Aren’t you afraid to live in Israel?

21 January 10 21:05 in the zOhn
Tags: 9/11, Have I told you this one?, Israel, West Virginia, yhc

This  might be read as a companion piece to How I became an Israeli citizen.

It has been so long since the United States had a war on her own land, that it is hard to imagine living in the middle of one. But for those raised in West Virginia, for instance, well, think about the reality. The town names, the street names, the landmarks, the cultural attitudes, the kinds of churches–everywhere one turns, there is evidence of historical hardship and bloodshed.  How did people reconcile living in England in the ’40s? Those old war movies–they’re about wars and the people in them.  All those people in Arab countries–that’s real.  Is it different that I have chosen to live in Israel, that I am not born into a conflict raging in my backyard?  I could’ve been snug in Charleston (not that I was born there, either, but you get my point), where some maniac with a rifle was shooting at random pick-up trucks at GoMart service stations.  I could have been living, like so many of my friends, in New York City on September 11, 2001.  But I was in Israel.  I don’t say this snidely. Always in America, I was the minority, and so a target, in addition to the reality of the threat of random violence.  Here, I am still targeted for having been born a Jew, and now, for being an Israeli, but here are my real roots, my home, and history and family and majority and purpose–better to die for these things, G/d forbid.   In the face of all that . . . thanks to G/d that I am in Jerusalem.  For me, there is no struggle of faith versus fear to reconcile.

But yes, my friends, I wish it was safer, too.

Thanks to J.I.K. for giving me the impetus to write this piece.

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