The hammer strikes back
Tonight, I am packing my bags in preparation for leaving Israel. For the first time in a year I will be returning to visit my parents in Ventura, California. I will be going with my little sister, who is spending the year in Israel. Our visit will be for one week, where we will also celebrate my cousin Alyssa's Bat-Mitzvah.
After a difficult half-year on kibbutz Lotan, I returned to Jerusalem. I then went on an excellent trip to Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. While in Eastern Europe, it was nice to see people waiting in lines and to be amongst non-Jews again, eating pork for breakfast and drinking beer for lunch.
To a certain extent it reminded me of California, where I always lived amongst non-Jews. Because I am not religious I didn't stand out and therefore didn't experience the prevalent anti-Semitism in these countries.
Ten fingers and ten toes
Virtually all humans have ten fingers and ten toes. We are more similar than different. Perhaps this could be the basis for a peace settlement in Israel. Unfortunately people like to stress differences, rather than focusing on similarities. This leads to division and conflict. Israel is made up of many groups. There are men and women, adults and children. There are Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druse. Within the Jewish people there are the religious and the secular. Within the religious community there are the orthodox and the ultra-orthodox. There are the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews. Then are also the Russians, Ethiopians, French, Americans, Moroccans, et cetera, et cetera. In Israel and in the world in general people like to label people and put them in boxes. Some people think that religion and skin color is the basis for division, but it appears to me that people like to create divisions regardless of the similarity of a population. Perhaps by labeling groups it provides some order to the chaos of existence.
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About this blog Exodus
Thoughts of a relatively new immigrant from California.
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