Extraordinary

This blog post was written special for the "Why I LOVE Israel" Blog Carnival. To read about this event and find other entries go to http://realisrael.wordpress.com.
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When I moved to Israel just over a year ago, I did many of the same things anyone else around the world does when they move to a new place. I went to the bank to set up my first bank account on my own. I probably scrunched up my face as I tried to decipher the small print in Hebrew. Then the bank teller welcomed me home.

I usually go to the supermarket on Sundays and then again on Thursday or Friday morning if I'm cooking for Shabbat. It took me awhile to learn where the best places to go shopping are and where I can get the best deals. The most I've learned has probably been from the people I've stood in line with. They are always happy to comment on what I'm about to buy and what good deals I accidentally discovered. Lines in Israel might be a hypothetical concept, but you can always make friends in them.

I spend two days a week at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. The bus to campus is full of students like me, having rolled out of bed just in time to catch the far too infrequent 30 bus. At school groups of friends sit around the grass talking, laughing, and playing random instruments. The Forum always has vendors selling everything from jewelry to children's books. In the classroom as we discuss the future of Israel's children our similarities are illuminated and our differences are set aside.

When I'm not in school or sitting at home pretending to do homework I'm usually babysitting. There are several families in the neighborhood I help out. Sometimes we play in the house. Other times we go to the park and the kids play with other children they only met moments before. Parents and other babysitters will talk to me like we're old friends. Once in awhile a parent will take out a package of cookies and bottle of juice with enough cups and napkins for everyone there.

I really like to walk everywhere. You walk enough in Jerusalem and you realize how small this place really is. By now I feel that I recognize everybody. Once in awhile I take the bus. When we get near a supermarket there is always at least one elderly man or woman who insists on standing with their many packages instead of taking one of the many seats immediately offered to them. One time a woman handed me her baby to hold while she organized her bags and secured the stroller. She never asked me if it was okay or thanked me afterwards but it didn't matter to me, and none of it came as a surprise.

I love Israel because I can walk down the street and match up the exact place I'm in with an event I read about in the Bible or learned about in a Jewish History class. I love Israel because on Friday afternoon a siren goes off and the city quiets down as people begin Shabbat, however it is they choose to celebrate it. I loved how on the holiday of Succot (Tabernacles) thousands of Christians from around the world paraded through the streets of Jerusalem and were so intensely excited to be in their Holyland. I loved how every night of Chanukah menorahs were lit around campus to celebrate a miracle from hundreds of years ago. I live in Israel so I can be part of a miracle that only started taking formation sixty years ago.

All those things make me love a place, but it took more than that to decide to live here. It took seeing bus drivers refusing to move until all elderly passengers had found seats, and I need to have a superb university to attend for graduate school. I need neighborhood store owners who greet me like an old friend and having total strangers to graciously help me with my charges and become friends with me at the park.

My life here is both ordinary and extraordinary. When I visit the US and tell people about my life here, it seems that they forgot that in Israel too people go to supermarkets and study in graduate school. So I tell them about the ordinary, and I try to sneak in stories about the extraordinary too.

There's a lot out there to read about Israel. A lot of it can be debated for hours on end. The media isn't going to talk about how I opened a bank account and waited anxiously until I heard back about my acceptance to Hebrew University. But in the end of the day, that's what Israel is like. That's what people are doing-- ordinary things, in often extraordinary ways.