“What do secular Jews do on Sukkot?” I’d asked a few days ago. It’s the same question that plagues me on Shabbat, when an eerie calm filters through the city, and the secular Jews must be at home eating dinner and watching a B-list American movie with Hebrew subtitles on Israeli cable.
Tuesday was an unusually warm day, which Max thought the Orthodox Jews in
And that was when my question was answered. The hills of Gan Sacher were speckled with secular Israeli families – abbas barbequing and imas pulling children around on little plastic tricycles. (Note: I only observe the tradition gender roles, I don’t create them.) Middle school boys skateboarding down the sidewalk and high school girls screeching excitedly in the direction of the ice cream truck parked in the park’s corner lot. We picked a nice spot of grass, ate our sandwiches, and read our books – although I eventually abandoned my novel for people watching.
In the evening, after the city stumbled out of its Sukkot stupor, Max and I went downtown to get frozen yogurt on Ben Yehuda. What is usually an incredibly lively district was swarming with hundreds of extra people, most of whom appeared to wealthy American (and British and South African) Jews who had made their annual trek to
I’m ashamed to admit it but I was embarrassed to be associated with this crowd. They’re loud and a little tactless and have no shame in speaking English (with increasing volume when non-English speaking Israelis don’t understand) everywhere they go. “I’m not one of them!” I wanted to scream, to the Israeli behind the ice cream counter. I’m living here, learning Hebrew, trying to understand and appreciate Israeli society. But they’re Jews too and they have as much right to be here as I do … if we have any right at all.
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