We boarded the plane on June 7th at night and begin the long journey to Tel Aviv. I am so excited to finally be on our way. As we find our space and some food, the music makes me feel like I’m in a club in NYC in the early ‘80s. When we finally get to the gate, the scene around me is very much akin to what I saw as a child in Far Rockaway, Queens. Orthodox Jewish families identifiable by their dress, the men in black with hats and curly locks of hair, some praying and little boys dressed similarly, while women with covered heads, dressed modestly with children, all waiting to board. There are, of course, more secular looking folks as well, along with a larger group of American birthright young people who seem bubbly and happy that emphasize the differences among a people. The trip over the pond (ie. The Atlantic and into the Mediterranean) is uneventful with the usual bad food, crying children, and cramped seats and spaces. I slept most of the way over (as my partner says I have a PhD in sleeping) so our tour to Old Jaffa when we first arrived was intriguing since I rested so well on the plane. No problem with that, more about it below. We sat next to a traveler from Tel Aviv who told us to find the “good” coffee places and not just the Starbuck-like Aroma. I come from proud peasant stock who were coffee picking people on my paternal line (cane cutters on my maternal line) so coffee is important, good coffee! Thank you fellow traveler for the tip.

The plane’s tinted windows that made everything look dark until we were landing suddenly clear up and we can finally see outside. Until then, I thought it was just dark (LOL, feeling foolish) but then I could distinguish the coastline which had earth the color of red clay, soil similar to that from Caribbean. I felt some joy at finally seeing this land I’ve come to witness and was surprised at seeing so many farms and greens spaces below while Tel Aviv lay in the distance standing tall and shiny with its high rise buildings while below me were a variety of green spaces. Unexpected for sure.

We moved through Passport Control very quickly in the deft hands of our first guide through the airport, for which I am still grateful. Instead of the long interview by security I’d been warned about by friends and colleagues, we were whisked off to a smaller line (there was a huge one we managed to avoid) and got through relatively quickly. For a moment, as I wait to have my passport inspected I feel that feeling of being in another country, that sense of excitement, adventure, and not understanding the language, a feeling I welcome. In another 40 minutes or so we were with our guide, Barak Berkovich, and on the bus. We also finally meet Raeefa, one of our staff members from AEN.

First impressions of Israel from the airport: it is the very modern, shiny space I imagined it to be, technologically advanced, carefully laid out, with all the modern conveniences including expresso bars, shops and boutiques, and cool, European style bathrooms (smaller, lower seats, etc.). This contrasts with images we get in the West about ancient lands, lots of dryness (it’s moderately humid by the ocean), and religious people. We moved to our bus, a 15 seater with curtains, air and water, and into the expert tour hands of Barak who quickly gave us his spiel about how to be here. Hand gestures are important, driving is about communicating about each others mothers (his joking way of saying it’s a bit chaotic), hydration is important,(luckily I’m coming from Colorado where we hydrate), and he provides us with important details on how to move through here including a bag with sunscreen and the proverbial water bottle.

Driving along the highway, I see a mixture of palm trees, industrial buildings, and a lot of concrete. We head to Old Jaffa, the port city and older part of Tel Aviv. Barak takes us to St. Peter’s church, the site of the first non-Jewish conversion to Christianity. Barak delivers a great synopsis about the symbols on the church, its importance, and moves us to a plaza. I am entranced by the ocean and can’t stop staring. The smell of the sea hits my nose, and along with the humidity, makes me feel so good. Here we meet up with Napoleon (of course, why not) and the mythology of why there are a series of rocks in the bay here which apparently is important for the biblical Jonas and his whale, Poseidon and Medusa. There’s a lovely fountain depicting the zodiac. By chance we bump into one of the author’s whose work we’ve been assigned and Barak knows and greets him. Raeefa also recognizes him and she seems thrilled. It’s one of those magical moments that she acknowledges as “Israel is small.”

