Next week in Jerusalem

I am writing this post from Jordan, the night before I leave for the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge to cross the Jordan River. I can’t wait. This will be a fascinating summer to be in Israel-Palestine.

Domestic politics within Israel are undergoing significant transformation. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is fighting off major corruption charges and foreign minister Tzipi Livni seems poised to take power soon.

Also, 2008 is the state of Israel’s sixtieth year in existence. Many have taken this as an opportunity to reflect on the success of Zionism; many are asking how much longer the state continue to exist. Ali Abunimah thinks that only a one state solution is viable. The Economist seems to agree. Religious nationalists like the Jerusalem Post maintain that Israel can continue to expand and thrive. Jeffrey Goldberg does not have one answer.

Relations between the countries and nations of the Middle East are also crucial right now. After a tumultuous century, the Middle East is still a region with an unpredictable future. The Palestinians are still without a country and Israel continues to occupy the West Bank while keeping Gaza under siege. Hamas and other violent political Islamists threaten the prospects of peace. In the background, Iran is making its influence known through bellicose rhetoric and close relationships with Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.

But this will also be an important traveling experience for me on a more personal level as well. I spent last fall studying in Amman. I learned how to speak some Arabic, became friends with a number of Palestinians, and started to learn how to look at the Middle East through Arab eyes. This gave me a valuable understanding of the Middle East, but it was from only one perspective. I look forward to experiencing life on the other side of the green line.

I have been to Israel once before. I can’t say I totally enjoyed it. Many American Jews feel a deep affinity with the Jewish state in the Middle East, but I did not. This is largely because of my resentment of the country’s stubborn belligerence towards the Palestinians, but it is partially because I am not a Jew in the eyes of most Israelis. While I was raised Jewish and I identify with the religion and believe in much of its teachings, my mother is not a Jew. This makes me, in the interpretation of the Orthodox rabbis who have a stranglehold on Israeli law and consciousness, a plain old goy.

Having my faith questioned is one of the things that will make my time in Israel-Palestine difficult, as will being constantly confronted with the realities of the occupation and the hatred that it breeds. But these are challenges that I look forward to with the same excitement that I look forward to working at Time Magazine, floating in the Dead Sea, visiting the holy sites, and living in the German Colony with Helen. It promises to be a great summer regardless.

Background

Between reading the news and talking to Max and other friends who have traveled to Israel, I feel like I know a lot about the Middle East. But I’ve never been there, I don’t study Middle Eastern history or politics, I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, and I’m not even Jewish. (Of course, my religion–Christianity–has some investment in Jerusalem too.)

While I am in the Holy Land, my full time job will be to take pictures. I’ll take pictures all day, every day. Sometimes I’ll take them with my digital camera, and sometimes those pictures will end up on this blog. Sometimes I’ll take pictures with a 4×5 view camera, an apparatus that, due to its bulk and the cost of the film it requires, is generally reserved for photographers with a plan. I hope to be one of those photographers (the ones with plans) but right now what my photographic exploration will focus on is still up in the air.

I’m coming from an outsider perspective: a stranger in a strange and strangely pivotal land. The idea of going off to take pictures of an unfamiliar place, not to mention a place where so many of the world’s most pressing issues converge, is somewhat daunting. Who am I to go to Jerusalem and start taking pictures? A tourist? Yes. More than that? I hope so.

I usually take photos of the closest, most familiar spaces, and keep out all the people. My favorite subject is my home and the things that fill it. The Middle East, of course, is not quite my bedroom, but I think soon we will be intimately acquainted. I might even let some faces into the pictures.

Hanging around home, explaining to people what I’m doing this summer, all I hear about Jerusalem is something along the lines of “It’s not like any other place I’ve ever been.” I just smile and nod and say “Yep.” I certainly believe them, and I’m ready to see for myself