Day 9 in Israel-Palestine: 14 January 2026

This is what has been going on:

I developed a sinus infection, which happens to me when I am traveling sometimes. It hasn't happened in a while, but it happened the first time I came to Israel-Palestine in 2014. I think it's the combination of weird airplane pressure, dry air on the airplane, 10 hour flight, and the relatively dry climate here compared to where I live, plus "foreign" pollen, plants, dust. I felt just under-the-weather enough for several days to limit my activity, I did a lot of napping and not a ton of sightseeing. Also did I mention jetlag? I feel like the older I get the worse my jetlag gets. And then I think about people who flew all over the world constantly as older people, like the Dalai Lama and Jane Goodall; how did they do it? There must be things I can do to better prepare my body and circadian rhythms for trips like this. Anyhow, I went to an urgent care clinic and also had a telephone appt with a doctor here and got some meds and I'm feeling better every day but still a bit tired and I am NOT SLEEPING RIGHT AT ALL. I used to travel with my neti pot which sometimes helps the sinus stuff but it's such a fucking pain in the ass to get distilled water and heat it up while I'm traveling. Whatever. Truly it's all fine, I am (unfortunately and if you know me well you know I hate to even admit this) not a superhuman superhero and I have an actual human body and mind that are affected by things. If any of you figure out a way to make me into a perfect superhuman superhero, please let me know ASAP because that would be really helpful.

I am so glad I gave myself a long trip this time. I'm here 16 days total. It means I don't need to let things like the sinus issues/jetlag/tired bother me very much because I have lots of time. It makes me feel expansive and more relaxed. I am so privileged to have a professor job that's flexible and, even though our program doesn't have normal breaks like most (which means we kind of work all the time) the faculty do theoretically get all of January off (although did I mention we actually in practice just work all the time?) so I am able to take this time. I have been doing work while I'm here but I can still take time.

It's also nice that this is my fifth time here and so I don't feel like I need to obsessively sightsee. I am here to see my family, whom I haven't seen in three years. And I am really getting to know them so much better. During my first week here, I pretty much napped and did some lowkey driving around Jerusalem and exploring, but I spent every night with my cousin Ofer and his wife Ilil and their two children, Yahli 18 (going into the army in one month) and Libi (15). Ofer and Ilil (pronounced "eel eel") are warm, hilarious, interesting, smart, fun, kind, generous. We have talked about our childhoods, our parents, our families. I mean, I only met these people in my 40's and we have a lot to catch up on. I love them, like I truly enjoy them and we have a great connection. Yahli used to be less communicative and more shy (he was 15 the last time I saw him) and he's grown into a super fun, interesting, effusive, fascinating person. He evidently isn't good at school and at the same time he's taught himself like five languages and has lots of thoughts and opinions about the world and life. For example, he is a huge Real Madrid (soccer) fan and Ilil told me he asked her for Spanish lessons when he was like 8 years old because he was sure he would eventually play for Real Madrid someday and needed to speak Spanish. ADORABLE and super impressive. Also did I mention he's a huge soccer fan? If you know me nowadays you know that I am too and it's super fun, like literally one day I was at their house in the afternoon with just Yahli and we talked for like four hours and I bet half of that was about soccer. Libi is also sweet and hilarious but, being 15, not as into hanging out with us all the time, but she's so much less shy than she used to be three years ago and she speaks better English now than she used to and I have found out she loves soccer too. We all watched a Real Madrid match together and there are some photos here of Yahli and Libi sitting like 12 inches form the TV and discussing the match in Hebrew nonstop. ADORABLE. Ilil is like a gourmet hoe cook and just whips delectable things like homemade chocolate babka out of the oven every evening and I've mostly been eating food she's cooked. Amazing.

