More than soldiers and rabbis

A presenter at the Herzliyah Conference shared the results of extensive research on  Americans’ (Jewish and non-Jewish) attitudes toward Israel.  “The two things that dominate impressions of virtually all Americans whenever they think about Israel” he said “are religion and military security.  So the average American in Oklahoma or Wyoming thinks that every Israeli is either a rabbi or a soldier.”  This evoked a raucous laughter from conference attendees.  Yet it did serve as a sobering reminder that so often we look at remote parts of the world uni-dimensionally.  Yet there is so much more to Mumbai than Slumdog Millonaire, to Afganistan than the Taliban, to Australia than the Koala bear.  My falafel dinner at Tel Aviv’s Dizengof square later that night featured Nightly News stories about irrigating the Negev, the week’s lottery winners, and the latest challenges at Ramat Gan neighborhood charter school, served to reinforce the multi-dimensional reality that daily life in Israel is, for the vast majority, far removed from the static fixations of those who have never experienced Israel.