For someone who lives in Israel, it is always strange to travel to a place where nothing happens. Back home, you are painfully aware of the fact that there is always something happening; and usually, whatever is happening is extreme. It can be extremely good, like the signing of the Abraham Accords or the latest massive tech acquisition; or it can be extremely bad, which hardly needs elaborating. What this means is that, in effect, one lives a kind of bipolar existence: Israel is a vertiginous rollercoaster, rising into the sky and then plunging down to the ground and back again, but never quite touching the heavens or the earth.
There is, no doubt, something exciting about all this. Ain rega dal, as the Hebrew saying goes: “never a dull moment.” Some of us veteran olim are adrenaline junkies of one kind or another; some of us just like being in a place where something like history is happening; and some of us just like the life in Israel, at least when things are relatively good. However, the adrenaline from the highs never lasts, and things often get bad very quickly. At the same time, one knows there will always be more highs to come, and the bad things will eventually pass. You accept this, to a certain extent; but one thing you never do is get used to it.
I’ve been in Brookline, Massachusetts — where my family lives — for six days now. I’m on my annual visit for the Passover holiday, and given the recent tensions in Israel, it’s a welcome respite. Brookline is one of those extraordinary places where everything is, for the most part, ok. It is extremely wealthy — though it isn’t ostentatious about it like some other affluent Boston suburbs — generally safe, and local news is rarely more exciting than the occasional act of vandalism or town meeting dispute. It is, in other words, extremely boring, which at the moment, is rather welcome.
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