Israel: An Ode to Love

Nothing I ever write really feels like it has light or depth to it, if it’s not about Israel.  It’s not because it’s Israel (as the embodiment of a modern complicated miracle) that the writing flows. Rather, that Israel is my amud shidra – it’s my spine. It’s my orientation and it informs every which way that I relate to the world.

Motherhood. God. Torah. Zugiyut. Belonging. Justice. Peoplehood. Vocal modulation. Conflict. Politics. Resolution. Land. Heat. Fashion. Conversation. Life. Submission. Fertility. Popsicles. Womanhood. Sex. Eye contact. Brokenness. Public transportation. Rain. Seasons. Injustice. Humor. Chaos. Body. Beauty. Sexuality. Identity. Alcohol. Bread. Language. Love. Passion. Headwear. Time. Compassion. Empathy. Apathy. Peace. Water. Philosophy. Coffee. Fruit. First born. Darkness. Facial hair. Pain. Death. Anger. History. Stone. Justice. Scent. Music. Trauma. Fringes. Rest. Stories. Supermarkets. Aggression. Dairy products. Accents. Personal space. Noise. Diaspora. Family. Touch. Anxiety. Terror. Nuance. White shirts. Safety. Trepidation. Joy. Hope. Power. Hopelessness. Rootedness. Rot. Judaism. Yearning. Longing.

Each part of my being wants to be close to her. Intimately. Absolutely. Even the parts of me that want to run as far away as possible; the parts that make me nauseous and miserable, find me with my thumb out, an oversized backpack on, sunglasses on my head, hitchhiking back.

My bones are contoured to her mold, even if I have to break bones to fit. Everything about her smothers me; with her overwhelming bosom of power and strength. She comforts me. She is a womb. She births me. I breathe. I suckle from the teet of “you can do no wrong.”

She nurtures me and raises me and holds me, combing my hair with pungent rosemary cream. Each stroke with loving maternal protective aggression. Yanking my hair and telling me it’s love. “Don’t move, or it’ll hurt more! You are doing this to yourself, you know.” I cry. A release. A prayer. She is right. I do this to myself. I love her because and despite and with spite of what she is and who she is.

She is the vibrance in color. Her greens are greener. They camouflage. They kill. They heal. Blues bluer and sadder and deeper. They fall from eyes and fill seas of grief. Her shades of bleak, bleaker. Darkness is darker and reaches into your soul and forever changes the matter within you. Her light, glimmering, glistening, beautiful and blinding. She is never dull; never sepia. She is saturated with layers upon layers upon layers and each moment carries with it the heaviness of never just being able to be without the then, the now, the what will be?

She is a seductress. Taunts me and ravages me; makes me feel alive. She brings me flowers and iced americanos with the right splash of milk. I put a pink flower with a long stem in my hair. A crown of gold. Her luminescence makes me feel beautiful. Passionately (sun) kissed, I blush.

She draws me in with snarky alley cats, chubby baby thighs, bicycles parked in front of vine-covered cement walls, turquoise coffee tables, Balkan chest hair, piyyutim sneaking out the cracks of ancient walls, and mundane words in a sacred language on billboards.

With her, I am never alone. Being held by a society of collective loners; collective believers. A cacophonous and dissonant love song. Minstrels, ministries, minarets, minyanim and Mashina. All looking to belong to something.

I live in her presence. In her light. On the cusp. Always between both here and there. Between hope and despair. Between morality and compromise. Between mortality and being immortalized. I consider smoking cigarettes so that she’d want me; think me cool.

She asks me with a mean-girl punch in her tone – “Why are you so obsessed with me?”

I don’t know and I just can’t get over her. She is everything that I dreamed her to be and more but also she’s goddamn awful and has such an attitude.

She sips a cup of muddy coffee with hints of cardamom on the top of a sacred wonky desert hill. She takes a puff of her hand-rolled cigarette which she spent far too long composing. She breathes in the idiosyncratic perfection of multiculturalism, love, community, and holiness. And violently exhales, coughing up a puff of congestion, blame, fracture, hatred, and absolute (refutable) truths. I worry about her.

She assures me that she’s ok, and there’s nothing to worry about. “Only the good and the beautiful die young,” she mutters to herself.

I worry more. Hostages. Loss. Grief. War. Economy. Human Rights. Innocents. Innocence. A never ending cycle.

I don’t know what she has on me. Maybe it’s thousands of years of longing and lusting pangs. Maybe it’s built into my spiritual DNA. Maybe it’s epigenetic. Maybe it’s blood and covenant. Maybe intergenerational stories; trauma. Maybe it’s prayer. Maybe it’s a self-determined miracle. Maybe it’s Divine. I don’t know. But I love her and I’d do almost anything for her.

But I’m not sure that I’d pass Abraham’s test.