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January 11th, 2022 
Awake Goy For over a decade I have taught rabbinic students Biblical Hebrew. For the past couple of years I have been a student of Arabic. I started in May 2020 with Duolingo, driving my family to distraction with a steady stream of triumphant ka-chings, the app’s way of giving students affirmation. I continued with two semesters at a local college. After completing the equivalent of two years of Modern Standard Arabic (Fus’ha), I embarked on the Palestinian dialect (‘Amiya) studying with a teacher on the West Bank. After years on my bucket list, Arabic became my pandemic project.
During these homebound years of the pandemic, the study of foreign languages has skyrocketed. As a teacher of language myself, I know that teaching and studying is an act of love. I liked the idea of getting back into the student trenches and placing myself a White, Jewish man, now an American (formerly an Israeli), under the tutelage of a Palestinian woman on the West Bank, some years my junior.
My study of Arabic has been a constant joy. It continues to open windows on to the Arab world and Palestinian culture. Arabic has also opened my eyes to a new perspective on Judaism and the study of the Hebrew language. After all, some of Judaism’s most influential thinkers in centuries past were Arabic-speaking Jews, in Andalus and the Maghreb, North Africa and the Middle East.
In late December, I set aside my apprehensions about Omicron and caught the last plane out of Chicago to Israel. The plane was packed. We landed in Tel Aviv just hours before North America was placed on Israel’s “red list.” Foreign nationals had already been banned from Israel since the end of November. Now, in late December, even Israelis were not allowed in or out of the country without special permission from a government commission (officially favoring Jewish travelers).
Although we arrived in mid-afternoon on a workday, Israel’s International Airport (Tel Aviv) was all but abandoned, as if it were the middle of the night. The passport control stations were closed and we were whisked past automatic passport scanners. Even so, my suitcase had arrived at baggage claim ahead of me. From there, straight past bored customs officials and quickly through a perfunctory covid test. I was outside the airport terminal within 20 minutes of deplaning.
After an absence of some years, I had come to Israel to attend a milestone family event.
My second objective was to connect with a new friend, my Arabic teacher. Sara is a young woman from the southern West Bank community of Halhoul, a suburb of the major Palestinian city of Hebron. Sara had invited me to visit her language school in Hebron. I was looking forward to meeting my teacher and her colleagues in person, trying out my intermediate level Arabic, and seeing Hebron through Palestinian eyes.
Although I have since been to other areas on the West Bank, the last time I visited Hebron was during the Oslo accords, a quarter century ago. I was part of a group of Israelis who had been invited to Hebron by the nascent Palestinian Authority. I admit I was scared. I had never been to the West Bank before out of uniform or without an Israeli armed guard. Our group put our trust in our host, a young Palestinian Authority official. At one point in our walking tour of Hebron, an Israeli military patrol of paratroopers spotted us. They insisted they accompany us – for our own safety. After all, if anything happened to us, they would be called to account. But the Israeli soldiers’ presence threatened to nullify the protection given us by our Palestinian host. We continued our tour with the soldiers tagging along. These heavily armed combat-ready soldiers looked confused and aimless. After a short while, they melted away. That visit to Hebron in the mid-90s was the first time I really understood that an outstretched hand provides greater security than all the guns in the world.
This time I was going solo. The first problem was how to get from Jerusalem to Hebron, deep in the Palestinian West Bank. From my base in Jewish West Jerusalem I looked into the Israeli bus service. The state bus service, like so many other Israeli institutions, has long since created a one state reality, seamlessly linking 1948 Israel with its post-1967 settlements on the West Bank. But the Israeli bus only serves the Israeli settlements between Jerusalem and Hebron, not the Palestinian communities. How to safely leave the armed perimeter of a Jewish Israeli settlement, cross over no-man’s land and enter Palestinian territory without arousing suspicion on both sides? Also, the Israeli bus does a milk run through all the settlements between Jerusalem and Hebron, taking up to two hours each way. I wanted to make the most of the one day I had set aside for this visit.
So I looked to Palestinian East Jerusalem as my gateway to the West Bank. Damascus Gate at Jerusalem’s Old City is a major hub of Palestinian life. The area includes a bus terminus and intercity taxi rank leading into the northern and southern West Bank as well as destinations within Israel. I took a cab to Damascus Gate early in the morning. But it would be a wait for a shared van to Hebron to fill up and I wasn’t sure I could communicate reliably with the driver. So I decided to fork out the $80 for a private taxi, calling back the same cab that had picked me up in West Jerusalem. My driver, Ahmed, is a savvy, grizzled Palestinian. As a resident of East Jerusalem, he drives a taxi with a yellow, Israeli license plate, granting us access to the Israelis-only roads on the West Bank. If the day remained calm politically, we could hope to pass Israeli military checkpoints without inspection.
