Coffee Talk

I wound up doing most of the talking with a new friend today. He asked what it was like studying in Israel. And he let me talk. Talk. Talk. Talk. At the end, he said that he'd really like to try living there before actually making aliyah.

Always a good idea.

Especially for this kind of society that's so drastically different from the United States. I told him that when I am there, my life flips around. There are no prepared foods. Even if there are prepared foods, it's generally all the same: Middle Eastern salads, chicken, and lamb. Clothes are difficult to find- if you can't find a shirt in your size in that store, chances are, you're out of luck finding another shirt like that in Tel Aviv. I just switch into Israeli mode when I land and take things in stride without even thinking about how an American would react. I've forgotten what it's like to be frustrated not to receive a smile and a thanks of gratitude from the cashier. It's auto-pilot for me. I told him to try doing a program there to help him settle and get involved but he's going have to try and acculturate to see if Israel is for him. If you don't like what you've turned into and your life remains difficult, then don't move. If you don't want to have the feeling of living on the edge and know that you could be killed by a terrorist any day, then don't move (although Israel is still safer than the major cities in the US).

I talked with one of my professors about how teaching Israel worked given the politics. I told her that so far I've learned that you're supposed to keep your politics off the table. But how could a professor run a course on such a sensitive topic? She explained that it's much easier with graduate students to talk politics but with undergrads, you want to give them a grounded perspective. And there's no way to avoid that bias when you speak. It made me think.

I certainly will be qualified to teach Israel, given my deep experience and connections. But I think that I will want to take the time to explore the materials out there and figure out how to put together a good course that reveals Israel's fighting spirit and complex, multilayered, and conflicted society. In the meantime, I will keep talking to people to practice my rheotric. Also, that ridiculous Arab-Israeli conflict class that I took at Colgate inspires me to reform that syllabus. I don't want American kids to get their facts backwards.