What Happened in Israel

My friend, her sister, and I at the Dead Sea

Israel is described as the Holy Land. A place not to be missed by any Jew, Muslim, or Christian. Being a Jew, Israel is supposed to have a special place in my heart, but, because I'm not very religious, it honestly did not. I expected this trip to be life changing, not because I would finally see the place my ancestors came to after roaming the desert for forty years, but because it was my first opportunity to be independent. I was going only with the company of my friend Hannah, who's family and friends we would be staying with. Being two stubborn teenage girls, it wasn't easy having to stay together 24/7 for three weeks. By the end of our trip, we had managed to refrain from killing each other after a few fights and childish tears (so much for maturity and independence). On the last day of our trip, I was disappointed. Had I become a crazy, but independent, teen? Not really. This was supposed to be my “life-changing” trip, as I called it, and the irony of that name set in on the last day as I had had no “life-changing” moments. On the last day, we made our way back to Hannah's friend Hadar's house in Tel-Aviv, where she would take us to the airport. When we got to Hadar's house, everything seemed as it should be: Shir, her sister, was watching TV while her brother, Tomer, played on the computer, and her father Etan chatted me up about the World Cup. Her mother, Liat, was in the kitchen making dinner when I noticed the TV was showing images of rockets falling from the sky, narrowly being stopped by the iron dome before they hit the ground. Suddenly, the microwave dinged and beeped--so I thought. Hadar, her family, and Hannah stood up and rushed to the door. Hannah urged me in that direction as she tried to stay calm. Momentary confusion quickly gave way to the terrifying realization that it wasn't the microwave that had gone off, but a bomb alert. I hurried down the four flights of stairs, past the other apartments, willing my legs to move faster in order to get to the locked doors of the bomb shelter. That's right, LOCKED doors. The woman in front of me quietly mumbled, “Lo beseder” (no good in hebrew), and all I could think in a slightly frightened yet ironically proper tone was, “yes, very bad indeed”. There was a horrifying silence that I presumed to be fear, but as I stared at the faces around me , time seemed to freeze. I studied each of the Israeli's faces: their somewhat bemused looks with boredom in their eyes. I realized what they were experiencing wasn't fear for their lives, but a momentary adrenaline rush. They weren't worried, except for Shir who lacked shoes and didn't want to get her feet dirty. They were tired. America is not Israel. These people are used to this. No one can hide forever. No one can worry. There's no time for that. Life, even faced with fear, must go on I realized. Life must go on, sometimes oddly normally, in a war zone.

Looking back after four months of being home, the trip was really great. And I truly miss Israel