Our journey was unimpeded and we drove into Palestinian Hebron passing roadside signs in Hebrew declaring the city off-limits to Israeli citizens. When we arrived at the meeting point, Ahmed connected with my teacher by phone and stayed with me until Sara came out and found us.
For Jewish Israelis, Hebron, like the rest of the Palestinian West Bank, is a parallel reality, a doppleganger that is all but invisible. I mentioned my visit to Hebron to one of my Israeli relatives. Crickets. Hebron is not an appropriate topic of conversation in polite Israeli company.
The first layer of separation is the Israeli military checkpoints along the Israelis-only highway manned by heavily armed Israeli soldiers. Lining the Israeli road are sheer, 25-foot high concrete walls blocking the view from the road of the Palestinian communities behind. Dotted along the wall and towering high above it are the military watchtowers, sheer concrete structures with glass windows at the top and dominating the landscape. I served in the IDF many years ago and through sustained effort managed to avoid doing guard duty on the West Bank. Now the military system I was once part of was foreign. The gray, featureless concrete structures broadcast a hostile, cold disinterest.
Hebron was a revelation. In this Palestinian metropolis I had expected to see the traditional Muslim lifestyle, the small shops and street life. What I wasn’t expecting were the gleaming new, glass-clad office buildings, the shiny, bustling eight-floor indoor shopping mall and the streets chockablock with shoppers and pedestrians. Much had changed in a quarter of a century. This is a vibrant city benefitting from a so-called “economic peace.” My taxi driver, Ahmed, told me he likes to take his family for a day out in Hebron and do a big shop there. Prices on the West Bank are substantially lower than Jerusalem. He can make up the cost of the drive and loss of income for the day in the difference in prices.
Yet, Ahmed also told me that the good times could evaporate on a dime. As a Palestinian, you had to know, moment by moment, what was the mood of the Israeli forces that day.
This is Netanyahu’s dream: get the Palestinians to “lower their expectations” of political self-determination and reward them with “economic peace.” None of the Palestinians I spoke to challenged the status quo but I sensed that there was also a lot that wasn’t said. Not every conversation with every Israeli has to be a fight.
The Go Palestine language school faces the King Hussein high school and sits on the third floor of an older apartment building. A professional looking logo and sign welcomes visitors. But the paint is peeling from the walls and the classrooms are empty.
My teacher introduced me to her colleagues. Saja, the administrator, is a young business school grad. The secretary is a similar age and my teacher is in her early thirties. Abu Mohammed and his wife were the middle-aged directors of the center.
They sized me up. Sara had given me a famous poem by Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet to study.
بين ريتا وعيوني بندقية…
Beina Rita wa-‘uyunee bunduqiya…
Between Rita and my eyes is a gun…
Thus opens Mahmoud Darwish’s iconic love poem to the Israeli choreographer and dancer, Tamar Ben-Ami. Darwish met her in high school. Tamar/Rita was a member of the Palestinian-Israeli Communist Party and danced in an Arab-Jewish dance troupe in the mixed city of Haifa. Their relationship ended with her conscription to the Israeli army. My teacher had read the poem as a symbol of the occupation, the ever-present guns wielded by the Israeli army as a tool and symbol of the violence that underpins the occupation.
I had committed this poem to memory, so I ran off the first stanza to the group. Abu Mohamed replied in fast Arabic. I had to slow him down. I’m just an intermediate student, not proficient yet. But I was in; I had won their trust.
The school staff welcomed me with a sumptuous breakfast. We tore off pieces of whole wheat pita, dabbed them in locally produced olive oil and coated with the tastiest za’atar I can remember. Moist and dark with a rich flavor. We washed down the dates and honey with sweet, hot tea.
After breakfast, we headed out for a walking tour of the city.
In all the bustle of this vibrant city, there are almost no outsiders. Not only are Israelis banned but foreigners are long gone because of Israel’s covid regulations. For the most part, we were ignored. A few curious bystanders approached me, this rarity, an American tourist. My hosts deftly deflected them.
