tomorrow tomorrow

I've been biting my nails more than ever. And at first it wasn't about what's been going on this week. Tomorrow morning is Christopher and my big meeting at the Ministry of Interior, to get him working papers and health insurance- just some of the benefits of citizenship. If you're not Jewish, this country makes you wait 4 and a half years with an orange "Temporary Resident" ID (the same ID Palestinians who are allowed to work here get) before you get the "full" rights I got upon landing at Ben Gurion last year when I made Aliyah. Of course, even then, I doubt he'd get the 76% discount on a new car or the check in his bank account every month... Right now what we're really interested in is that work permit and health insurance. And they make it hard. We have a stack of papers 3 inches thick to bring in. And still it's not certain, even though we have (seemingly) everything they've asked for- a list that differs depending on whom you talk to and which color paper they give you.
So that's been stressful. But this new offensive up north. Christopher asked me this morning if I didn't think something like this would happen when I moved here. I knew about the suicide bombings, but on our Livnot trip, when I first was here, I heard about the highest tourism rate in 20 years, about the new calm, and the Disengagement seemed to lead towards that as well. I remember a few years ago I played a gig in New Hampshire, and the orchestra put me up with this absolutely lovely couple who had an incredible house on a lake (and the best in-house art collection I've ever seen!). The husband was British and the wife German. One night after a dinner of swordfish, we sat up talking till 1 or 2 in the morning. They told me how they'd each come to the states, and how the US represented the best possible place they could be. Somehow we started talking about Judaism, and they were surprised that a Jew could show so little interest in Israel. Really, before I ended up here, it meant almost nothing to me. A symbol, a source of a lot of names in the prayerbook, but a problem in its decisions and treatment of its neighbors. And anyway, I'd had enough positive Jewish experiences at Havurah and Kol Zimrah and Jews in the Woods to feel like the spiritual home is where the heart is. Simple as that. But then the couple started into how they felt like nothing would end well in the conflict here. "How can it?" the wife asked. "There's no solution." I felt, and very fervently, the opposite. "It has to end well," I said. "There's no other choice."
Hmm. Maybe the first strong feeling I ever had about this place? And now. I'm reading for the very first time all the news text messages my cell phone company sends me (in Hebrew). Christopher and I have watched news clips from the international press, as well as videos from all kinds of points of view put up on youtube.com. Wow, if you want to see some disturbing stuff, read the comments people put up on the videos of Israeli settler violence. One person wrote that seeing that, he understood why Hitler would want to kill all these people. On the other side, there were all sorts of "F*ck Arabs" and throw them in the sea sort of stuff. People feel so strongly about this all over the world, while right in the country it takes a lot to get people to really listen to the news. That's happening now. Thursday night, my quartet rehearsal was punctuated by lots of discussions among ourselves about the escalation. Our roommate Shai is not only watching the news all the time, he's on the phone to friends at the same time, discussing it. He and most of his friends are from the Kiryot, a group of small towns north of Haifa, at least one of which has already been hit (and where my father famously got lost driving at night while he was here visiting with us! The towns are so small and off the beaten path I guess, they stop putting English on the road signs) so you can understand why they're keeping touch so well.
As with my whole connection to this country, I'm reserving judgment until tomorrow. If they don't let my love stay here and work here and contibute all he has to offer to their people, I can't imagine why I would want to stay. On top of that, I don't know if how bad I want to let things get before I get on a plane. I do feel a tremendous, albeit confusing connection to this country. I am smitten, wholeheartedly in love with my quartet more than anything. I am so lucky to get to play with them. I am also so unbelievably lucky that the man I love came all the way from across the world to be with me, and he did think about these things happening before he came! But my family and spiritual center are elsewhere.