Away from home

When you’re away for two and a half months from home, you learn a lot of things about yourself and your family. Some are quite meaningful and/or disturbing: how much time do you actually want to spend with your toddler every day, or the best time of day to have a real conversation with your spouse. Others may seem mundane but are also revelatory: how much laundry detergent do you use in two and half months? How much shampoo? (Answers: a lot more than I thought, and less than I expected). I know which parts of the kitchen I never touched and which clothes I never wore.

Memory is also relative to place and context. My knowledge of this operation is of course better than the last two Gaza ones because I was here, but I may also remember other things better because I’m not at home. For example, I’ll probably remember the date of the Malaysian airplane crash or remember Robin Williams’ death better than some other celebrity because it happened this summer. I’ll remember that the time D first wore nail polish or H first went swimming were summer 2014. Going away divides life up into units that don’t exist at home, for good or bad. This has been studied, of course, to maximize test preparation, with some studies recommending taking practice exams in the room where the real test will be held. But I think it’s an argument for variation in life: change your location and change not just your luck but what you remember, which is really how you perceive the world.

Another ceasefire ending

It’s our second to last week in Israel and we’re at the end of another ceasefire. This one was five days, long enough that I stopped checking Israeli news obsessively and occasionally looked at other sections of the New York Times. But now as midnight approaches, I’m checking Ynet again and that feeling of tension is welling up inside me. They say there might be a deal that was just signed, but there’s no reason to trust Hamas, and I’m bracing myself for more rockets. In the end, either way, most of our summer here will have been during a war. Of course it changed things, though we never considered leaving. In fact, while one friend from Boston emailed me to see whether the I thought she should bring her small children to Israel for their scheduled vacation, heard much more of the opposite: both Americans and Israelis who are glad to be in Israel during the conflict. Israelis felt like if they left, they’d be betraying those who were risking their lives to defend them and their fellow citizens, and Americans like me who felt that there is little we could do from abroad, while by just being here, we might be able to offer support to Israelis and raise awareness back home. In any case, we are still here, but I wish it could have been different.

Jerusalem pictures

Flowers and a hidden courtyard in Jerusalem.

What's it like over there?

Everyone is asking what it’s like to be in Israel these days, during this operation, this war.

In some ways, it’s crazy. I was out with my brother the night the kidnapped boys’ bodies were found. Every store had the news on and everyone was discussing it. People were crying as they ignored customers and just watched the TV. There was a sense that whatever happened next was going to be bad all around, that this ending was only a beginning of something much worse. And that was true. But since then, I have not seen that kind of communal focus, and as this “operation” continues, people check the news all the time, discuss the situation, feel depressed, but must they go on with their lives.

So despite the war, and despite the craziness, Jerusalem feels wonderfully alive. Playgrounds are full of kids and it seems like every third woman is pregnant. Religious and secular mix, as do Arabs and Jews, on buses and in restaurants and throughout the city, though I definitely notice at times that I am the only mom on the playground without a head covering. Posters advertise the opera and theatre and special markets happening throughout the summer. Delicious smells waft from the numerous restaurants that cover the landscape.

One evening, we met friends at the new First Train Station. The fake sandy “beach” was closing down, but we caught the end of a volleyball game. Kids were climbing on structures and riding around on big tricycles and clambering up a rock-climbing wall. Adults were dancing to jazz and swing music in the open plaza. We fingered delicate jewelry and eccentric headbands at the artist’s stands. It did not feel like were in the midst of a war.

All around Jerusalem, there is building and improvement. The old train tracks have been converted to a wonderful long trail with bike lanes and running space. The train is finally running smoothly and the combination of the train and the conversion of downtown streets to pedestrian walkways has successfully decreased the car traffic and increased the foot traffic in the area. The open-air market, always full by day, is also now popular at night among a younger crowd who listens to loud music while dining on a variety of cuisines. Begin Road, or route 50, the new highway in Jerusalem, makes it easy and painless to get in and out of the city, and they have even improved the signage. These improvements (combined with Waze, an app developed in Israeli that allows drivers to share information about traffic and accidents), make it an easily navigable city.

Of course, there have been air raid sirens. Four in Jerusalem so far, but almost all in the first week. We feel like we have it easy compared to the south, of course, or the “merkaz,” the center, around Tel Aviv, where there are sometimes multiple ones a day.

We traveled north last week. It didn’t seem like the right time to take a vacation, with people risking their lives to defend the country and people suffering air raid sirens all the time. But we needed a break and wanted a family vacation. While Jerusalem is relatively quiet, it was nice to get away from the worry of rockets and sirens. But as we were leaving, we heard about a stone-throwing attack on route 2 on the coast, and about sirens are going off in the northern Galil, but during the day, away from the news and focusing on the pool, it felt like a real break.

That was, until we started talking to people. At Hamat Gader, we saw a family swimming and looking totally without concern. But when we spoke, we quickly learned that they haven’t been home for three weeks. They live in Kfar Maimon, a moshav near Gaza, and they have no safe room. The mother told me she can’t have her three little girls there, so they’ve been traveling from grandparents to friends to hotels. She wants to go home, but she knows that would be irresponsible.

Many tourist sites were offering free or discounted admission for residents of the south. Everyone is suffering from the decreased tourist activity because of the situation—our hotel offered an across-the-board discount hotel offered 25% off for Operation Protective Edge. Vacation during a war is cheaper, I guess.

And now back in Jerusalem, another two Arab boys attacked violently by young Jewish Israelis. Stories of cars being burnt in West Jerusalem neighborhoods because they had Israeli flags flying on them. I don’t like to talk about a cycle of violence, because I think that suggests that both sides in this conflict are equally implicated and equally violent. But I do think there’s a cycle of hate, and the more the conflict goes on, the more each side feels justified in their hate, becomes more extreme in their statements, and raises more children into a culture of hatred. How can we stop that cycle?

So here I am, in a shady, beautiful Jerusalem café, feeling safe and comfortable, listening to the people around me discuss the Iron Dome protecting us from rockets.

Adaptive innaccuracy

While on a recent run (!), I was listening to the well-done Sipur Yisraeli podcast, which is modeled after the PRI radio show This American Life. One section talked about the human ability to estimate or predict ability. When people registering for a course are asked to estimate whether they will be in the top 5% of the class, they do a relatively good job— not perfect (some say they will and don’t; some say they won’t and do)—but not much more than 5% answer yes. However, when they ask whether student expected to be in the top half of the class, which should happen to about half of the folks, 70-80% said yes. Is this over-estimation? The same happened when people were asked to estimate how other people saw them in terms of attractiveness and intelligence—people all overestimated their appeal to the people they knew. One group, however, saw things more accurately: those who were depressed. In other words, understanding one’s limitations is associated with actual inability to function. So that 70-80% is adaptive. Apparently people wouldn’t sign up for a class if they thought they weren’t going to do better than average. We have to be overly optimistic or we wouldn’t do anything. Arrogance, or poor statistical ability, is, in some cases, desirable.