By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — “How can you let your daughter move to Israel?”
The question, along with disbelieving little gasps, has been put to me by a number of well-meaning friends and acquaintances in recent weeks. My second daughter, Debra, has been recruited from The New York Times to serve as breaking news editor at the Jerusalem Post. She now lives in Tel Aviv (and I have discovered the miracle of Skype!).
Everyone looks after one another in Israel—anybody who’s been there knows that feeling of mutual concern, warmth, and kindred spirit.
The first flaw in the question is, who can dictate to an adult child where she should live? Like her sister Sari, Debra was raised to think of this planet as a kind of “world house” (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Her generation is not crippled by the kind of ethnic or national fault lines that jaundiced the viewpoints of our own generation and that of our parents. And while social media has truly melted the boundaries among peoples, and even set some freedom rides in motion, the cyber group is just more mobile, ambitious, and wonderfully curious about this small planet than any peer group before.
It must be noted, too, that Debra, a truly international journalist, has deep roots in Israel; I was born there and she has many family members—and great friends—living, working, even parenting there.
Debra, a frequent visitor to Israel during her life, knows and loves the country well enough to have accepted the position because it is based in Tel Aviv and not in Jerusalem. This is not a security concern; Tel Aviv is just a lot more fun than the increasingly religiously-radicalized capital city. Tel Aviv, a sand dune just a few decades ago, is now one of the most energetic, cosmopolitan, secular, artsy, and trendy metropolises in the world. It is a sprawling city of skyscrapers, Fortune 500 companies, night clubs, beachfront condominiums, galleries, boutiques, freeways, stadiums, concerts halls, and world-class theaters. You can find and buy anything there, from a BMW X5 to a set of Naturalizer® “Array” boots.
We who live here in America, media-soaked and manipulated, often think of Israel—an exceedingly contemporary nation of high-tech industries, world-class medicine, and trend-setting technology—as a place systemically beset by violence and carnage. Yes, there are incidents of terror in the land, but the cumulative impact is miniscule compared to the terror that is ongoing in America’s gun-ridden streets. Debra is much safer in Tel Aviv than she ever was when she lived in Los Angeles and New York. Sadly, Israel loses many times more of its citizenry to its raging traffic free-for-all than it does to acts of violence or even terrorism.
Everyone looks after one another in Israel—anybody who’s been there knows that feeling of mutual concern, warmth, and kindred spirit. People give one another directions, opinions, and even berates freely, enthusiastically, and in-family. We in the Diaspora are obsessed with the Palestinian predicament (which the vast majority of Israel’s youth definitively wish would just be resolved), with Israel’s supposed “intransigence” (they just want to live), and with the government’s alleged rigidity (Israeli youth don’t care about the government as much as we on the outside are obsessed about it).
Israel, exceeding democratic, multi-dimensional, with its own space and desalination programs, culturally vibrant, brimming with tourists, scholars, and visionaries, is a place where young people are comprehensively literate, urbane, and just want to download the latest i-Tunes and life itself. It’s good enough for Debra; that’s all I can say.
*
Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be reached at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com