that covered the victim with fluorescent string. Later, when I was studying Arabic in Jordan, Palestinians I knew mourned the 1948 war as the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”).

Now I live in Virginia, where Israel’s birthday is invisible, and this year I mark it by packing. I’m preparing to move back for my sabbatical, preparing to embrace the double life I’ve been trying to deny since I dodged the draft into the Israeli army 18 years ago.

“Are you excited?” I get asked at least once a week. No, I say, I’m just going home.

I’m going home, and I’m scared. I’m scared not because of Iran’s nuclear capability or Hezbollah’s Katyushas or Hamas’s suicide bombs. These threats are real, but they feel abstract. I’m scared because I’m not sure I can resist absorbing their reverberations, the pent-up aggression that flows like a river through so many daily interactions; the constant noise, the sense that life is a zero-sum game, that the planet is too small for both of us, that your gain is my loss, that listening to your story will erase my own.

When we studied Zionism in high school, I asked my history teacher why Jews have a historical “right” to the land. I could understand saying we had a “connection,” but what do we mean when we speak of a “right”? What does that say about the rights of the people who were here before us?

“If you ask such a question,” he said, “you shouldn’t be here.”

So I left.

I left because I wanted to think my own thoughts, to read Socrates and Rousseau and Kierkegaard and ask the “real” questions of existence. I left and I built another life, not as a Jew, not as an Israeli, but as a human being. I left, and (even after returning briefly to Israel after college to complete my military service) I embraced what I imagined America could give me – an identity that was all about the future, all about possibility.

Being American, I imagined, meant that it didn’t matter what I came from: that I could shed my grandparents’ traumas and my parents’ generation’s sins; that I could claim America’s light without seeing its darkness; that I could take its freedom without its slavery and its Indians.

I was wrong. Slavery is part of my American self just as the Nakba is part of my Israeli self. America has taught me that these truths coexist, and that I can’t be a full human being without acknowledging and honoring what I come from. So I’m going home.

Go to the WSJ site for the rest…Thanks, One Jerusalem.

Tags: • Category: History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Profiles 

Comments

10 Comments on Why I’m Going Home

  1. David-Joe on Wed, May 14th 2008 1:33 AM

    2. What an utterly despicable individual.

  2. Gliker on Wed, May 14th 2008 2:00 AM

    3. That was nasty.

  3. Stephanie on Wed, May 14th 2008 5:59 AM

    4. David-Joe: Not everyone agrees with your viewpoint. That doesn’t make him/her a bad person and certainly not despicable. And you know what? She’s headed back this way. That says more than her column.

  4. David-Joe on Wed, May 14th 2008 12:41 PM

    5. A different oint of view – by all means. That what she did is forgiveable or that she even considers that Israel’s enemies have a “point of view” is all unforgiveable.

    You think she will defend the settlements in YeSh? She will be marching soon enough with the dirty radical left wing in Israel and pointing a corrosive finger at the IDF.

    Steph – I have no time for individuals such as that. She ought to be visiting Beit Halochem and on her knees seeking forgiveness from those guys who are the only reason that she has an Israel to returrn to.

  5. Liza R on Wed, May 14th 2008 4:20 PM

    6. David-Joe, Why should she have to defend the settlements? There are many, many Israelis who don’t. I find your attitude to be rather offensive, especially given that (as far as I recall – correct me if I’m wrong) you’re not living in Israel either.

    Most of the comments you leave on this site are somehow insulting, nasty, etc. It seems that you never like anything that gets posted, nor any of the comments left by others. Why do you bother, if the site upsets you so much?

  6. David-Joe on Thu, May 15th 2008 1:52 AM

    7. Liza, are you a Sabra? I am. I have served and fought [3 months in Lebanon during the push towards Lebanon].

    Israelis are rough. We do not find tough words insulting or offensive. Yours is a very American attitude.

    Yes I do not live in Israel – but so what? I can return whenever I want and its easy. I do not view Israel through the eyes of an oleh, but a Sabra. Israel is anormal country to me, not special. I view it through through eyes of someone born and raised on a kibbutz, where in the Jordan valley we used to have bullets flying and in the middle of the night rush to shelters when I was a kid.

    And as the sun rose we would then be feeding the soldiers that went after the Arab marauders.

    I do not mean to offend anyone, but I will also never apologize or shrink back from being Israeli, kibbutznik and a Jew, that declares the other side has no point of view, and that people such as Shari are dirt.

  7. Stephanie on Thu, May 15th 2008 5:45 AM

    8. You crossed a line here, D-Joe.

  8. Liza R on Thu, May 15th 2008 7:04 AM

    9. No, David-Joe, I am not a sabra. Why do you feel it necessary to mention your military service in the very first sentence? Am I supposed to be impressed or swayed by that bit of information somehow? Sorry, but I’m not. I’ve been living in Israel for 17 years, and while I may not have been born here, I’m as jaded as any Israeli I know.

    What you do not seem to realize is that there is a difference between rough and rude, and you have crossed that line repeatedly here. You haven’t offended me as an American, you’ve offended me as a person with your rudeness and your condescending attitude.

    You’ve dodged bullets – shall I tell you about my close calls with terror attacks? You seem to think that your connection to this country is better than everyone else’s because you were born here and served in the military (as you seem prone to mentioning). I’d just like to point out that while you chose to leave (and yes, it is easy to come back – why don’t you?), we chose to come here, and to stay. To endure the hardships, to raise families, to be Israeli.

    You say that you don’t mean to offend anyone, but you do. Just because someone doesn’t share your point of view doesn’t make it acceptable to call them names. It has nothing to do with being an Israeli, a kibbutznik or a Jew. It has to do with being a responsible adult.

  9. Mama Java on Thu, May 15th 2008 5:26 PM

    10. i wish shari and all other “yeradim” a safe & successful return to Artzeinu Hakedosha. like so many others, shari is finding that what she so desperately sought in chutz la’aretz is right there “at home” – or she didn’t need it at all. “hatzlacha raba, shari!”

  10. savtadotty on Sun, May 18th 2008 11:19 PM

    11. At least Shari now understands that not all Americans who make aliyah are crazy or naive.

Leave a Comment





© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap