Day 6: Beer Sheva, The Negev

I woke up this morning feeling much better. Not 100%, but certainly functional and ready for a full day. And a full day it was. After breakfast we headed south to Beer Sheva. Beer Sheva is a rather new city, whose history stretches back only a few decades, not millennia like the rest of Israel. It’s on the border of the Negev and is attracting a decent population of young people. When we got there, we were told we had a choice of one of three tours. I went for the art and history tour, not realizing how young the city was. In that respect, when we’re talking about the art the city has to offer, we’re talking about the graffiti on the wall built outside of the IDF facility that was put there to make your walk from point A to point B more enjoyable. And when we’re talking about history, we’re talking about the shopping mall that burned down 15 years ago and is now used as a symbol for progress in the city. I just got a super weird vibe from the whole city. When we started our tour, we were all sitting in a gazebo in a park, and our guide was explaining to us how this park was revitalized, turned from a place where drug dealers used to operate into a place where families can go have lunch, kids can go play soccer, and where old people can go to on their walks. But as I looked around, there was nobody there. Not another soul besides our tour group in the park. I actually asked why, and our guide had no good answer for us. As we were finishing up our tour, she told us to be careful, main street is really busy and loud. We got there, and it is nothing compared to the shuk in Tel Aviv. There wasn’t space to take two steps in the shuk. On Beer Sheva’s main street, I could run around in circles at full speed with my eyes closed and still stay five feet away from anybody.

We took two stops on our tour to get food. The first was this real strange fruit sushi, which was not that delicious, and the second was an assorted array of nuts, coated in interesting things. Some of them were covered in spice mixes, others just in salt, but the best nuts in the trays were cashews covered in Oreos. I could eat those every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Overall, though I’m not the biggest fan of nuts, I really enjoyed this tasting. The flavors were varied, and the nuttiness of, say, an almond was taken away from by the sweetness of the coating. The message I think these two tastings were trying to give is that Beer Sheva is a city open to lots of different customs—both the nuts custom rooted deep in the Middle East, and the custom of sushi so old to a region so far away—but also to changing those customs. It was a metaphor for the fact that Beer Sheva is a new city, looking to find its own path as it develops into something unique. Though I can’t say I thoroughly enjoyed the fruit sushi, I suppose it gives a nice metaphor to think about. Maybe part of its metaphor is that some advancements, some change isn’t meant to happen. That traditions should stay how they are, and to mess with them is only to worsen them.

Other stops on the tour were, as Allison put it, what makes Beer Sheva a normal city. We saw a center for kids to come and record music! And we saw an art gallery! And we saw graffiti! Just overall, the whole vibe of our time in Beer Sheva was weird. It was our tour guide so excited about something that seemed so normal about a city. It really did not have a lot to offer, but, it was a nice jumping off point into our time in the desert, as the rest of the desert activities would be very meaningful and exciting.

We had a quick lunch, kebab this time, on “main street,” at which point it started to rain. Unfortunately, it would rain on and off during our time in the desert, but we looked at it as a miracle. It’s funny, Omer told us that you can tell the difference between an American and an Israeli because the Israelis will smile when it rains. To us, though the rain had the possibility to ruin our time in the desert, we tried to see it through the other lens. That we’re seeing something so rare in Israel, and that we should appreciate it. So, though much of the next day or so was spent in wet clothing and running in and out of the Dead Sea for fear of lightning strikes, we did it all with good cheer and excitement. I’m really proud of our group’s spirit and perseverance, and we collectively decided that we’d continue to have a good time, no matter the weather. Our first thing we did in the rain that distracted us was going up to our leader Allison and doing impressions of her. They’re rather easy to do, mostly involving “Heyyyyy guysssssssss, I know it’s like raining and everything, but like you’re gonna love it still…” That was the catch phrase we caught onto: “You’re gonna love it.” She was funny about it at first, but came around to appreciate them in the end. They came from a place of love…

From Beer Sheva we ventured into a small Bedouin settlement called Laqiya. I had my eyes glued to the bus window the whole ride over that way, as it was unlike anything we’d seen on our trip before. It felt like we were finally in the Middle East. We had left the shimmering skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, the beauty of the Kineret, the dazzling blue-painted sandstone of Tzfat, and the weird, innovative architecture of Beer Sheva. We had entered a community with concrete slabs whose paint was chipping off at the bottom. Where the buildings, still in a familiar sandstone, were now much blockier. Some special buildings looked like well-designed fortresses, but the majority looked uninspired and square—built just to live or work in, not to be enjoyed from the outside. All stores and signs transitioned suddenly to being only written in Arabic, and some buildings that looked like stores or homes from the outside looked pitch black and void on the inside when passing by their doorless facades. You could see the two minarets from all over the town, marking this clearly as Muslim land. I wondered what we were doing here. We were told we were going to a Bedouin camp to listen to a presentation, but all I could think of is where this tent would be in the middle of such a settled community.

