My cousin Shirley's arrival has ushered in a new phase of my travels; I near the end of my life in Ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, and gaze upon the greater picture. While frustrating and stressing the hell out of me, fundamentalist Judaism prompted me to rationalize my liberalism on the one hand, and proclaimed the meaning and sanctity of these lives we lead, on the other. Actually, the revelation of meaning in every day life is maybe why this fundamentalism is so attractive - Jerusalem is on the verge of being completely overrun by Ultra-Orthodoxy, and its constituents aren't just conservative Israelis pushed towards radicalism by the tragedy of the Holocaust. They're Americans, they're liberals, they're smart people, too. This is indeed a serious 21st century question: how do we combat fundamentalism? Dialogue doesn't really work; the two sides are boxing in totally different rings. But the fact remains, the surface of Ultra-Orthodoxy is really shiny, the isolated communities function smoothly, and the system provides answers to unanswerable questions. This brand of religion is not to be ignored.
With that in mind, on back-to-back days last week I went to Hebron, and then Sderot. One is a milleniums-old city whose conflict is similarly ancient relative to current events; the other is less than a century old and resides on the front page of every Israeli newspaper daily. Ah, but newspapers only report 'news', so the slow decay of one of civilizations first cities isn't as exciting as Kassams and Katyushas.
Hebron, lying South of Jerusalem and well within the West Bank, is Judaism's Holy City of Earth (its counterparts being Jerusalem (Fire), Tzfat (Air), and Tiberias (Water)). All the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs are supposed to be buried here. It's a city 4000 years in the making. It's no joke.
But actually, it is a joke, the most cruel one at that. This city is dead, or dying. Decades of conflict between Jews and Arabs have destroyed it. All you have to do is walk around for five minutes to see this. It's all dust and decrepit buildings, or else hollow, unused new buildings whose golden stone only slightly sticks out amongst the rest. The streets around the city center are lined with Arabs' customarily green-painted garage doors pulled down permanently over shop stalls. Except for a paltry display of commerce outside the Cave of Machpelah (where the patriarchs are, but conflict has prevented any semblance of tourism-directed development from being initiated), there are no markets, no banks, no stores at all in sight. Pairs of Israeli soldiers twiddle their thumbs in cute little toll booths on the street corners.
Sderot, of almost-daily-rocket-fire-from-Gaza fame, gets all the press, so I was not expecting Hebron to dominate the images in my head. I was expecting to see the widespread damage of terrorist bombarding, and to heed the emergency warning system's call when the time came. That didn't happen. Certainly, there is zero denying the psychological stress of growing up in a town where rockets rain down upon the streets. And certainly, if Mexico started slinging rockets over our borders, there would be a crater in that country soon enough. But Sderot's main thoroughfare is lined with palm trees. Sderot has tacky advertisements for supermarkets and furniture sales. There's a life to live there, a compromised one, but a life nonetheless. I'm not so sure about Hebron. I didn't see the whole city, I'm sure there is economic activity someplace. But there are houses all over the hillsides; a hundred thousand people live there. And you don't hear their voices.
Once again, the ridiculous unsolvability of this country floats to the surface.
