Sticks and Stones

The chutzpah  – to disregard, to defy with such carelessness and contempt, the stringent dress code clearly spelled out in crude block letters for all to see.

Her dewy innocence failed to soften the suspicious looks from, those who warily  watched her from the windows and doorways of shabby buildings, from the street corners where they stood enveloped in the shadows of the encroaching night.  She walked blithely, light-hearted and carefree, intent upon her adventure, unaware of its cost. She was inquisitive and open: to new people, to new ideas, to life itself.  And she innocently believed that the face you presented to the world was the face that greeted you back.  But the faces that watched her through the slats of the shutters that shielded their homes were cold and uninviting.

***

“Are you nuts?” her youth group leader had sputtered when she told him what she wanted to do with her day off. He had to shout to compete with the din of voices and discordant noises eddying all around them at Kikar Zion: teenagers’ raucous laughter,  the joyous singing of Bratzlover “na-nas” bobbing energetically as they grabbed the teenagers into their circles, the blasting of someone’s boombox from which a  legendary chareidi singer’s voice crooned the popular song V’Ahavata L’ Rayacha K’mocha.

“Are you nuts?” the leader repeated, rolling his eyes in pronounced disbelief.  “Everyone else is going to Ben Yehuda Street for some last-minute gift shopping.  Why do you want to go there?  I deliberately didn’t take the group there this time; I erased it from the itinerary when I heard about all those crazy riots.  Not only are they relics from the past, those people are insane. What do you want to go there for?”

“I came here to learn about my heritage,” she said.  “But except for the Western Wall where we watched them pray, all this time we haven’t really had any meaningful encounters with authentic Jews.  I want to go meet them, talk to them one on one, learn a little about their lives. Maybe they’ll even take me into their homes. Isn’t that what a trip to Israel should be all about?”