Separation Anxiety

Now a word, or a paragraph, about living in Jerusalem. Most young and hip people who share my political perspectives and secular progressive lifestyle congregate in Tel Aviv, the lively and constantly developing city on the shore. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is characterized by tons of religious people in modest dress and black suits, rowdy Americans on long-term programs, old stone buildings, magestic hilltop views, and the site of incredible tension between Jews and Palestinians who “share”, albeit unequally, this sacred and dysfunctional city. And perhaps it is only appropriate that all these divisions are clearly delineated and made apparent, of course by the giant concrete wall that cuts through those views I mentioned above, but also by the different buses that serve Jews and Arabs and the striking contrast between the increasingly upscale Jewish quarter of the old city and the increasingly neglected and impoverished Arab quarter, not to mention the Palestinian neighborhoods that are literally crumbling and covered in waste while new subsidized settlements are being constructed in their wake.

An anecdote: Just the other day I was walking around the Arab Shuk (open-air marketplace) in the old city, getting lost in the maze as I always do, but this time I was there just before sunset during Ramadan. Everyone (except for me apparently) had formed a mass herd and was scrambling to get to the mosque for prayers and for the breaking of the daily fast. At first I was walking in the opposite direction of the crowd, but to avoid being trampled I had to turn around the allow myself to be carried by the wave. I was with a friend of mine from Year Course (the program I did in Israel 5 years ago). She commented about how she had never seen anything like this in Israel before and had never been that far deep into the Shuk. She even felt like she had crossed into a different country. Actually, before 1967 we would very well have been in a different country. So it’s ironic because there is an invested interest in maintaining that separation and the feeling that this place and these people are foreign, but while also insisting that they remain within Israeli domain and control. But that’s how Jerusalem is; you weave in and out of mostly invisible borders (apart from the wall) and don’t pay attention to how bizarre it is that within one minute of finding my way outside of the Arab Shuk filled with cheap and only practical clothing, supplies, and food, I entered into the newest marvel of Jewish Jerusalem, the very high-end and perfectly sterile shopping boulevard where GAP just introduced its first Israeli branch. I was blown away by the fact that these realities exist right on top of each other yet cannot be in communication with each other. Just another example of the overwhelming privilege of Jews in this country; we don’t have to know what goes on the “other side”, or sometimes in Jerusalem it can be just the next street over. So for me, living in Jerusalem is about forcing myself to see what is right in front me and think about the significance of it all.

While Tel Aviv is a marvel in and of itself, it is also referred to as “the bubble” because it’s so easy to stay in North Tel Aviv and not see the harsh racial and class-based divisions that residents of South Tel Aviv are all too aware of. Jerusalem has a few ritzy shopping zones like the one I mentioned before, but Tel Aviv is overflowing with fashion boutiques and cute cafes that are lit up at night, beautiful young people on bikes and mopeds, and lest we forget, the Mediterranean Sea. I’ll be real with you, it’s fun! But during my orientation for the fellowship we were taken on a tour of Neve Sha’anan, the neighborhood where the largest Central Bus Station in the world was built despite the pleas of the residents to consider the amount of air and noise pollution that would accompany the monstrosity. The tour was lead by the director of a Mizrachi feminist organization called Achoti (My Sister). (Mizrachi refers to Jews originally from the Middle East, i.e their descendants are not from Europe). She gave us a paper with testimonies of women who had been trafficked into Israel from Russia and Moldova and were now sex slaves locked up in apartments in this neighborhood that is now known mostly for the high concentration of foreign workers and refugees who find themselves on the fringe of Israeli society because they are unable to receive the benefits of citizenship, i.e Jewishness. On the tour, we walked to each of the apartments/rooms where the women were held and we read their painful stories of abuse while we stood, literally, at the scene of the crimes. Many of the places we went to have since been shut down, but trafficking of women in Israel is still an issue that is largely ignored, and even facilitated by the police who often make deals with the pimps. South Tel Aviv does not shine like North Tel Aviv and it is not by accident that this area receives significantly less money from the municipality and is the area where all the shameful and racist practices of the city are carried out. So what do I learn from this tour? Did it pop the Tel Aviv bubble? I think that mostly it just helps me connect the dots between the divisions I see in Jerusalem and those that I’m now getting to know in Tel Aviv as well. I look at who is let into the dream world and who is systematically shut out and the parallels speak for themselves really.



These are the other NIF/Shatil Social Justice fellows standing in front of an apartment where 5 sex slaves were burned alive naked and clinging to each other because they were locked inside with no escape.


Here you can see the incredibly close proximity of the Central Bus Station to apartments in Neve Sha'anan. Thousands of buses pass through here everyday, honking and contributing to unbelievable air pollution which contributes to high cancer rates in the area.


Residents of Neve Sha'anan


"Prostitution Row" (unofficial title). All those yellow doors are rooms where trafficked women live and do sex work.

Out of work and on the streets of Neve Sha'anan