I’ll take a break from this description to give a short acknowledgement to our bus driver, Walid. Because out of all the maneuvers he did on this trip, this is one of two that really stood out. We were pulling into where our presentation would be, and he starts pulling into this narrow alley, from a narrow alley, forwards. First, I was amazed that he hit nothing just turning, but I had come to expect that from Walid by now. He knows where every inch of his bus is in relation to everything on the street. It’s frankly amazing. But then, he backs out of this alley and back into the street we were just on. He then continues to pull into the street we were just on, this real narrow street with tall walls on both ends, back first. He does it like a champ, first try, perfectly straight. We all gave him a round of applause on that one. Walid is Arab, and though I don’t know much about his upbringing, he is pro-Israel. I mean, clearly, as he is working for what is essentially a propaganda tour of Israel, but hey, it’s a great one so I can’t really complain.

So back to the settlement. We pull into this narrow street and enter what seems to be a courtyard. There is a tent standing in the courtyard, and we are all invited in. I found it interesting that this tent was just here. When I was told we’d be visiting a Bedouin in her tent, I was imaging that we’d be out in the desert. But it seems that as Israel is modernizing, many of these nomadic communities are turning into settlements, and the tents are just kept around as an aspect of their culture. Something they can continue to visit and pay respect to, but also something for tourists to come to and feel cultured. But still, something felt fake about this tent being so permanently set up in a courtyard. The tents existed originally because they can move, so I find something so poignant about a permanent tent—that something has been lost, that times have changed.

The woman in the tent told us her story. She made it clear that sexism is ingrained in the Bedouin society. That she was arranged a marriage and was married at 15. That her mother, when asked after her father’s death, admitted that she would not have married her father if given the choice, even after having spent nearly a lifetime together. Our woman broke that barrier though; she divorced her husband and married a man who she loved, and is now an outspoken feminist in the Bedouin community. She explained to us how She grew up stationary, but her mother grew up nomadic, in a tent. Her mother had nothing by way of amenities, though she had those as a kid. The question I was most intrigued about for her was why one would want to move from a tent to a settled community. Though her English is good, when she got passionate, she slipped back into Hebrew (she speaks Arabic natively, and learned Hebrew as a young kid. That is true of the majority of Bedouins, and I certainly noticed her very Arabic accent as she spoke Hebrew). I took careful note of her intonation and inflections as her speech got faster and faster, her voice louder and more passionate. Though I’m sure the translation did it less justice than hearing it out of her mouth, the gist was that the Israelis wanted to provide services to the Bedouins. They wanted to provide them with running water, electricity, access to education. Of course, all those things can be taxed, and who’s to say that they wanted that in the first place? Of course, we see it as a government’s duty to support its citizens with services that benefit them, however, I’ve never considered the point of view that sometimes the citizens don’t want that. That sometimes, they’re good living how they and their ancestors have for centuries.

This thought put me in a tricky spot. Because we still heard that conversation from Eyal Dror about how the Palestinian Authority is unable to provide basic services to their citizens, and that Israeli hospitals and the emergency services teams have become the standard of care, even for those living in the West Bank. But here, we saw a group of people that didn’t request it, but instead, were given these resources. Were coerced into moving to a settled community because they were told that these resources would improve their lives. And yes, it did, but there’s an element of something lost in that. It’s just interesting, I’m not sure how to include this in my thoughts, and this has not changed in the slightest my opinions about Israel. It was just different, for once, to hear about Israel from a more negative side than I was used to on this very pro-Israel tour.

We left Laqiya and headed to the Bedouin Tent Experience. The sunset drive through the desert was stunningly beautiful, and the whole bus was watching the windows the whole time. I loved it. I was surprised that the desert was not sandy, rather rocky. The mountains were proper mountains, not just sand dunes. I don’t know where I had gotten this sandy desert impression from, but it was really cool, seeing how the desert looked for real.

