The Salmon Run

On the first night of my trip to Israel last year, our medic, a young man named Ran, asked me if I believe in god. We were sitting outside our hotel in Tiberias; he had a gun tucked into his waistband and was hand-rolling a cigarette. I thought for a moment and responded, "I like to. I mean, I don't think I believe like these people do," as I gestured to the rest of the country, "but I would like there to be something more." He nodded, and then I asked him the same question. He told me that he doesn't, and how he doesn't think that prayer and devotion do enough to make things better. Then, concerned, he added "I want to be a good man, but I don't think that this is how."

Half a week before my trip, the lady I worked for, Leala, a Jewish woman from Midtown, stopped me at the door on the way out. She wished me safe travels and told me to have a good time, and then she said, "Put a good word in for me at the wall." A few days later, when I was on my way to say goodbye to Cara, I spoke to my grandmother, Aggie, on the phone. Before signing off and after I had told her the details of my trip, she said, "Send my love to Jerusalem." I had already been a complete mess in the weeks leading up to my trip, emotional at the thought of finally seeing Israel, but now I also couldn't stop thinking about what they had said. There is so much romance surrounding the idea of Israel, and I don't really understand it, the homeland, whatever that means. It's strange to have such a deep connection to a place you've never been, but I'm guilty of it myself. I was excited for all of the normal reasons to travel with my best friend, but the best of my excitement came from knowing that "next year in Jerusalem" was only a few days away. Realistically, I knew that I'd mostly be gallivanting around the country with Adam, drinking and making new friends, but it still felt like I was on my way to do something profound. And there was something special about the way they spoke, Aggie and Leala; their requests felt ancient, instinctual, and almost desperate. 

Today Mom, Dad, and I drove east to photograph the salmon swimming upstream. This morning, we had woken up to the news that Israel had been bombarded by rockets and manned attacks. From the land, air, and sea, armed terrorists were making their way from door to door, taking hostages and executing civilians. The prime minister had declared a state of war, and the Israeli army, including active and reserve soldiers, was quickly mobilizing. So in the car ride on the way over we barely talked about anything else. I kept checking my phone, because on the Canadian front the skies were quiet but social media was ablaze. Jews were frantically sharing news articles, begging for solidarity, while other people shared encouragement for the efforts of the invaders, and some people said nothing at all. I try to convince myself that these people have their hearts in the right place; it's difficult, but I imagine that they feel the same way that I do – like they're right.  

About halfway through the Israel trip we finally went to Jerusalem; I had been looking forward to it more than anything else. Once we arrived, our tour guide, Oren, gave us each a small sip of wine in a plastic cup and made us stand in a circle. He blew the shofar that he kept in his backpack for whenever he needed to get our attention, but he already had our attention, so this time, he did it just so we could hear the sound. Then he helped us all say shehechiyanu, the prayer for new and special experiences, and we set off into the old city. It was boiling; we spent the morning weaving through countless corridors while heat radiated off of every brick. I once read an old passage that said something along the lines of "the closest thing a Jew can get to a homeland is his own head." But today, walking through the old city, sweat dripped down my back, and my skin turned red in the heat of a homeland that felt very real. It was triumphant, and for the whole day, my friends and I cracked jokes and bought candy. We saw groups of young yeshiva students, talking and laughing together in the narrow hallways. And we passed through an underground courtyard, with window shaped light scattered across the floor, where I spotted a toddler playing with a plastic bicycle. I felt proud to stand where the temple once stood, and to watch Jewish children, myself included, making happy memories. Using joy in defiance of all the forces that would have had us disappear, and more importantly, joy because we had so much to be joyous about.  

A few hours later, Oren's shofar pierced through the chatter of a balcony packed with hundreds of tourists and we all looked towards him. With a hand waving in the air, he said "yallah lets go to the western wall." I kept mostly to myself for the whole time, I did tefillin and placed my note between the ancient bricks, but after a few minutes, I found Ran and asked "I know you said you don't really believe, but how do you feel when you visit a place like this?" He smiled like I had asked a good question and then gestured for me to follow him. He led me to the left, through a large arch that I hadn't noticed, into a cavernous brick room full of some of the most pious looking people I had ever seen. The men were all praying, facing or resting their heads on what I realized was still a part of the western wall. We stood out, and sweating through our t-shirts, we were being stared at. But more than our misplaced appearances, I think they stared because they saw that we were neglecting the prayers that we, like them, were commanded to do. Finally, Ran responded "I feel a connection, but it's hard. The hardest part is wanting to believe in god."

