Save for “>Rosh Hashanah, an extended weekend with a similar spirit as Christmas Break in America (but without all the mall panic). But the lovelier that life in Israel's modern beach city becomes, the fuller I brim with Tel Aviv guilt — that sick sense of contrast between our island of calm and the atrocities unfolding a short drive north, south and east. Syrians are dying; Gazans are starving; Egypt and Lebanon are embroiled in bloody civil wars. And here we are chilling in our sukkahs, giving thanks.
There are of course still moments of bomb anticipation in Tel Aviv, too, like during the conflict with Gaza last November, and — almost — In quiet moments like these, we can hear our neighbors screaming. And although it makes me grateful for all that I have, my sukkah is filled with Tel Aviv guilt.
Jewish Israelis often tell me that they just want to live their life — their Western life — like any other Western person in the world. And I see where they're coming from. The students at my University of California campus who stormed student-government meetings and criticized Israel's violent offensive, and its preventative measures in Palestine (prioritizing absolute safety over the human rights of the trapped Palestinians), seem so silly and out-of-context, in retrospect. How easy it is to criticize another Western aggressor when you're wrapped in your own cozy Western mall culture, just like the one Israel craves, on a land seized from another people.
It's much more difficult to reconcile this contrast when you're living in the middle of it. Especially when you're taking shelter in the eye of the storm.
Who knows — Tel Aviv could come under siege tomorrow. Knock on wood. But over a beautiful string of holidays in the Holy Land, the end-of-summer breeze has been heavy with the hurt of hundreds of thousands of our neighbors, so close yet so far off, fighting for their own peaceful September.
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