Walking in this older area of the city, we move across cobbled stone walkways, buildings with the star of David on it, and Hebrew script everywhere. I begin to understand better my friend Ken Sider’s comment that when he first went to Israel how good it felt to be in a “Jewish thing,” how his body relaxed to be around so many Jews. I felt something similar the first time I stepped foot in Ghana, felt that sense of calm in my nervous system from not being so Other, how good it felt. I can sense/feel how important it is to be validated so completely about your Jewishness. And although Barak assures me that most people in Tel Aviv, as the liberal hub of a religious region, are not religious something about this being Jewish here feels affirming. I am not a Jew and yet I can feel how good it must be to be Jewish, once and for all since I am familiar with what if feels like to be an outsider, the proverbial other, surrounded by Not-Me people, places, and sensibilities. What a triumph here. More importantly, Old Jaffa or Yafo as it is known locally is the site of firsts, including turning a sand dune into modern day Tel Aviv along with that first conversion of a non-Jew to Christianity by Peter. We stood in a site where we could see the glorious city on a hill with a touch of the Mediterranean sea on its side. Really beautiful. As a bonus, we saw a beautiful sunset against a minuet building that looked like it sits simultaneously in the first millennia and today. Barak has reminded us that this is a land of complexity and contradiction. I remember something of yesterday’s lesson about holding both grief and hope, and I begin to feel my way through a sense of Israel as contradiction and complexity.

The third element of Hip Hop culture is graffiti (the first two breaking [dancing] and spinning[DJing]), of which I have been a practitioner. As a New Yorker born in the South Bronx, I couldn’t help but notice the graffiti on the way to our restaurant and our first speaker. My upbringing tells me that the graffiti means someone is trying to communicate something, perhaps something taboo or unspeakable. From NYC tag culture I know that this is a language all its own, that marginalized youth use it to make their mark on society, to become present. I wonder at the extent and messaging in Tel Aviv. Who is trying to communicate? What is their social location? What compels them to tag? And how did they come to use this form of writing born out of the desperation of youth who are structurally dislocated (racially, culturally, economically) in urban spaces like New York City. Who are you taggers-of-Tel-Aviv? What kinds of dialogues might we have, me, daughter of disidentified Puerto Rican colonial exiles and Cape Verdian migrants to the U.S. of A? What kinds of marginalization might we share like those I discovered I had with Calcuttan Jute Mill workers and Mayan weavers in Chiapas? What differences exist between us and where is our common ground? Do you also dance and spin? Are you angry like younger me was at my lot in life?

Dinner with Yossi Klein Halevi was amazing and humbling. Author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (2018), Yossi spoke to us about his intentions for the book, about the responses he got (between 500-700 Palestinians wrote him) and his hopes for a resolution to this conflict. I am intrigued by Yossi’s sense that, as Mark Twain once wrote, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times, for a resolution. I am intrigued by his metaphor of the wall—the green line I’ve learned about that divides and occupies. I was surprised at what seemed to be a not so positive outlook despite Yossie’s incredibly hopeful book. Although his book is a plea for dialogue, even when he at times is at capacity about outreach, he says that when a Turkish Imam reach out to him, he “got torn open again by the conflict.” His narrative reflects on what it means for an Israeli to live with the occupation, and says that what made his book emotionally and psychologically possible was his work with Abdullah, the Turkish Imam, who brought Palestinian and Jewish students to Jerusalem to meet with Yossie, and Yossie’s witnessing of their pain and struggle. I feel close to tears again, an affect that continually surprises me on this trip. Yesterday, during orientation, I close to tears several times with several of the presenters. Here is this welling up of grief and hope, simultaneously that I must hold and witness, for Israel, for Palestine, for all of us in the world who will be affected by the continuation or the resolution of this conflict. I remember Cuba’s great revolutionary José Martí’s words that Cuba and Puerto Rico are two wings of the same bird. I wonder if Israel and Palestine are also two wings of one bird: freedom and self-determination, sovereignty and indigeneity, grief and hope, and ultimately, connected in ways where one cannot be without the other.

After Yossi leaves to get back to Jerusalem, Barak reminds us that it’s important to see Israel from the perspective of a middle easterner, from the perspective of an Israeli. Time to figure out how to shift lenses, to as Toni Cade reminded, to learn each other’s ways of seeing and being. “Things look different from here” Yossie reminds. Important advice to opinionated Americans who don’t live this reality.