I remembered the guidance not to identify as an Israeli in Hebron. The only Israelis West Bank Palestinians know are Israeli army and the illegal, armed settlers. As an Israeli rabbi friend put it to me: you don’t want one of their bad guys to get the idea that you are one of our bad guys. But, as we walked the busy streets, my phone rang. It was a family member helping me navigate Israel’s labyrinthine covid regulations and the CDC’s fast-changing deadlines. It didn’t help that my flight back home had been cancelled, as was the next one. I needed to nail down my covid test. So, I had to take his call – but he only speaks Hebrew. I tried to stay out of earshot of bystanders, saying the bare minimum in monosyllables and ending the call as quickly as possible. (We arranged for a buddy of his who has a concierge covid testing service to come to me and test me the day before my flight. I had the negative result within 24 hours. By contrast, the test I took after I got back home to the States involved waiting for an hour and a half in Chicago’s snow to register, then coming back 6 hours later to take the test, then waiting another 36 hours for the results – and for double what the Israeli test cost).
At no time during my day in Hebron did I feel under any threat to my safety. I think I would have felt uncomfortable had I been there on my own but my hosts were well known and moved easily through the crowds. They were relaxed and I followed their cue. The shop owners were friendly and open-hearted to this American tourist.
We walked through the busy commercial center towards the picturesque Old City. A Palestinian police car was parked facing the opening to the Old City, a cop hanging out with his foot up on the patrol car’s bumper. This was the only police presence I saw in Hebron during my visit. The policeman marked the otherwise invisible line separating Palestinian-controlled Hebron (H1) from its Old City, an area policed by the Israeli military (H2). No Palestinian police are allowed past this point. We were drawing near to the armed Jewish-Israeli settler encampment in the heart of Palestinian Hebron.
The Old City of Hebron reminded me of Jerusalem’s Old City. Narrow stone streets, flanked by small stores set into the stone and covered in many places by the typical domed roof of Arab architecture. But unlike in Jerusalem where you can buy religious memorabilia for each of the three Abrahamic religions packaged in identical packages by the same factory in China, here the artifacts are handmade locally. Most of the stalls were closed but we visited a ceramics workshop and other craftsmen. I stopped to buy gifts: traditional blue Palestinian handmade bowls and blocks of olive oil soap from the ancient soap manufacturing center of Nablus, small glass jugs in an Aladdin’s cave of glassware. Glassmaking is a traditional Hebron craft. Food was out for sale: a riot of colors. As this is cauliflower season, there were heads of pickled cauliflower in purple, green and white. Olives of all types: brown kalamata and salt-cured black olives, cracked olives, spicy, stuffed. A young boy delivered an uncovered side of beef, pushing his small wheelbarrow over the flagstones down to the butcher shop.
The first Palestinian flag I noticed was plastic bunting hanging above me. Looking up I could see that the souk was encased in a metal mesh put in place by the Palestinians as protection. Walking here, Sara’s hijab was once doused with paint by the Israeli settlers above. Through the gaps in the covering I could see high above an Israeli flag on a watchtower aside a new stone-faced building. This was my first glimpse of an Israeli “settlement” in Hebron. As in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, the lower level is Palestinian, the upper, Jewish-Israeli. An empty water bottle and some other trash rested on the mesh roof over our heads.
We proceeded further. Through openings on my right I could see big cement blocks, dead-ending the alleys. These were sprayed with Palestinian flags as graffiti. These mounds of concrete were the back end of the Israeli settlements built into the market place.
Still further down and deeper in, the stalls were all shuttered. The iron doors neatly painted an ochre yellow were all padlocked shut. The place was empty. There was an eerie quiet. We were all alone. My hosts pointed to where each of their grandparents had once lived. Sara remembered her grandmother showing her around and telling her stories of the life that was once here. Her grandmother’s are the memories she now cherishes. They told me that this area of the souk had been shuttered since the massacre of 28 Muslim worshippers in prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of the Machpelah by the American-Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein in 1994. I don’t know what struck me more: the obvious injustice of punishing the victim or that this supposedly temporary measure had been in place for some 28 years, with no sign of ever ending.
Around the corner, loomed the heavy presence of Shuhada Street. My hosts turned away, reluctant to go any further in that direction.
A shopkeeper proffered me a map of Hebron. I was eager to visit the Ibrahimi Mosque/Cave of Machpelah. I had first visited the Cave of Machpelah as a child, to pray there with my father. This was before the first Intifada, a time when Israeli families could roam the West Bank as if it were our own. Later, as a young man, I came back to Hebron to visit, always under armed Israeli guard. As a yeshiva student, I once spent a Shabbat weekend at the Hebron yeshiva, the largest institution of the Hebron settler community. So it was odd now to be standing in the Palestinian souk outside that same yeshiva’s new stone building. Through the wire fence bedecked with Israeli flags, I could see the oversized Jewish star in stone relief on the outside of the yeshiva study hall. Guard towers and surveillance cameras completed the picture. Here and elsewhere in Hebron, the thought came to me: this is not a place where one is proud to be Jewish.