This past Friday Ofer's sister Sharon came over to Ofer's for Shabbat dinner with her daughter Noa (pronounced like the guy with the ark). Sharon is wonderful and was the first person here to just flat out ask me, as we sat down to dinner, "What's it been like for you in the United States since 10/7/23?" and I was like, "Shitty." And I told them all about what it's been like to know and love people in Israel since then and how so many people who don't personally know any actual Israelis (or Palestinians for that matter) have had a whole lot of things to say and how painful it's been for me to love my family and hear blanket statements about Israelis all the time. How I'm afraid to tell people I have family here, how I was afraid to tell people I was coming here now. I told them that its true, when it's come to personal interactions with my loved ones and friends and colleagues, people have been very kind to me but it's been really fucking hard and terrifying otherwise and I have been afraid in the USA as a Jew for the first time in my life and don't put a chanukia (menorah) in my window anymore.

It's been intense to talk with my family here about their lives over the past three years. I have now come to understand how totally and thoroughly hated they feel as individual human beings, hated by the whole world. Ofer and Ilil told me that when they as a family finally were able to go on a trip together last year they went to Hamburg and felt the need to discuss beforehand as a family the specific lie they would tell people about where they were from (Albania) because they were terrified to tell anyone they were Israeli. Sharon is a curator at the Israel Museum (kind of like the Israeli Smithsonian) and she told me that she and her colleagues and all the museums in Israel are totally blacklisted worldwide and even though some museums are still borrowing items from the Israel Museum they refuse to acknowledge that in public and refuse to publicly collaborate. She told me she is afraid to go to the conference of worldwide Jewish museums! Afraid as a Jew to be amongst colleagues who also work at Jewish museums worldwide! You think Netanyahu gives a flying fuck about her life? No he doesn't. Her career has been hugely affected. She also used the word "genocide" several times and reminded me -- as I have been reminding my friends and colleagues -- that before 10/7/23 she and Ofer and all their friends were protesting every single Saturday in the hundreds of thousands all over Israel against Netanyahu, but the whole world has forgotten that he's actually incredibly unpopular here with most Israelis who aren't ultra-Orthodox right wing. Sound familiar to anyone out there in the USA? Ofer told me he is afraid to tell people professionally he is Israeli. Anyhow, you get the picture.

At the same time, it's hard to even convey the extent to which my family is convinced that Israel is actually the only safe place on Earth for them as Jews. So ironic, right? (In the Alanis Morissette meaning of the word ironic.) When I asked Yahli and Libi would they ever live anywhere else, they said they might temporarily study for like a year somewhere but neither of them would ever live permanently outside Israel or raise a family anywhere else. Yahli is totally uninterested at this point in ever visiting the United States. It's hard to describe that it's like here: this is a country where every single Jewish person I meet is descended from Holocaust survivors or people who escaped terrible oppression before the Holocaust, or are people who have needed to flee places like Yemen, Morocco, Russia, Poland, in the decades since the Holocaust because they felt it wasn't safe to be anywhere else. Like my deceased cousin Yehuda's girlfriend Susie told me she came to Israel with her family in the 1960's from Poland as a teenager because there was such vitriolic antisemitism from the communist party in Poland then. Did you ever hear about that? Nope I didn't either. This is a country founded by and still made up of people who are individually, collectively, and generationally traumatized. It's deep deep deep.

Sharon's son Daniel (pronounced "dahn-ee-yell") has been in the army in a combat position since October 2022 which means he has been in the army this whole time. It's mindblowing. His brother Michael (pronounced "meech-eye-yell" where the ch is the guttural "cccchhhh" where it sounds like you are hocking a loogie) has now been in the army in intelligence already for a year. It's mind boggling. I asked Yahli about the option of registering as a conscientious objector and he said, sure, people do that and yet he personally can't imagine not serving. His exact words. It's really difficult for me to understand what it must be like to grow up as a person who has been taught the world hates you because you are Jewish, that the whole world hates Israel and doesn't want it to exist, also while knowing you will be conscripted into the army when you are 18. It seems easy, in that context, to understand why people might feel the need to serve in the military here. Does it make it okay? Maybe not, but it's helpful for me personally to put myself in their shoes. I truly don't know if I have ever felt as unsafe in the world as most Jewish Israelis seem to. Again, mind-boggling.

