My day ended exactly where it started, on the hotel balcony overlooking the walls of the Old City. Jerusalem spread out below me. It is amazing all the history in this panorama, so many of the world’s great religions all calling this view home. Yet for all the people who hail from this spot, how many of them ever come and see it for themselves? How many people are stopped from coming and seeing this view because of misconceptions and media?
Explaining my love for Israel to others is a challenge I wrestle with every time I visit here, but this time it seems to be an all consuming thought. I have always shared my experiences here with friends and my Jewish community, but for some reason this trip I feel more compelled to bring back the truth to a greater audience, not sure why. Maybe it is the amazing presentations about Israel’s accomplishments, or the talk of turning crisis into opportunity or maybe it comes from something deeper. I just know that I am stuck on wanting those I hold dear to see this amazing country. I want my friends, Jewish and non-Jews, to be as anxious to see Israel as they are about visiting Paris, Greece or the far east.
But despite my best efforts, I don’t know how to flip that switch for someone else. It frustrates me. I keep searching for the right photo to share, the right words to say to overcome the years of misinformation, but I don’t have them.
As I struggle with the question of how the Israel I see at my feet can be so different from that which much of the world imagines, a phrase keeps circulating in my mind, ”When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child...”
While I am not always aware of it, when I look back I realize that every time I visit here I learn more and more about myself and the world and I move farther away from that thinking like a child. For a child believes unquestioning in that which others tell them. While I have never been one to follow blindly, ever trip here reminds me why it is so important to question, to understand the motives of those telling their stories, to validate with my own eyes that what I feel is what I see. Some would call this skepticism, but in a day and age where information comes at us at warp speed blind faith to cost too much.
A friend asked me a question today, do I fear at all when I am here. I had to stop and think to answer him, but he was right in the point he was making, I don’t fear at all. I feel safer here than I do at many places in the US. I know the same facts as everyone else, I know where risks exist, but I don’t fear for my safety. I feel very safe and protected here.
My dear friends, Israel is not a place to be feared, this is not the country of CNN, Fox News or Katie Couric. But please, don’t blindly take my word for it either…come…stand here for yourself. Share this view with me.
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