Sundays on Kivunim are often filled with additional “experiential” educational programming, taking us on fieldtrips around new areas of Jerusalem, or outside the city altogether. Over the course of the Sunday programs we have met a lot of interesting people and seen a lot of new places, or at least learned to look at familiar places in new ways.
The Sunday right after I returned to Israel from New York, Kivunim was visited by Daniel Rossing. Mr. Rossing has worked in Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, and today he directs the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations. His program consisted of a short lecture on the history of Jerusalem, specifically regarding Jewish-Christian relations, which was followed by a walking tour of the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Mr. Rossing’s lecture began with an introduction to Jerusalem as “City of the Between.” He discussed this label from many points of view, but he began with the religious dimensions, talking about how Jerusalem is in many religious teachings the site of the final judgment between ascent to Heaven and descent into Hell. Jerusalem is also a city caught in between sacred and secular, being a holy city for many, while having just elected a secular Mayor. He talked about Jerusalem being a border between the past and the future, as different communities in his eyes seem to live in different centuries. It is a city split between democracy and theocracy, between tradition and modernity, between dream and reality. Perhaps most poignantly he talked about the “in betweeness” of Jerusalem’s citizens, explaining how Jews are a local majority but a regional minority, while Muslims are a local minority but a regional majority, and Christians are a double minority—perhaps exposing why he finds the Christian community so interesting in this context.
His discussion of the many dualities existing in Jerusalem was very compelling to me. Over the past few years I have become more and more interested in and conscious of the importance of appreciating the coexistence and synergy of diverse, and even seemingly opposing, elements in the world. Indeed, as my roommate Jason and I have discussed, Rossing’s label for Jerusalem seems to apply to much more than just this city. Especially that Sunday, as I reflected on the excitement of the past several weeks on the road, and began to settle back into life in Jerusalem, I found Rossing’s use of the term “in between” to describe quite aptly how I had felt over the course of all that time living out of a suitcase.
By the time I returned to Jerusalem, almost two weeks ago, it had been nearly five weeks since I had lived in Beit Shmuel. The last time I had packed up and rolled my suitcase out of our hostel had been on December 28th, the day that winter vacation started. Since then I had traveled all around Israel for two weeks, and then flown from Tel Aviv to Casablanca via Istanbul. I had spent a week breathing in Morocco, before making the continental shift from Africa to Europe on a ferry over the Strait of Gibraltar. Then, just four days later, I had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and spent a week back in the warmth and winter of my hometown, before making my way back down to New York, and eventually flying back to Israel to take a bus back to Jerusalem. It’s a lot to fit into so few sentences. In fact, it’s the most I’ve ever fit into so few weeks. Last year I spent almost five months looking forward to Kivunim, and now it seems that I fly to Israel with nary a few hours to spend in anticipation.
Those five weeks opened my eyes to more of the world than I’ve ever experienced, and I always seemed to have been experiencing the “in between.” During those five weeks America finished its latest transfer of power between presidents. In Morocco the in between was ever present: we were at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, Islam, and Arab civilization, with all the languages that go with them too; between democracy and monarchy; and between the desert and the sea. When we crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, we felt in between worlds, just floating in transit. In Spain we found ourselves in between many major religions and cultures, as we visited places that had seen the heights of Jewish, Muslim and Catholic cultures, in conflict and coexistence, at one point or another.
There’s nothing like travel to make one feel in between, but especially on a plane. The sense of transferring gravity, from one life to another, between the earth and outer space, makes us groggy as we try to adjust our biological clocks to the time at our destination. When I landed in the United States, the familiarity overtook me. I was home, but I felt more in between than ever as I felt the shortness and sweetness of my visit all at once; I asked myself, do I live here or have I moved out? Something in between, no doubt. My time living out of the suitcase, then in its fourth week, endured. Arriving in New York City, feeling the familiar, almost overwhelming energy of millions of lives all playing out together in a dense and cosmopolitan city, and perhaps especially upon entry to the United Nations building, I felt more definitions of “in between” materializing. When I boarded the plane back to Israel, just hours after speaking at the UN, days after leaving Spain, and weeks after I had flown out of Tel Aviv, I felt what seemed like an entire era of my life come to a close. When I landed in the evening in Israel, after taking off in the evening of the previous day just hours before, I wondered where the day in between had gone. As I looked out the window of the bus on my way from the airport to Jerusalem, I felt myself begin to slow down and finally find the calm to reflect on my travels. With the fresh ink of the fifteenth stamp of the year drying in my passport, I felt a new sense of life in between being a seasoned tourist and a resident-at-ease sink in.
