As a traveler, I am not a particularly choosy person. I will go pretty much anywhere, anytime. Wander on horseback into the mountains of Kyrgyzstan? Why not? Spend the night in a sketchy Burmese border town? Sure! Eat my way through Bridgeport, Conn.? Loved it. Once, I even spent four consecutive Sunday nights in Geneva — in midwinter — an ordeal to which no rational adventurer would willingly submit.
In fact, of all the world’s roughly 200 nations, there was only one — besides Afghanistan and Iraq (which my wife has deemed too dangerous) — that I had absolutely zero interest in ever visiting: Israel.
This surprised friends and mildly annoyed my parents, who had visited quite happily. As a Jew, especially one who travels constantly, I was expected at least to have the Jewish state on my radar, if not to be planning a pilgrimage in the very near future. Tel Aviv, they’d say, has wonderful food![...]
How did Jews like the writer end up so far removed from their people?
ReplyDeleteDovy,
ReplyDeletei think if you take look at all the wonderful and heartwarming shtuyot (Engish understatement) going on in the religious world, none of which is new, so nicely recorded for posterity on this very blog, then perhaps there's a small clue as to why the less affiliated become even less affiliated. I think the solution then speaks for itself, although is of course far easy to say than achieve.