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Out of the Box
by Andy Miller I step out of my hotel. Hop in a taxi. Tell the driver “Wailing Wall, please”. It is Shabbat, so there are no cars on the streets, no one around, a foreigner in a seemingly abandoned, ancient city, where I was told specifically by the Birthright Israel staff not to go for fear of violence as the country was in the grip of what was to become known as the Second Intifada. Just me, the Arab-Israeli cab driver and the Old City on a Saturday morning. No Jews. No tourists. I am clearly not being taken to the Wailing Wall, at least not now. The driver mentions the Sabbath, as if to explain away the absence of other human beings from these odd, abandoned streets, striking the fear of “what if?” into my well-traveled yet jetlagged brain, trained to be fearful of men such as this. My heart begins to pound a bit harder. My rational mind says “get the hell out of here” while my curious mind says “let’s see where this leads”. The cab driver continues to weave in and out of the single lane streets of the Old City, past empty shop windows, dirty buildings, locked doorways and closed businesses. “Where the hell is he taking me?” It’s too late now, time to enjoy the ride. The cab comes to a stop outside a shabby, foreboding building on a street that time long forgot. The driver tells me this is a market and I should shop. I am not an idiot, I have traveled all over the world. I nod my head, get out of the cab, and shop. Under the watchful eyes of the shopkeepers, who appear to have opened the store just for my shopping pleasure, with the cab driver looking on and speaking with the others in their extremely foreign Arabic tongue, I peruse the various menorahs, mezuzahs, tallit, tfillin and the other chotchkies I tend to avoid while traveling. My memories and photographs are typically my souvenirs, however I feel just a bit compelled to make at least a few purchases if I want to return to the hotel in the same condition in which I left. I make my selections, I do not haggle, I receive wide smiles and gratitude from the shopkeepers, and the cab driver happily beckons me back into the car. I passed the test, whether that was spending the requisite amount of Shekels at the store, appeasing the shopkeepers, whom I believed to be related to the cab driver, or being brave enough not to run when the cab pulled up to the establishment in the first place. My mind numb, my heart racing, scared, but fully, completely, utterly, alive. “Is this what it takes? Stepping outside of my box? Defying the wishes of my trip leaders, and most likely US State Department warnings, to feel what it is to truly be alive?”. Suddenly the empty, derelict ancient stone streets became a bit more inhabited, cleaner and busier, I see Jews walking to and from synagogue, I see tourists, I see tons and tons and tons of IDF soldiers. My heart stops pounding. I have arrived at the Wall. I have a habit of – no, a genuine interest in – observing and conversing with those I deem different than me. The Other, the one who exists outside the box. The man serving Guinness in a bowl to his dog in the pub in London. The intravenous drug user at the Acropolis (“A Ruin at the Ruins”). The people speaking in front of a statue of Jesus with Hebrew letters above his head on the Charles Bridge in Prague as a form of reconciliation. This is the good stuff, this is real life, this is unfiltered. People living outside of boxes history and society and ourselves have placed us in. This is why I left the hotel that morning – to experience what I knew our highly planned trip to Israel, where we were driven around in private air-conditioned busses with armed ex-IDF soldiers guarding us, would not – the chance to interact not as students, not as Jews, not as Americans or any other person in a box. This was the chance to interact and share and discuss and learn. Existing outside of the box. The essence of what it is to be human. Once I pass through the heavily guarded gates, I enter the area near the Western Wall. It is quite large. A quarter of the courtyard is occupied by IDF troops, who are either on patrol, flirting with one another, or on a big armored cultural field trip, I cannot tell. I go to the Wall, I experience all that is the Wall, and it is amazing, however, I want to see more. "What is here that I am not supposed to see?" "Why was I not supposed to come to this place, alone, even with the presence of an army division to protect me?" I walk from the Wall to the first set of metal detectors I see, which happens to be surrounded by IDF troops. As I pass through the metal detectors, I enter an ancient world of winding alleyways, shadows, stone façade shops and myriad languages. I enter a shop where I meet Ramadan, a middle aged Muslim man, an Arab, the Other that I was to be protected from at all costs. This man, however, stepped outside of his box, treated me as an equal, invited me into his shop, served me sage tea, spoke in a kind and caring voice about politics, his family, his yearning for peace and the notion that a very small number of bad seeds need not determine the fate of an entire people. Ramadan wanted peace, for his children to grow up in a safe place, to run a business, to be a human being. Ramadan’s wishes, hopes and dreams are my hopes and dreams. I am no different from this man than I am any other man. I thought back to my experience in the taxi cab. If the cab driver and the shopkeepers he brought me to were people to be feared, was that thought simply due to the box I put myself in, that of an American and a Jew and a potential target? I came to realize these boxes we place ourselves in are just artificial constructs that push us farther and farther apart. My experience in the cab? A kind man’s way of showing a tourist a place to get a good deal on some souvenirs for his family (my parents still display the menorah in their home). My experience with Ramadan? A discussion amongst two individuals, who happen to live in two very different parts of the World, but who share more in common than we lack. This otherwise scary, life-threatening journey proved something some might think of as naïve and trite: Most of us utilize boxes to separate ourselves from others. Jews, Arabs, Christians, Americans, Israelis, gays, lesbians, Millenials, loyalists, separatists, Orthodox, secular. We all want peace. We all want to raise our families in relative comfort and safety. The best experience of my trip to Israel was something all of us can realize without ever leaving home. If we step out from beyond our protective boxes, shed our preconceived notions of the Other, have some conversations and some sage tea, we can begin to heal the world’s problems. I return to the hotel that afternoon and tell of my experiences. I am admonished by the trip leader, but I could not have been more grateful for the opportunity and hopeful for the future of humanity. To think, if just a handful of the other students on the trip had created the same opportunity for themselves as I did, another group of individuals step out of their boxes, expose themselves to society, and make real, tangible connections with other human beings who were previously been deemed “different”. If we continue to break down our collective boxes and teach our children to do the same, what an amazing world awaits us all. |
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