During my gap year in Israel in the early 1990s, I would often travel between Jerusalem and Efrat to spend Shabbat with family there. I recall driving past the entrance to Bethlehem and catching glimpses of the bustling life going on there.

I vividly remember seeing Christmas trees in December, the festive celebrations so absent from other parts of my Jewish-oriented life in Israel. Of course, the second intifada and building of the “tunnel road” put paid to that experience during later visits —Palestinian life was somewhere “over there”, and I didn’t give it much thought.

That’s why it felt incredibly surreal last week to find myself sitting in the leafy courtyard of a Palestinian café directly opposite the Church of the Nativity, sipping fresh, cold pomegranate juice while everyday Palestinian life swirled around me. I was acutely conscious of the fact that this was not an experience that most of my friends and family, both in Israel and the UK, would ever have. I felt immensely privileged — but also rather confused.

hand in hand library

The Hand in Hand library

I was in the Holy Land for four days as part of a study tour comprised of Jews, Christians and Muslims arranged by the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) in the UK, in association with CIEL (the Center for International Experiential Learning).

The tour’s objective was to introduce participants to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with an emphasis on the dual narratives of both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives.

Throughout the tour, we also considered our own perspectives and the way we discuss the conflict in the UK, in terms of language, tone, and openness to hearing conflicting truths. My sense of feeling simultaneously privileged and confused very much characterised the time I spent there — along with the conflicting emotions of great hope suffused with deep despair.

Our itinerary was loosely divided into three sections: “Zionism and Jewish Connections to the Land of Israel”, “Occupation and the Palestinian Perspective” and “Israel’s shared society”.

We were asked to expect to feel uncomfortable and I believe every single one of us embarked on the trip prepared to open ourselves up to this. What I didn’t anticipate was just how many deep-seated reactions it would provoke in me.

We flew out to Ben Gurion together, and thanks to a three-hour delay on the tarmac in Heathrow due to bad weather and very little sleep on our first night in Jerusalem (getting to bed at 5am was not on the itinerary!), by the time we set out for a tour of the Old City the next morning, we had bonded over exhaustion, in-flight movie choices and the ubiquitous round of applause that rippled through the aircraft as we landed.

Walking through the Christian quarter and the Arab Shuk were new and enthralling experiences for me and the history we heard from our guide was fascinating.

By the time we arrived at the Kotel, I was beginning to internalise what I had always known intellectually but never truly felt — that the holy connection I felt with this place, these streets, is shared not only by members of my own faith and people, but just as profoundly by other peoples and faiths.

With Julie Siddiqi at Western Wall

Judy with Julie Siddiqi at the Western Wall

As I touched my head to the stones of the wall, the tears started to come, and they remained close to the surface for the duration of our stay.

On that first, intense day in Jerusalem, we were exposed to several different Jewish voices. The concept of Torah being used to make the case for a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one was completely new for me as an Orthodox Jew and one I found compelling.

Conversely, hearing from a representative of a Jewish community in the West Bank was uncomfortable. I wanted to distance myself from the (in my opinion) abhorrent views he was espousing, while at the same time fully identifying with his starting point that the Jewish people are as deeply intertwined with the land of Israel as they are with the Torah itself.

We ended the day at Roots, an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots initiative for transformation based in the Gush region, where we enjoyed slices of hot pizza while listening to the stories of Rav Hanan Schlesinger and Noor A’wad.

The word that most of us used to describe his experience was “healing” —– despite the separate narratives and inherent prejudices that both Rav Hanan and Noor were raised with, they have built a shared institution right in the heart of the conflict, cementing friendships and sowing the seeds for change.

Listening to the stories of the other was the only possible route we could see out of the bloody mess that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Day two dawned and it’s fair to say that most of the Jewish participants were approaching the planned itinerary with a certain amount of trepidation and even fear. We were to spend our time in Bethlehem, meeting with senior Christian and Muslim representatives who would give us a greater understanding of the Palestinian perspective. We passed the checkpoint with little difficulty but walking the streets of Bethlehem felt dreamlike and bizarre. I’m familiar with the “separation wall”, but of course, I’ve never seen it from the Palestinian side before.

The graffiti that covers nearly every inch of it is by turns funny, beautiful, repellent, and thought-provoking. Just as I had felt that the views of the representative of the “settler” community were unnuanced and somewhat arrogant, some of the speakers in Bethlehem triggered similar emotions in me. Our group was encouraged to ask tough questions, but we didn’t always hear satisfactory answers — some of the responses felt like stock propaganda. But at the same time, there were questions I had no answers to.

Why is it that I, a British Jew, could make aliyah tomorrow and be handed a passport and full citizenship, but a Palestinian woman born and raised in East Jerusalem to a family comprising generations of East Jerusalemites cannot access the same rights and privileges?

We were accompanied for the day by an unfailingly good-humoured, kind and thoughtful Palestinian Christian resident of Bethlehem.

You would have to be a stone not to be moved by his account of the struggles that everyday life entails for him and his young family — struggles that could be eased if he and thousands like him were afforded a little more dignity and respect and with no risk to Israel’s security.

Later, as we stood on the roadside, it was pointed out to me that on the other side of this heavily walled compound lay the Tomb of Rachel. I felt unbearably moved and the Biblical phrase “Rachel is crying for her children” ran through my mind.

The final full day of our trip was spent in Jaffa, where we were privileged to visit the co-existence Hand in Hand elementary school.

The students, Muslims, Christians and Jews, were of course indistinguishable from each other — they were simply adorable children who blew kisses and waved to us through their classroom windows.

We learned that this school has a long waiting list, and that whenever there are flare-ups in the region, it is the place everyone wants to come for comfort —because here the relationships are deep enough to withstand the difficult times. I will never forget the sight of volumes of Tanach standing proudly alongside the Koran in the school library. It was a metaphor for what still eludes us and yet must somehow be made possible.

On our final morning, we met two fathers, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Both had both lost their young daughters to this terrible conflict.

Both men were keen to emphasise that they see themselves, before their identities as Jews and Palestinians, simply as human beings.

Many people have asked me: “What was the point of this trip?” I cannot answer this question for my Christian and Muslim friends, theirs is not my story to tell.

But as a Jew, and a religious one at that, the one message I have come away with is that I don’t need to negate the truth of my own connection and the Jewish story in the Land of Israel, to recognise the truth in the Palestinian story.

One day, I pray, the weight of all these individual stories will chip away at the real and virtual walls that divide us and they will simply disintegrate. After all, I really don’t want that to be the last time I find myself sipping sweet, cold pomegranate juice in Bethlehem.

parentscirclefriends.org
friendsofroots.net
tentofnations.org