and taxis choked the road, which was dotted with mosques and coffeehouses that blocked the view of ageless olive groves. The taxis came in a variety of shades—Mello Yello, mango, Tang—everything around, but not quite, New York City yellow-cab yellow. The road signs were all in Arabic—no Hebrew, no English, no neon. Drenched in sun and dust, the landscape looked like paper, toasted, its edges singed by fire.
In time the hills became more rolling and the olive green a bit more plentiful. We veered around Ramallah on an Israeli bypass road and rolled to the gate of Bethel, a modern Jewish settlement in the midst of Arab domain. Such communities are the tinderbox of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, an ever-shifting frontier of faith that triggers passions and hatreds that could only be aroused by the potent braiding of faith, family, and text.
We waited for the yellow gate—twice as big as the one on the border with Jordan—and proceeded inside the community. Suddenly we were in Israel again. The buses were red, the signs were in Hebrew, the children wore kippahs, or skullcaps, on their heads. Yet the place felt different, tense. The school, the playground, even the bus stops were protected by fences. The entire place was swathed in barbed wire. It was a voluntary ghetto, a Wild West outpost of choice, not force.
We drove up the hill and decided to stop by the director’s office, which was in a Quonset hut. The secretary, whose hair was hidden in a net as per Orthodox tradition, looked at us skeptically, as if to say, “Are you for us or against us?” After a brief negotiation, the director agreed to meet us for five minutes. We stepped into his office, which was lined with maps and blueprints. He had a grimace for a face, and a scar across his cheek. I asked him why he was here. “We are here because of the Five Books,” he said. “We are living in Bethel, on the road of the patriarchs, and this is our contract.” He placed his hand on the Bible, which sat prominently on his desk. Of all the places Abraham visited, why did he stop here, I asked. “I cannot tell,” he said. “It’s not a high place. It’s difficult to defend. If there’s a possibility to ask Abraham why, we will ask.”
Back in the waiting room, Avner remembered that he knew anAmerican couple in town. The husband, a guide, was working, but his wife invited us to stop by their home. It was a modest home, barely large enough for the couple, their five children, and several thousand books. “They’re my husband’s,” explained Fern Dobuler, who, like him, grew up in a moderate Jewish household on Long Island. “When we first became religious, I had all these questions. Every time Abby couldn’t answer one of them, he went out and bought a book.”
Fern was garrulous and gesticulative, in a Catskills-real-estate-broker sort of way. A phys-ed teacher by training, she balanced her athleticism with her religious need for modesty by wearing a long skirt made of sweatpant material and covering her head with a New York Yankees cap. She met her husband in college in New York, where both were active in a pro-Zionist group. One year Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, paid a visit. “If you really want to help,” he told them, “move to a settlement and be a pioneer.” Others delivered similar messages. When Abby’s grandmother was dying, she made them promise: “Don’t forget you’re Jews. Don’t forget Israel.” A week after she died, Fern gave birth to a daughter and slowly the couple embraced a more traditional brand of Judaism—saying daily prayers, resting on Shabbat. Eventually they came to Israel for a summer.
“We had three children at the time,” Fern said. “We rented an apartment in the Old City. It was fabulous. My kids went to the Western Wall by themselves. You could smell history in the air. We came back to New York and every single Friday night Abby would start to cry. ‘I wish
In time the hills became more rolling and the olive green a bit more plentiful. We veered around Ramallah on an Israeli bypass road and rolled to the gate of Bethel, a modern Jewish settlement in the midst of Arab domain. Such communities are the tinderbox of the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, an ever-shifting frontier of faith that triggers passions and hatreds that could only be aroused by the potent braiding of faith, family, and text.
We waited for the yellow gate—twice as big as the one on the border with Jordan—and proceeded inside the community. Suddenly we were in Israel again. The buses were red, the signs were in Hebrew, the children wore kippahs, or skullcaps, on their heads. Yet the place felt different, tense. The school, the playground, even the bus stops were protected by fences. The entire place was swathed in barbed wire. It was a voluntary ghetto, a Wild West outpost of choice, not force.
We drove up the hill and decided to stop by the director’s office, which was in a Quonset hut. The secretary, whose hair was hidden in a net as per Orthodox tradition, looked at us skeptically, as if to say, “Are you for us or against us?” After a brief negotiation, the director agreed to meet us for five minutes. We stepped into his office, which was lined with maps and blueprints. He had a grimace for a face, and a scar across his cheek. I asked him why he was here. “We are here because of the Five Books,” he said. “We are living in Bethel, on the road of the patriarchs, and this is our contract.” He placed his hand on the Bible, which sat prominently on his desk. Of all the places Abraham visited, why did he stop here, I asked. “I cannot tell,” he said. “It’s not a high place. It’s difficult to defend. If there’s a possibility to ask Abraham why, we will ask.”
Back in the waiting room, Avner remembered that he knew anAmerican couple in town. The husband, a guide, was working, but his wife invited us to stop by their home. It was a modest home, barely large enough for the couple, their five children, and several thousand books. “They’re my husband’s,” explained Fern Dobuler, who, like him, grew up in a moderate Jewish household on Long Island. “When we first became religious, I had all these questions. Every time Abby couldn’t answer one of them, he went out and bought a book.”
Fern was garrulous and gesticulative, in a Catskills-real-estate-broker sort of way. A phys-ed teacher by training, she balanced her athleticism with her religious need for modesty by wearing a long skirt made of sweatpant material and covering her head with a New York Yankees cap. She met her husband in college in New York, where both were active in a pro-Zionist group. One year Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, paid a visit. “If you really want to help,” he told them, “move to a settlement and be a pioneer.” Others delivered similar messages. When Abby’s grandmother was dying, she made them promise: “Don’t forget you’re Jews. Don’t forget Israel.” A week after she died, Fern gave birth to a daughter and slowly the couple embraced a more traditional brand of Judaism—saying daily prayers, resting on Shabbat. Eventually they came to Israel for a summer.
“We had three children at the time,” Fern said. “We rented an apartment in the Old City. It was fabulous. My kids went to the Western Wall by themselves. You could smell history in the air. We came back to New York and every single Friday night Abby would start to cry. ‘I wish
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