Why are Israelis so Sexy?

My friends are farmers in the highlands of the Great Karoo in South Africa. There they raise some 400 head of free ranging grassfed cattle. These beautiful bovines roam this dryland region, blessed by the sweet grass of those high planes. They also have some horses. The farm borders a nature reserve, and because of the sheer scale of these tracts of land, many thousands of hectares, breaches often occur along the fence line. Sometimes the animals, domestic and wild, meet out there along those rugged boundaries. Sometimes things happen. Things like zorses.

A zorse, as some of the jeu de mots enthusiasts will quickly gather, is the result of the conjugals between a zebra and a horse. When we came across this beauty of a beast while out on a bumpy drive, my friend explained to me that one of their frisky stallions had happened upon a lovely zebra mare, and their tryst resulted in this splendid equine creature. The size and power of a horse, with the wildness and ancient hereditary code of a zebra. And those subtle black stripes on the glossy brown coat. Gorgeous. This zorse was both a glory and a bane; it was so powerful, but almost impossible to catch, breaking fences and merging its own impulses—no fear of humans and with an endemic sense of the savannah.

When he explained all of this to me, he used a term I’d never heard before to describe the phenomena of the zorse. “Hybrid vigour,” he had called it. It was the first time I’d ever heard mixed breeding being framed in such a positive light. Usually, terms like mongrel or mutt are used. This time it was the best of all worlds in one marvelous mammal. Gazing across the open plane at the zorse, it all started to make sense.

It got me to thinking about my own species and, homing in, the extended family to which I belong and all those wild, dazzling and near untamable little nieces and nephews that I’m surrounded by. It also got me to thinking about the general makeup of the modern State of Israel. Ask any visitor who isn’t bias in one way or another about Israel (is there anyone left who isn’t?) and have them describe their first experience in Tel Aviv. In fact, ask me. I’m in Tel Aviv fairly often, and my impression of the citizens is much the same as it’s always been. Why are there so many good looking people?

More than just good looking, why is there so much spunk, such originality, confidence and vibe? Obviously, this can’t mean everybody. However, there is enough presence of this dynamism for it not to be anything but highly noticeable. It is a lot. Sometimes too much. For a mixed city with no homogeneous history, the culture is a blur of everyoneness. And yet, somehow, it works. I stroll the boulevards gazing at the speedsters on their e-scooters, the cyclists, dogwalkers, café clientele, beachfront joggers, couples of every fluidities, that make up a great percentage of the citizenry, and I ask myself, “Why is everyone so sexy?”

Coming from South Africa, the Jewish community is essentially a Vilna stronghold. I married an American-born Israeli from fine German stock, and her siblings have really mixed it up. My sister-in-law is from an Iraqi family, and my brother-in-law is an energetic combo of Yemenite and Moroccan. There is Polish in the family too. The Jewish diasporic mingling of the gene pools, just within my own crew—Persian, African, Asian, Russian, East and West European—has shown sure signs of this hybrid vigour of which my Karoo farmer friend spoke so eloquently.

There is more to this sexiness than just the healthy cross-pollination of our genomic ingathering. Israelis, as badly behaved as they may be in some situations, are not spoiled. They know how to get their hands dirty, do the hard work—clean the house, fix their own stuff, pull together as a unit, function in community. They help each other. This is native to the culture. There is something about the interactivity, the familiarity, the warmth, that adds to the whole affair. That warmth can quickly become heat. Very hot heat. Don’t believe me? Go visit Tel Aviv!

The hybrid vigour presents in many of the ways one would imagine. Never mind the disproportionate number of Nobel Laureates the Jews have produced, or the engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, artists and activists coming out of Israel. That’s old news. Needing to direct all this sexiness somewhere, Israelis basically birthed the trance music scene in the late 1980s in Goa, and it spread like oil on a suntanned back, the world over. They made the world party, and party hard.

While this short article doesn’t really touch the surface, I’m convinced that it is the very essence of hybrid vigour that generates the health and virility of so many Israelis. This in turn shifts the culture. It ups the pace, it brings the beat. To my mind, it is real and you can feel it.

So, to my Israeli brethren I say, “May the zorse be with you!”