My time in Ethiopian-Israelatinia

Israel. A place that has welcomed guests for thousands of years and where I entered and stayed for only about a month. It would be almost insulting for me to reach a judgment on such a place from such a short visit, but my initial feeling towards the authorities were soured by a long and what I thought was unnecessary security screening of me while I was in Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. They just wanted to make sure I was up to good, and not no good, yet I couldn’t help but feel profiled for my un-Christian and un-Jewish name (though in fact, my grandfather was Sydney Lincoln Weinfeld before changing his surname to Winfield to escape anti-Semitic sentiment in the US). 

My first week was largely without responsibility, as my internship scenario had not quite been worked out, and I enjoyed the freedom of walking around campus and mingling with other students. Though most were in the clutches of studying for final exams, most were still friendly enough to indulge in conversation. Across my dorm suite, which I shared with my American compatriots, were a group of students, different from me in that they were Arab Muslims I believe, but just as welcoming as I had hoped. Ibrahim in particular had the gentlest and most hospitable shining smile. I also tried the local tobacco inhalation method of Nargila with a larger contingent of Arab Muslim kids who hung out by a balcony overlooking a majestic king’s eye-view of all Haifa (the University of Haifa is atop a hill), including the massive blue and green nuclear reactors that weren’t (they were actually from a coal plant, unless my memory is failing me). 

Aside from hanging out in the city bars once early on and again later with the rest of the Americans on board the Global Health Systems course, I spent a lot of time socializing in the HU bar, a watering hole not far from where I slept. Here I met many other exchange students, and Jews of great ethnic diversity- of Yeminite, Russian, European, and American extraction (there tended to be more Jews in the bar since alcohol is forbidden in Islam). This diversity on campus is what really made things lively for me. I reveled in the opportunity to ask questions of whomever I met- about their lives in Israel, their courses of study, and their beliefs. I, having grown up an atheist in Bible-belt Georgia, relished the opportunity to learn about the Western religions that I had for the most part ignored, closer to their origins. 

This learning was really enhanced on our weekly field trips with our guide, Izzy, whose encyclopedic knowledge of all things Israel and beyond was invaluable to my comprehending the sheer magnitude of the timescale of history that I was walking on. Layers and layers of civilizations, one on top of the other, the buried remains of love, hate, violence, war, peace and the mundane- I couldn’t move without stepping on stories ad infinitum. We visited Roman ruins, the old fort at Masada, and the jewel in the crown of my trip- Jerusalem.

When my classes began, I enjoyed the small class sizes and the great discussions that were happening all around me. I tried my best to limit my input because my curiosity sometimes monopolises others’ opportunities for asking and answering questions. Unfortunately, I met an untimely end to my Israel experience, and I had to go home due to illness. I had just started to make deeper inroads in relationships with people that had not too long ago been strangers to me, and this I regret most of all, that I did not have a chance to say to everyone goodbye. Though apparently, in the Jewish tradition goodbyes can take quite some time before actually being final. But I am content with the month I had in Israel, the people I met, the places I saw, the learning I engaged in (though I was by far the perfect student), and hope to have some way to visit again in the future.