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| Orit and Ayelet in a Gush Katif greenhouse. |
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Orit is a painter and writer living in Tel Aviv.
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By Orit
December 21, 2005
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| Orit playing ball in Gush Katif, a week before the expulsion began. |
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I used to be a happy girl.
I used to always be cheerful. I used to smile a lot. I used to like people and always seek to be kind.
I don't know what's happened to me lately, but every since the "Disengagement", or expulsion if you will, I've never been the same. Something has died in me -- a joie de vivre, an optimism, a basic faith in humanity.
The things that once used to give me joy now just arouse in me indifference. I used to like listening to pop music; I used to like meeting friends for dinner or a drink; I used to like going to movies; I used to like smiling at store clerks; I used to like going to work; I used to like seeing a new restaurant open on my street; I used to like meeting new people; I used to like getting dressed up and going out to party.
I never thought that I would like the word "hate." But recently I like that word. Sometimes I like to say to myself that I hate people. I'm becoming a total misanthrope. I particularly don't like Israelis, a people I had once loved with all my heart. I think the majority of them are cowardly, irrational, cheap, dull, passive, and dumb. I don't understand how they could have watched the expulsion on TV, if they even went that far, and not take to the streets in protest.
I've lost friends. We never made an official split, but nothing has been the same between me and those friends who were pro-expulsion. It's slowly becoming clearer to us that ultimately we don't share the same values. I can't share with them the one thing that sits in my heart so deeply. I've made new friends, but most of them don't live in Tel Aviv --they're scattered about Israel -- so I'm more isolated in a city that's already so difficult to penetrate socially.
Nothing inspires me anymore. I turn-on the news and hope: "maybe this is the day when something will inspire me ... just maybe something good will happen? just maybe someone will get a bout of common sense or courage." But that day never comes.
I feel like there is no one person, no one group that could even come close to inspiring me or giving me hope, except perhaps the people of Judea and Samaria.
But even there, I don't think I fit in. For all intents and purposes they're believers and I'm a heretic. I don't believe that God dictated the Torah to Moses and I don't believe that Orthodox halakhah is the path of truth. I could enjoy wonderful Shabbatot and activism arm in arm with them, but we'll probably rub each other the wrong way eventually. And I don't know what they're doing to turn this country back on its feet. I keep waiting for some sort of leader to emerge among them, but he, or she, never shows up.
I secretly dream of the US. I'm not going to lie. I do. People there seem to still possess a basic sense of decency and self-respect. There's still kindness and fairness in the air, overall. Maybe I'm not a good Zionist, but life in America really does seem better: spiritually, financially, and physically.
Except that I don't fit in there either. Israel is my home -- it's the home for the Jews, even though they get kicked out their homes. If Israel didn't exist, America wouldn't really welcome us. They know we have a place to come back to, so they tolerate us for now. And there too Jews are selling their souls and crouching behind their comfort instead of defending their only true home.
And really, I don't want to live as a nation within a nation, in which the one true glue holding us together is a halakhic system that I've abandoned many years ago.
I?m learning to become comfortable with the new Orit. I've been getting to know her. I?m learning to get used to grimacing, hating, sulking. I figure that it's better not to fight it. Maybe it will all go away with time.
What else can I do? There seems to be no where to run and no where to hide, except maybe to the deep recesses of my heart.
That's where I live right now. My only solace is that by getting to know my heart and acting on what I know, maybe I can one day inspire others and find again the hope for this country.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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