By Eliana Rohrig
Recently our cohort was offered the opportunity to go on an optional tour of Hevron with our tour guide, Jamie. The self-selected smaller group was wonderful because we all had time to ask Jamie questions in a quieter setting, as we explored the small area of the Jewish part of Hevron. What makes Jamie such a wonderful tour guide is his knowledge and care for the topics we explore throughout our journeys. Especially when it comes to politics he has the specific skill of discussing complex and taboo issues gracefully, being careful not to offend but also treating us as future educators who are invested in trying to see this conflict as more than a zero-sum game.
We walked off the bus and Jamie pointed our attention to buildings in the distance, gates in the peripheries of our vision, to orient us in this maze of H1 and H2, area A, B, and C. As you walk through the streets of Hevron, hearing the children play in the kindergartens and day cares, you lose yourself during what feels like a normal moment on a Jewish Yishuv; and this is what the community members of Kiryat Arba and Jewish settlers in Hevron work hard to achieve. This is an uncomfortable reality, as we hear stories of the Palestinians who lived on this very street beforehand.
We walk past young soldiers and Jamie asks if they wouldn’t mind exchanging a few words with us. The sun beats on their helmets, “Sure”, they reply. The first one introduces himself, he learned in the Yeshiva here as part of his Hesder service, and he is from Hashmonaim, a Yishuv just outside of Modiin. “Do you know Channah Spiegelman?” I exclaim. “Of course”, he smiles. Channah is the director at the summer camp I enjoyed many wonderful summers at, Moshava IO. He tells me he worked there and I realize we must have been there at the same time. Suddenly, this isn’t a romantic show and tell session, but a close to home experience of someone I could’ve known. It is during moments like those that I realize how difficult it is to participate in a narrative where I try to remove my bias.
As we walk towards the cave of the patriarchs I am surrounded by respectful dialogue as friends express their confusion and exchange their conflicting thoughts, and their hopes.
Our final stop is “Ma’arat Hamachpela,” a place where I feel compelled to pour my heart out to G-d. I do so with hesitation knowing that this city is not just part of our narrative as Jews, but to another nation, that I hope we can make our nation. It is difficult to participate and engage and remain optimistic about a time when Hevron will not be a home to so much pain and suffering, but I push through to daven the words that Jews for thousands of years have uttered, words that mean the most to me, Ashrei, Pasuk Kuf, “Karov Hashem Lechol Korav, Lechol Asher, Yikrauhu B’Emet” – “God is close unto all of them that call upon Him, to all that call upon him in truth.”
