Pesach on the Mediterranean

Pesach came to close on Monday night, though the holiday spirit seems to be going on for a bit longer given the number of tourists still strolling through the neighborhood. Much of the vacation felt like a Mediterranean get-away. The weather was perfect almost the entire week – sunny, low 70s with a light spring breeze. Given the fact that most of the country was on holiday, we were lucky to get stuck in relatively few traffic jams and had a totally delightful time out and about. We went sailing with friends and picnicked on their boat in the Tel Aviv harbor; We spent a night at another friends’ beach house north of Netanya where we took a sunset walk along the cliffs, ate a delicious fish dinner in their garden, and went for an early morning bike ride through the countryside. We continued north and toured a winery, lunched with friends at their hilltop vacation home, and the next day, had another lovely meal on the garden patio of a restaurant in the restored “old city” of Rosh Pina, one of the first two “new” Jewish settlements of the Yishuv.

Overall, it was a calm, peaceful and fun-filled week, as any holiday should be. Other than the fact that almost all of Israel and several tens of thousands of other tourists were traveling the length and breadth of the country, there was little else to suggest that it was Pesach once we left Jerusalem. Throughout our wanderings in Tel Aviv and the north, we saw (but didn’t eat of course) far more bread than matzah in restaurants. And these non-kosher restaurants (as well as the kosher ones) were packed!

I imagine that many of our fellow tourists and travelers were happy to leave it at that – enjoying the landscape, the spring air, the relaxed pace of being with family and friends. Indeed, Israel has many of the attractions and pleasures of other Mediterranean holiday spots - the rich colors of the landscape, expansive beaches, an abundance of olive oil and fresh produce, relaxed social conventions, and a host of other cultural markers.

And yet, when you turn away from the coastline, and look to the other edges and borders, it doesn’t take long at all to remember that this Mediterranean country is also in the Middle East.

My first border crossing during the holiday took place on a sherut (shared taxi) to Tel Aviv. Because of the traffic snarls, the driver decided to go the “back” way, on a new highway that cuts across part of the West Bank. This means we had to go through a checkpoint on the way back into Israel proper. We stopped and a young soldier got on the van. She wished us all chag sameach, apologized for the interruption in the journey and then asked us for our identity documents. Apparently, the man sitting next to me was Palestinian. He was told to get off the van and we were told to continue on our way. He wasn’t carrying anything and certainly didn’t have anything concealed under his short-sleeved polo shirt. I kept wondering why he was detained and if and when he would get to his destination.

The next boundary wasn’t crossed but was still very much part of the landscape on one of our days in the north, when we drove up to the Golan Heights. Near the Syrian border, there are three feuding Druze villages that seem to be united mainly in their disdain for and reluctant acceptance of Israeli occupation. We stood at an overlook in the northernmost village and could easily see the Syrian outpost marking the border. Indeed, there were even tour buses and quite a number of people at the fence, simply gawking at the other side, just as we were doing from Israel. My cousin Noam who grew up in the north said even though Damascus is less than a hour’s drive from the border, it might as well be on the moon. We wandered through a little farmer’s market, bought olives, honey, and fresh almonds, and saw throngs of families setting up picnic barbeques for lunch. Apparently, even the Druze were enjoying the Pesach holiday or so it seemed.

Finally, back in Jerusalem we decided to interrupt our holiday enjoyment with a bus tour of the “Jerusalem envelope”, the official name for the 168-kilometer separation barrier surrounding Jerusalem and the Ma'ale Adumim settlement-city. The tour is sponsored and guided by staff from Ir Amim (City of Nations or Peoples), an Israeli NGO that works to “render Jerusalem a more viable and equitable city, while generating and promoting a more politically sustainable future” (for more info see their website at http://www.ir-amim.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=151). The tour took us to several key edges of greater Jerusalem to better understand the jumbled and jagged geography of Jewish expansion and how the separation barrier closes off Palestinians from their land and from each other within the municipal borders and just outside of them. As Ir Amim describes on their website, “the tour outlines current developments in Jerusalem in relation to the policies of the Israeli governments and its consequences for a future political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The organization itself walks along a tricky edge – trying both to preserve the security of Jewish Israel and at the same time, work towards a future for Jerusalem that everyone can live in and with. I did this tour two years ago with a group of students and even then, it was virtually impossible to see a way to more equitably share this holy city with its diverse populace. Today, the situation is even more charged with political challenges from abroad and local policies that continue to promote Jewish development and encroachment into Arab communities.

There is no small irony that the Mediterranean is on the western border of Israel, where you can look to the open sea and imagine a free, just, relaxed, comfortable, and secure existence. It’s a wonderful picture and we certainly had a taste of it this past week. But, it’s sadly fleeting just like our holiday escape. Even our friends with the sailboat and vacation home ultimately confront the jagged edges when their children serve in the army and when they themselves work to smooth out some of the jagged edges between Jew and Jew and between Arab and Jew. It’s great to have the Mediterranean at our backs, but we also have to remember that the Middle East is all around us and not just on the edges.