We passed out of the Old City souk through an Israeli military checkpoint and into the small open space just outside the Ibrahimi mosque complex. We faced a large Israeli army guardhouse, the last Israeli checkpoint before entering the sacred compound of the mosque. Sara later told me that she dare not visit the mosque alone. My hosts and I entered one by one through a turnstile under the watchful eyes of several Israeli soldiers seated behind bulletproof glass. I had pulled out my American passport, ready with the answers friends had coached me to provide. Thankfully, this was a calm day and we were all waved through without inspection. I put my passport back in my pocket and followed my hosts through to the mosque.
I paused to take it in. An imposing ancient structure rises up from the monumental stone enclosure built by King Herod over 2,000 years ago. Leading up to the mosque’s doorway were the famous deep, stone steps. Once inside, before entering the carpeted prayer hall, we removed our shoes. The hall was smaller than I remembered as a child. Large cenotaphs mark the traditional burial locations of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs/the Islamic prophets Sarah and Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca. Past the iron grilles of the mosque’s eponymous Abraham cenotaph my view ended in a roughshod sheet of opaque plexiglass. Behind that lay the Jewish prayer space bordering on Abraham’s tomb from the other side.
The imposing wooden minbar pulpit is an exquisite piece of the finest Arabic wood carving. This minbar is almost 1,000 years old, one of the oldest in the world. It looks like it’s in mint condition.
Exiting the mosque enclosure through the one way turnstile we made our way through the second turnstile away from the Israeli soldiers and back into the Palestinian souk. We quipped with typical Palestinian dark humor that we had done international travel in two directions in the space of one hour.
As we passed through the mosque’s turnstile, a young boy called out to me. He was hawking cheap bracelets embroidered with the Palestinian flag and the world Palestine. I hesitated. One of the older boys said: “you can give to him.” Something in the way he said it sounded like this wasn’t a generic sales pitch but there was a story behind it. I pushed my shekels through the metal bars and he pushed back the bracelet. I am wearing it now as I write.
We turned way from the Old City, back past the Palestinian police car. My hosts treated me to delicious falafel in a public square. They then took me to the taxi rank for the trip back to Jerusalem. I climbed in to the last place in this Palestinian taxi van. I felt perfectly safe here, as I had the whole day in Hebron. My hosts’ friendly exchange with the taxi rank manager and driver was my guarantee of safety. (And an hour later, Sara texted me to make sure I had arrived back safely.)
Before letting the driver leave, the taxi rank manager grilled the young man sitting next to me. This passenger produced his well-creased, laminated Israeli birth certificate and other documents. He was peppered with questions by the older man. I guess travelling as Palestinians on settler roads with the Israeli yellow license plate, they wanted no trouble from the Israeli forces in the event that they were pulled over. I was instructed to say I was a hitchhiker they had picked up along the road, not a paying customer (I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. This fiction would take some collaborative suspension of disbelief by the Israeli army: these days, how many American tourists are roaming the West Bank’s roads thumbing rides?)
Once we had all been cleared, the taxi headed out. We inched through slow traffic before pulling into a gas station. After filling up, the driver spread a cloth on the gas station pavement and prostrated himself in prayer. He climbed back into his seat, picked up and started thumbing his masbaha prayerbeads. He continued to say prayers under his breath all the way back to Jerusalem.
Thankfully, we were waved through all the Israeli army checkpoints. At the final checkpoint before Jerusalem, as the bored soldiers motioned to us to keep moving without inspection, the driver breathed an “alhamdu lilla” (Thank God). He immediately called up a buddy on the phone to pass on an up-to-the-minute report on the checkpoint situation. Money was passed forward to the driver to pay for our fares. Relaxed chatter broke out in the cab.
A few moments later, the driver’s prayerful gratitude turned to muttered frustration as we hit Jerusalem rush hour traffic. Back to Jerusalem and its normal, Israeli problems.
أعطني الناي وغنّ و انسَ داءً ودواء
إنما الناس سطورٌ كُتِبت لكن بماء
A’ateenee al-naya wa-rannee aansa daa’aa wa-dawaa
In’ma a’nassu suturoon kutibaat lakin bimaa.
Forget illness and its cure
People are just lines scribbled on nothing but water.
(Gibran Khalil Gibran, 1918)
Editor’s note: Names of some of Davis’s associates have been changed to protect them.
Rabbi Michael Davis
Rabbi Michael Davis is an independent Rabbi in suburban Chicago.
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