A huge point of anger and resentment amongst my family (and millions of other Israelis) is that the ultra-Orthodox (the "Haredi" in Hebrew) are not required to serve in the military here because they evidently need to be studying Torah 24/7. This has always been a hugely unpopular policy amongst all other Israelis, and now ias even more so. In fact, it must be escalating to be a really big issue because there was a protest here in the past week by Haredi men against the idea of the Haredi being conscripted. Ain't that a kicker? The very people who most want to be at war and who are the most supportive of war crimes and illegal West Bank settlements, the same people who get Netanyahu elected over and over, are the same people who refuse to serve in the military. Mind blowing. Imagine feeling like the whole world hates you because your government fucked everything up after 10/7/23 and genocided tens of thousands of innocent people, and you also hate that government and have been protesting them for years, and you also feel like you and your children are just expendable fodder for the ultra-conservative-religious in your country who don't even serve in the military anyhow. Sound familiar, kinda like 9/11 in the USA?

On Monday the 12th I drove up north to צְפַת or Tzfat or in English often erroneously spelled Zafed or Safed. It's in the Galilee (yes that Galilee where Jesus walked on water on the Sea of Galilee). It is so beautiful up here. I saw flocks of sheep on my drive up! (I am always on the lookout for sheep since sheep were first domesticated in this region of the world.) Tsfat is I think the city in Israel-Palestine at the highest elevation. It's also a very holy city, one of the four holiest cities in Judaism, the other three being Jerusalem, Hebron (which is now in Palestine on the West Bank) and Tiberias, which is on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and is where Maimonides's tomb is. (According to the internet: "The Sea of Galilee, known as Lake Kinneret (or just The Kinneret) in Hebrew, is Israel's largest freshwater lake, vital for water supply, and famous for its biblical history, especially in the New Testament where Jesus taught and walked on its waters. It's the world's lowest freshwater lake, fed by the Jordan River, and named Kinneret because its harp-like shape resembles the Hebrew word kinor (harp).") Anyhow Tsfat is holy because many famous and holy Jewish thinkers and rabbis have lived here over millennia. It's very ancient (I mean what isn't here?) and over the centuries, many Jews came here when they were fleeing genocide and also were expelled from places like Spain in the 1400's. In fact, it was the Sephardic Jews from places like Spain (I think?) who came here and invented Jewish mysticism, the kabbalah. Lots of very religious people live here. It's also an enclave for artists. Think like Madrid, NM or Woodstock, NY except Jewish, ancient, and where artists and super religious Jewish mystical dreamers come. Many people here have that spiritual glow here, you know that glow? I love the spiritual glow, and lots of people in Israel have it, especially here. It's gorgeous here.

I am staying at an amazing and beautiful B&B in a 400 year old building. (It's also a super reasonable price!) The story of this building and photos of my room and the courtyards are below in photos. It's lovely here and I have gotten a lot of peaceful rest. Which I really needed. Since there's only two rooms here, the couple who owns this place bring a gorgeous breakfast ("Israeli breakfast") right to the room. Of course the couple who own it are, like so many people in this country, Jewish Americans who love studying Judaism and love being Jewish and wanted to bring up their children in a Jewish place and "made Aliyah." They are super lovely people and definitely have the spiritual glow. Every restaurant in Tsfat is kosher which is not true at all in all of Israel because there are so many secular Hews here who don't keep kosher. Which many people outside of Israel don't know. I mean, most Israelis aren't going to be eating pork or oysters ever, or even dairy and meat at the same meal, but aren't actually keeping kosher.

Here are some photos of things I have done and eaten and seen over the past few days.

Today I drive back to Jerusalem and tomorrow I go to the West Bank. Please put out all your prayers and woo that all will be safe and easy and good for me tomorrow. My family here are NOT happy I am going to the West Bank (all except Yahli who wishes he could come with me to Bethlehem but legally can't because he is Israeli) and neither is my girlfriend back home. So please put out your woo (which is really a socially-acceptable-in-leftwing-circles way of saying please pray for me) and for all Palestine and all Palestinians.