When we arrived, we were able to scope out the place for a minute. Here’s the deal. It’s supposed to be the Bedouin Tent Experience. An experience, it is, but an authentic one? Maybe. Our tent came equipped with a heater, there were decently nice bathrooms, and we ate in a large “tent” that was really closer to an inside than a tent. There were many other groups along with us who were having the same “off the grid” “middle of the desert” experience that we were having, but we didn’t let that change how we interacted as a group in the “public” spaces in the camp, I’ll say that.

That being said, it was nice that there was no WiFi. It did feel cool to get off the grid even more for a small bit (though I was freaking out the whole time about whether dad had done the crossword or not). Either way, I really enjoyed our time at the Bedouin Tents, and though the experience wasn’t 100% authentic, it was certainly something I will remember and appreciate for a long time. We were told as soon as we got to the camp, that we may not leave the campgrounds. So, of course, Max, Solomon, and I decided that we’d wander off about a mile away into the desert and attempt to summit a dune. We escaped the parking lot without suspicion and started to walk. There were, at the bottom, groups starting to stargaze, but as we moved farther out, we became truly alone. This was the experience I was looking forwards to having. We soon encountered a big trench, which we could only assume is used as a road for ATVs or something, and once we made it to the other side, we began our ascent. Again, this wasn’t sand we were climbing over, but rocks that we had to be careful not to slip or trip on. Climbing up was exciting. The wind was strong, since it had been raining earlier that day, and we had to constantly watch out step. But once we got (almost) to the top, something spiritual hit me. I really had not had a spiritual event since we first got on the bus, when I was reveling in what it was like to have finally landed in

Israel. But this was something new. The novelty of being in Israel had far worn off, and instead, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that this is where the exodus was. This is where our people wandered for forty years. The Golan, Tel Aviv aren’t our history. This desert is. It was on a mountain that looked much like this one that Moses went up to receive the Ten Commandments, and it was in places like these where dozens of Sukkots were celebrated, looking up on the same view of the night sky. I felt, in this moment, alone with all but two close friends, finally connected to Israel and my history. It was a wonderful feeling that unfortunately got cut short because we heard packs of wild dogs howling. We got scared and speed walked back to the tent for dinner. But those few moments standing up at the top of the dune were truly magical, and immensely meaningful for me. From this moment onwards, it almost became a motto for me of “I’ve never felt more Jewish.” By the end, it was almost a joke; someone had asked me if all these comments are in relation to my life before the trip, or if each experience gets more and more Jewish as we move on. Of course, it was the first one, and they were said too in good jest and with a bit of humor, but the point stands. That from now on, the things we’d be doing, the places we’d be seeing, would serve to connect me with my roots, my ancestors, my religion, and my upbringing. That now I’m no longer excited to be in Israel, rather, excited to experience our history together, as a closely knit group of friends-bordering-on-family.

We had dinner, it was nothing special. I just had some bread, couscous, and a meat patty that I was pretty sure was microwaved. I didn’t have much of an appetite anyways, so it was no big deal. But after dinner, we had a campfire and lit the last candle for Chanukkah. I suppose now is a good time to mention that it was Christmas too! Funny how you forget those things when you’re in the desert, with no Christians as far as the eye can see… But all night around the campfire we sang silly songs, the rivalry between Justin and another guy on the trip, Gabe, came to a head when they were doing Oklahoma Drills against each other, and Justin and I were wheezing laughing after we were repeating the words in the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in a silly way. And of course, Solomon and I represented our rendition of Don’t Stop Me Now. We also sang our fair share of Jewish tunes, and played a silly game. In this game, everybody in our circle—which included also another Birthright group staying the night at the tents—said a phrase of “I don’t like (blank), because (blank).” Then, we went back around, but replaced the first part with “I don’t like sex, because…” and then the same second half. That got some really good laughs out of our group, but the best one was probably Roy, the Israeli’s, with “I don’t like Justin/I don’t like sex, because he called me Amit.”

We tried to go stargazing far out, and though the sky was amazing, it was a little too cloudy to consistently stargaze, so we ended up going in early. That, and the dogs were a little scary again. The evening ended on a real high note, and it was definitely the best night of the trip.