Kissing Yemenite Lips in TLV…Jewish Lips

Day 4 – Chanukah 2025

Kislev 28, 5786

December 17, 2025. 18:00

“Kissing Yemenite Lips in TLV: Jewish lips” 

A tired distinction is often drawn between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. You know the stereotypes. I won’t rehearse them. Instead, let me ask a more uncomfortable question: do “holy” and “sinful” truly apply to cities in the Land of Israel—or are they inventions of rigid minds and stiff necks, our clumsy attempt to box in whatever we choose to call “religion”?

The Greeks tried to do exactly that to us. To divide and conquer our identity. To domesticate our peoplehood at the altars of Hellenism. Greek art celebrated gods and heroes with intact foreskins, the covered penis as an ideal of natural beauty—a notion later echoed by the Romans. They opposed brit milah. Circumcision itself became ideological resistance.

But this is Israel. 2025. And for the record, note:

There is no distinction between the people of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Read it again. Slowly now.

There is no distinction between the people of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Got it?

Am I delusional? Or are you willing to consider something other than yet another sermon on Jewish unity? Unity matters—but that is not my subject. I am speaking about peoplehood: its lived reality, its practical mission in the world, and how that practicality sits at the very core of Jewish tradition.

You may think the girls in bikinis along Tel Aviv’s beachfront, the men with sculpted six-packs, are fundamentally different from the shtreimel-wearing Charedi praying at the Kotel. Or from the wig-wearing women of Geula, wigs in every colour and length imaginable.

Delusional as I may be, I see longer and shorter pieces of fabric and a bunch of Jews. Sometimes this fabric is absurdly small—as on Tel Aviv’s promenade. Sometimes absurdly expensive—as with Jerusalem wigs that require a mortgage to afford. Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l said kisui rosh fare more modest – and cheaper for the record.

We are one people. How long until we absorb this message?

Once, I stood atop a Tel Aviv skyscraper at a party. Across the bar, a wild, luminous Yemenite girl caught my eye—her curls catching the moonlight. She reminded me of Amy Winehouse.

“Amy,” let’s call her that.

She stared at the word Jerusalem tattooed on my forearm and confronted me, eye to eye. Why Jerusalem? I answered with a line from Shai Agnon: “At all times I thought of myself as one born in Jerusalem.”

“Why not Tel Aviv?” she snapped. “What’s your problem?”

I told her Agnon was an Israeli writer. A Nobel laureate.

“You’re so fucking wrong,” she shot back, her face an inch from mine. “Are you even Jewish?”

I could smell the peaty single-malt whisky on her breath—probably from the Scottish Highlands. Thank you, Scots, for your centuries-old oak barrels.

I had no interest in arguing. Softly, I said: “Yes. I’m Jewish. And I know that because you are my sister—even though we’ve only just met. Blessed, unique, and complete as you are.”

Her face changed. She looked down. Then she opened her arms and kissed me. At the start of that kiss, I felt her lips tremble. Tears followed—one too many—rolling over my cheekbone.

We looked at each other for a long moment. A quiet, careful stare. Holding my hand, she said: “No one has ever said anything like that to me. No one ever helped me reconcile who I am with Jewish tradition.”

I corrected her gently. “There is nothing to reconcile. There is no difference. You are who you are. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

We kissed again. She stopped crying. We sang Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good while staring out at the ocean.

A Yemenite girl.
A Spanish-Portuguese guy.
Jews.

On top of Tel Aviv. Making out.

A shomer Shabbat man and a holy Yemenite girl—blessed, unique, and complete.

I will never take those lips for granted. Or any other kissed after that. . Nor those tears that rolled down my face. Never. They taught me more than I knew I could learn. Yemenite lips. Jewish lips.

A great kiss.

One rebellion and defiance of the odds.

A kiss of eternity -a Jewish kiss in the Jewish homeland.

They lit up that night’s darkness, moonlight notwithstanding—just as our four candles from our victorious Chanukiah do it once again. Year after Year. Generation to Generation. From eternity to eternity.

Chanukah Sameach.

Day 4.