Today, February 12th, splits Kivunim in half. Our first flight to Israel was October 12th, and we will be on our way back home on June 12th. Indeed, my perspective on what it feels like to be in between seems to have been inspired by the natural rhythm and calendar of this year. With four months of Kivunim behind me and four months ahead, I sit on the balcony of my new room at Beit Shmuel, looking out on the walls of Rossing’s Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, with the tops of churches and mosques peaking over the ramparts. Living yards from the Green Line, between Israel and the West Bank, as an individual I feel about as in between as any of the countries that we’ve visited. I hope and imagine that it’s clear how deeply this year has impacted me so far. I feel I have experienced growth in almost every area of my being, from my writing and my relationships to my dreams for the future and my knowledge of myself and the world. Recently I have found myself torn between somewhat painful yet endearing nostalgia for the freshness of the fall and renewed motivation to explore through the spring. Throughout the year I have joked about how time zones mean nothing to me anymore, but Rossing’s lecture could not have felt more pertinent than it did that Sunday. The time since I returned to Israel has been full of reflections on how my peers and I will approach this second half of Kivunim, as a group and as individuals. We have gone back to school, and are now watching the seasons change.
We continue to struggle with our identities, between high school and college, as American Jews living very much on the inside and the outside of Israeli society. In the past months this identity has been reflected in the election schedules of America and Israel, and our ability to really participate in them. And of course, we are still somewhere in between war and peace here. Soon we will see where we are going in that regard; with the Israeli election results released, we now begin another in between period as the next Israeli government and 18th Knesset takes shape. We find ourselves with two prime minister candidates, who both gave victory speeches when the results were released. While Tsipi Livni’s Kadima party received more votes than any other, the bloc of parties that would align in a coalition behind Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud party seems to beat out Livni for a presumptive majority in parliament. If today has marked the point between the two halves of Kivunim, it has also brought us to a new place of convergence between two interpretations of victory in Israeli politics.
In a few weeks we will be traveling to Turkey, one of the most in between countries on earth. While I have tried not to take for granted the in between nature of my life and the places I’ve seen, I’ve certainly become accustomed to expect it to a certain extent. I am learning to recognize that so many places on earth find themselves at the crossroads of civilizations, and also to look for such “in betweeness” if it’s not initially apparent. Indeed, Jerusalem may be a phenomenal example of such a localized fault line between cultures and ideas, but such intersections exist all over the place, and throughout history. Entire peoples, like the Jews wandering in the desert, have found themselves in between, while Obama’s stimulus package finds itself moving slowing between status as a bill and a law. Yet, being in between is not just about transition; it is also about moderation and complexity. It is about trying to achieve balance between seemingly opposite extremes, and recognizing that while places, people and ideas don’t simply fit into the categories that they may appear to represent at first, they do also fit together.
Living in between is exhausting. It compels us to put aside time to reflect, so that we do not lose track of where we are in the process of such intense experiences, or allow ourselves to desensitize because of sheer inertia. I know that the Kivunim experience and lifestyle will not last forever, but impermanence seems to be a fact of life. Perhaps the way this “gap-year” (bridge- perhaps?) has taught me to appreciate life shines light on the most basic value of spending some time to take notice of the in between—for high school graduates and others too. We’re all in between. When we zoom in we may find ourselves between classes, careers, relationships, or stages of life. Yet, when we zoom out we find ourselves between birth and death, and between past and future generations. It is in that context, seeking a healthy balance between these two viewpoints, that I begin the next half of this gift of a year.
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