I’m flying, unexpectedly, leaving Israel for the first time since the summer. Grateful that I was able to get a ticket at the last minute, given that, for so many weeks of war, it has been almost impossible to simply board a plane and fly out. Grateful that I didn’t have to go over land through Egypt or Jordan like so many others have had to do. Grateful that I’m now high above the earth on one of those forever flights to America’s Western coast.
I often love this journey. Some fifteen hours of release. To be neither here nor there. To be in that space in between.
But it feels, these days, like we spend all our time hovering in that space between as we go from stage to stage of what is starting to feel like a forever war, with neither a clear end nor new beginnings.
Now we are in the between space of “ceasefire”, one with Iran and one with Lebanon, and who knows how long we’ll stay hovering here? Perhaps when I need to return to Israel the missiles will be flying again and I will have to go overland to get home, like so many have done over the past weeks. Like how people used to travel way back when, “in the olden days”.
It’s hard not to feel like each day forward is only bringing us on some strange twisting path backwards into darker times that once upon a time we hoped we’d managed to get beyond.
The plane’s cabin is dark and I examine the flight map, and the large swaths of the globe which are passing below us. There’s Cyprus and Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Each with their own beauty and complexities.
What would it be like to be part of their stories, histories, struggles, strivings? Theirs instead of ours? I’ve visited most of these places. Some I’ve even lived in. And it almost feels like a little wave of greeting from my past to see them on the map.
It’s been strange that over these past two or three months as we have lived in two parallel time zones. There’s the very immediate breathless moment-to-moment present of the missiles from Iran and the missiles from Lebanon and the temporary ceasefires with both. While also celebrating-commemorating Purim and Passover, Holocaust Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day. A march through the travels and travails of millennia of Jewish history, all within the space of weeks.
I love the deep dive into these points of collective history. But there’s an overwhelming heaviness that comes with it. Because between the immediacy of war, and the centuries and stories of the past, there’s not a lot of space left for the matters of today. And certainly not of tomorrow. And that’s not a good thing.
As Israel just marked its 78th year, it’s hard not to be anxious about this in-between place we are in and the uncertain future we are headed towards. The external threats are real and complicated. But so are the internal threats. How many people told me over the Memorial Day-Independence Day tandem, how they used to love to watch the state ceremony – but now? Most said they couldn’t and wouldn’t turn it on, given all that this government is doing.
In the gatherings and ceremonies I joined in our very local community circles, people shared stories of loved ones who died in ways which each show the tragic clash between the collective and the individual. Over and over people expressed the hope-mandate that we be worthy of sacrifices made on behalf of the collective. How we must follow the light they offer to choose a path to be better. To do better.
The sincerity is deep. The grief, overwhelming. The debt, real. And the gap between the ordinary people around me, and the politicians and the influencers and powers-that-be is stomach churning.
In the time span of these past weeks, while we have been dealing with war, human beings circled the moon and came back. Their pictures of Earth taken from outer space are gorgeous, inspiring, haunting. There is a jarring dissonance between the enormity of the universe and the miniscule space we hold within it. And between the weight of what we feel about what’s happening around us, and the capacity we have to do anything about it.
Astronauts talk about how powerful it is to look at Earth from such a distance, the borders and conflicts and ways that we harm each other receding to a sense of universal connectedness, awe. We need more of that cognizance down here on earth. But the reality is, we can never be truly without differences and boundaries and strife over all of it. That’s just not the way human beings operate. And it’s often in these very differences — in the particular ways each of us sees the world and our place in it — that great human beauty lies.
But we do need to keep working on getting the proportions better. We need more of the good that I see in the people around me, and less – a lot less – of the harm.
The taxi driver who brought me to the airport for my last-minute trip, is someone I have known now for years. We catch up over the course of the early morning ride. He too is sick of the toxic politics. He can barely listen to the news these days.
He has been fighting cancer and tells me, “You know, you go to the hospital and we’re all there – Arabs and Jews and religious and secular - undergoing our treatments together. No one cares who’s who. We’re all just people trying to survive and helping make it a little easier for each other. We need more of that.”
Why is it we can feel this sense of common humanity in outer space, and local communities and in hospitals - but not in the politics that determine so much about our lives?
Why is it we can feel this sense of common humanity in outer space, and local communities and in hospitals - but not in the politics that determine so much about our lives?
Maybe we need to reframe our expectation. Maybe we’re actually always between — neither here nor there, but en route. We have to stop waiting for someone to bring us to a final destination, and do what we can to realise those ideals right now: make a little more room for the interconnectedness that becomes so apparent from outer space, and in local communities, and in hospitals where the living fight for life side by side.
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