Tel Aviv Tummy

Today I went to the beach in Tel Aviv in a string bikini.  It was the first time I had ever gone anywhere with my tummy naked.  I kept looking down at it for viewings.  I think it did all right, maybe I will take it out again sometime.

There is something about being an American visiting Israel for the first time that I hadn't expected: the summer camp/Disneyland aspect.  You keep meeting people you know (or at least, if you travel with more well-connected and more comfortably self-identified Jews, you meet people they know).  You stand around in little groups, in the heart of Jerusalem, talking about how the person you just met dated your roommate and slept on so-and-so's couch.  Then these people sleep on your couch that night, and the cause of Zionism is further strengthened by your newly brokered bond of friendship.  Even if you hadn't meant it to be. 

I keep getting this strange feeling that some crazy pro-Israel American Jew back home is clapping her hands together with delight to see all of the friends I'm making and all of the fun I'm having.  A young proto-Jewish girl, meeting other Jews, in Israel!  Looking up her (very) distant relatives in the phone book!  Learning Hebrew!  Don't get your hopes up lady.  Don't think this means I'm going to go all Birthright on you. (It's pretty nice isn't it, that I get to be both at the same time?)

Since I've been here, I've been to shabbus lunch with Bronfman Fellows, I've been to the West Bank. I've seen a house in a Palestinian camp scheduled to be demolished, I've seen a new house for a Palestinian family built where an old house had been destroyed.  I've met just-married American Jews raising money for a Yeshiva on the West Bank, and I've met way-left Jews who won't buy a coffee at a cafe because they don't want to support Israel. 

Not to bring everything back to my tummy, but it reminds me of the playground/playgirl aspect of it all.  Difficult to reconcile me flaunting my bod on the hot beaches of Tel Aviv with my blood-curdling experiences going outside the checkpoint.  I ponder this, as I sit in the air conditioning, the edges of my American credit cards glinting as they peep out of my pockets.         

 

Comments

[Sarah P]

is it going to be really annoying that I am always posting comments? maybe.

I am sending, in response, a quotation from the Israeli poet Rivka Miriam (ask Ilana!):
"In Jerusalem, everything is meaningful. & that's why it's heavy sometimes... in Tel Aviv... you see seashores...bellybuttons... & it's life, you know, it's simple life."

tel aviv is like what miami would be like if the rest of florida were a warzone.