By: Maurice Kolodny, Hasbara Fellowships High School Intern
Many things can change a life, some large, some small, some in between. This is one of those in between stories. I travelled to Israel in December 2019, about a year after my Bar Mitzvah. I was supposed to have my Bar Mitzvah there, but schedules got messed up, so I ended up going later. This made me think that the trip would be less meaningful, but if anything, the time I spent there was more meaningful than I could have imagined.
We arrived in Tel Aviv. I had never been to Israel, and for those who don’t know much about it, Tel Aviv is the cultural capital of Israel, located on the Mediteranean coast. It was a beautiful place, and visiting the old city of Yafo was very interesting; this was the first of many times that I saw Jews, Muslims, and Christians living together side by side, peacefully, in the Middle East. I’d always seen news videos of constant war, but on just one street in Yafo, a mosque, church, and synagogue all stood, side by side, the people mingling after an early morning prayer service.
Throughout the rest of my time in Israel, this kept coming up, place after place. Next, we went further north, to Haifa. The same thing happened. On multiple occasions, I saw streets with mosques, churches, and synagogues, with people mingling after a prayer service. Not only did Jews, Muslims, and Christians have places of worship together, but a Bahai temple also stood, not only with the others, but larger. This surprised me. even though I knew that Israel was diverse before, a different religion that I’d previously never heard of not only had a large presence, but the largest temple.
From there we went to the Golan heights. This was possibly the only place that I saw no religion at all. Only military installations and mortar craters. Within an instant I had gone from looking at vibrant cities, and a beautiful peace between religions, to the ugliness that comes about when this peace has not yet been achieved. But then, in one of the craters, I saw flowers growing. While this was only an isolated pocket of color, it showed the beginnings of new life. This reinstated within me a sense of pride in the land, that I had never before felt so strongly. These flowers showed me that even in the ugliness of war, our people will survive, and thrive, as well as strive for peace.
The end of the trip was looping down to Masada and then finally to Jerusalem. But to get there, we had to go through the West Bank. This frightened me, as all I’d ever heard about it was the danger. Yet again I saw the media’s narrative fall apart before my eyes. While some West Bank settlements were fenced off for security, most of what I saw surprised me. I saw Israeli factories in the West Bank that employed Palestinians. It directly cut against everything I’d ever known: the idea that all Palestinians hated Israel and Jews was gone, in an instant.
My time in Masada was short, but incredibly eventful. While I was only there for less than a day, I saw the resilience of the Jewish nation. For some historical context, Masada was the last stand of the Jewish revolt against the Romans. A 300 foot high plateau, it sits above nothing but desert. The Jewish revolt on Masada lasted up to 7 months according to some historians. Being in this place, still largely intact after almost 2000 years, standing on spots where my forefathers fought for their freedom and religion, it truly showed me the resilience and courage of the nation. My only regret was not staying longer.
Finally, after a week of travelling around the country in a way that changed the way I saw Israel and its people, I made it to Jerusalem, the crux of the trip. It was another example of Muslims, Christians, and Jews living in harmony. The four days I spent in Jerusalem were deeply religious. I went at least once a day to the Western Wall. It was stunning: me, a 5’1 scrawny American Jewish nerd standing in front of a massive 2000 year old wall, in the most important place for my religion. Unfortunately the time there ended on a poor note. The day before I was to leave, Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike. Hamas in the Gaza strip immediately responded by launching rockets into Israel, thus I spent my last day in Jerusalem unable to leave my hotel room in fear of being killed. This gave me a taste of the constant fear of rockets that the Israelis are always under. Overall my time in Israel showed that there can and is religious peace (far more than the media tends to publicize), but the peace is fragile and needs to be maintained and improved upon.
