OP-ED A deeper understanding

Author: Zach Fenster

I just returned from Israel for the first time since I lived there last year. As I sat in my seat on the plane in Tel Aviv, waiting to take off to New York, I started thinking about my transition from Israel to Middlebury, with the perspective of having finished a semester and Winter Term of college, and with a war in Gaza just passed. I remember how nervous I was when I came back in August that I would lose the perspective - the sense of personal connection - which had seeped so deeply into me by the time I left. I returned with a much deeper understanding of Israel, more attuned to its conflicts and rich society. Even if I could not always put words to my thoughts, I felt like after spending a year exploring Israel I could emotionally empathize with and even identify with the essence of what defines many spheres of Israeli society. Heading off to college, I wondered if this link would persevere or if it would fade away in my new environment in New England. Now that I am returning again, I wonder what role Middlebury - and more broadly, a liberal arts education - can play in that connection.

Let me backtrack and explain. Last year, I participated in a yearlong program for post- high school Israeli teens who wanted to take a year to serve as civilians before joining the army. I am not Israeli, but I wanted to meet Israelis my own age and speak Hebrew. The program was located in a housing project in Jerusalem and included a lot of community service work with children from the area. The program also sought to include participants from all over the spectrum of Jewish life in Israel, something that clearly attracted us all to the program, but also scared us a little bit more than at least I was willing to admit.

Aside from the Israeli-Arab conflict - or maybe because of it - Israel is a very fractious community. The divides between secular and religious, left wing and right wing and rich and poor are quite deep, a situation reflected in the country's political realities. But slowly, as our program progressed, the definitions that separated us melted away into genuine mutual recognition and appreciation. We got to know and like each other. During the Sabbath (Israel has a one-day weekend), we visited friends in their homes whether or not we agreed politically with the placement. We became less defensive and more open. This transformed the group dynamics. Suddenly, our mutual responsibility to one another and to our work in the community became the defining factor in our relationship, and as a result, we were able to see much more of where every individual came from, as opposed to pigeonholing their perspective.

As a foreigner, this was all pretty shocking to me. But in retrospect, I think there comes a time during a year abroad when you realize that by virtue of the emotional attachments you develop with people, the place slowly begins to mold you. I remember feeling several months into my year that I understood concerns of the regions' residents in a completely different way than when I had arrived because of the emotional shift that took place inside of me. I was catalyzed by my program. I realized one day that I had something in common with all of the inhabitants of Israel and, as a result, Israel felt like home to me in a much more real way than it ever had before.

This also changed my understanding of the conflict from a mostly intellectual one to a largely emotional one. When I heard of an attack against civilians or a land-for-peace deal, it was the narratives of the people living there - the feelings they had and the way those things fit into the totality of the narrative there - that came to mind. This is much more a sensitized understanding than an objective one, and it leads to hazier truths.

This feeling slowly became less acute the more time I spent at Middlebury. Middlebury's intellectualism certainly provides room for gray area, but in a situation as explosive and complicated as Middle-Eastern peace, dialogue often gets boiled down to the bottom line. This was both exciting and frustrating, as the emotional complexity I had come to associate with various scenarios was often swept away.

But with the breakout of the war in Gaza, I felt increasing tension between these two perspectives. Actually, I felt like the emotional understanding I felt I had was beginning to disappear, perhaps because time was moving on, or perhaps because it was too hard to hold on to. I experienced what might be a common phenomenon for people who have personal connections to highly sensitive issues: often, I felt a great gap in discussions, but an inability to convey what I wanted to.

When I returned to Israel over Feb break, some of those lost feelings came back. Seeing my old friends come home in their uniforms with their guns brought me back quickly, as did hearing people's frustration with Hamas and with what to many seems like a situation with no end in sight.

What I also realized though, is that each of my understandings from Israel and from Middlebury is incomplete without the other. Intellectual understanding is unquestionably important; indeed, excessive adherence to emotion alone may very well perpetuate some of the conflict. But we must also be sure, especially in a community as interested in - but in many ways removed from - the world as Middlebury, not to gloss over difficult emotional realities in our search for answers.