Storytime

In Israel, everyone has a story. Ask someone anywhere else where they are from and what they are doing there and you could get an interesting personal history, or you could get something as simple as “I’m from Boston.” But here, those questions aren’t just ice-breakers; they are a window into each person’s life. For each person who came to Israel, their reasons and their stories give an insight into their personalities and dreams that would not ordinarily come so soon after introductions. And for each person who was born here, that question immediately unloads an oral tradition full of drama and hope.

For dinner we went to one of the deans of the med program at Ben Gurion who had come to Be’er Sheva 37 years ago to start the program. At the time, Be’er Sheva was a small desert town with a small new university and a lot of ancient history. He started the minyan at the absorption center when they moved there, which on Friday night had old Jews from Morocco, Uruguay, and Yemen, and teenagers fresh from Ethiopia. He watched Be’er Sheva and its university grow into a bustling metropolis and a thriving educational center, watched as new neighborhoods sprung up from the empty fields, watched as a new generation of Israelis made the city their own. We went to friends for lunch, each of them too with a tale of searching and finding something here, or of exploring the world, or grandparents’ escape from Europe. Whether seventh generation Jerusalemite or here for two weeks, each person adds to the greater story of Israel.

As a new city, and one in the desert, it was comforting to be in Be’er Sheva, with its cars and broad boulevards and desert air. It reminded me of Anaheim or Sherman Oaks in a way. It was nice to be back in civilization, and Be’er Sheva being a more secular city, I found the cars driving on Shabbat—noticeably absent in Alon Shvut or anywhere else I’ve spent Shabbat so far—oddly normal. Somehow Shabbat seems more different from the rest of the week when I’m the one walking than when everyone else is too.

Two street signs on opposite crosswalks. Clearly they still have a ways to go.