On the way to the salmon run today, I read posts expressing admiration for the resistance of the Palestinian people and then articles counting the dead and kidnapped. It's like two different worlds but it all feels too familiar. The sides never change, people never listen, and the death count continues to rise for both sides. Even now, I've just separated the dead into categories, as if that matters. There is so much romance surrounding Israel that even the blood spilled is sometimes said to be desecrating the holy land, with reverence for the land instead of the blood. All of it, no matter from which people, is blood spilled from wrists that once held holy books, and even if they didn't, it's blood spilled all the same. 

It doesn't help that we deal in non-negotiables; for me, the safety of the Jews, both here and in Israel, and for them the freedom of the Palestinians. Our adamancy blinds us – it's like we expect people to declare a side and to cast away the plight of those they've ignored. I want us both to get our way, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think of my own cause with more concern. I feel bad about it, terrible, but I don't know the answer. I don't particularly want a future built on suffering, but I know that I do want a future. Compromise feels impossible, so does progress, and I fear that we may both be drunk on the romance of centuries of ritualized longing, blinded by our own conviction, stubbornly watching the death toll rise.

A few days after the western wall, I talked to Dor and Rami, two of the Israelis who had joined our trip. Dor had served in the IDF like most other Israelis, but Rami had opted out and done community service instead. I asked them "when you went to the army did you feel like you had to?" Rami, explained that he hadn't opted out of the army because he didn't want to do anything, he just wanted to help in other ways. It was important to him, and he said that it would feel wrong not to contribute. They nodded at each other in agreement, and Dor said "no, I wanted to. A lot of people want to, you feel a connection here." It made me think of the Israeli twins, David and Netanel, who I was bunkmates with at camp in 2016. They were identical, both of them long and scrawny, and they spoke their best version of a very broken English. I remember lying in a sleeping bag across from them and asking questions about their life in Israel. We were only 15 at the time, and they constantly talked about how excited they were to join the army, but it was never about the army itself – they only ever talked about wishing that they could help. 

A few of us – Kim, who is also from Toronto, and Shaked, an Israeli – were sitting together in our hotel lobby in Jerusalem. We were talking about antisemitism and the difference between our homes. Kim told us that the University of Toronto, a school with plenty of brilliant Jewish students, had attempted to get rid of the only kosher food supplier on campus because of student-led boycotts against Israel. She was one of the only students to vote against the action and was hopelessly outnumbered. I told them the story from camp in 2017, when I was a counsellor in training on the west coast trip. We were sleeping on the floors of a Chabad centre at the University of Boulder Colorado and a few campers and I had stayed up late to chat in the common area. At around midnight someone must have spotted us through the windows, so they set off an explosion on our doorstep; the sound rattled the glass doors and terrified me and the campers. Kim and I explained how vehemently people hate Israel, especially academics and tastemakers, who have the power to decide where civilized morality lies. In Israel Zionism is a virtue, but overseas they've hijacked it as a proxy for all that is bad in the world. It all feels too familiar; blame is reserved for god killers and globalists, never outright the Jews, but we're always found guilty nonetheless. And even though most Jews consider themselves Zionists, the intellectuals, proudly condemning Zionism as a form of evil, still insist that they're not antisemitic. Shaked, who was loud even for an Israeli, and who just a day earlier had told us about her cousin who was blown up in a bus alongside their fiancé, quietly apologized to us for what we had experienced. We were confused – it definitely didn't seem like we had drawn the short end of the stick – so we asked what she meant. She said "it's different because we go through it together, it's a war and we deal with it as a nation, but you go through it alone."

At the river today, the salmon hopelessly floundered through the stream. They would swim against the current, maintaining their place in slow patches of flowing water, and occasionally, they would explode with a burst of energy that would frantically propel them towards the whitewater. Some of the fish triumphantly summited the falling water, then they would find their place in another area of calm to regain their energy for another stubborn rapid. The ones that didn't make it over the falls would flow lifeless down the stream until they either found their strength or washed up on the riverbank to rot. It was a sad sight on the riverbank, lined with fish who had spent the last of their energy desperately trying to return home, but had succumbed to the unrelenting will of the forces against them. I think I might be wrong to say that they were headed home. Yes – they were born there, but they've spent their entire lives out at sea and nobody even knows for certain how they find their way back.

Videos have been circulating of the terror happening in Israel; bodies, dead or lifeless, are paraded around like trophies while rivers of blood flow through family homes. The violence is endless and senseless, and somehow people still try to excuse the perpetrators. "All resistance is justified" they say, on a day where more Jews were killed than any other day since the Holocaust. It's scary, terrifying, to watch the gruesome violence erupting in the Middle East, but selfishly, it feels equally terrifying to watch the rest of the world get consumed in the process. Today, crowds chanted "Gas the Jews" on the steps of the Sydney opera house, and swastikas proudly materialized on local streets. It makes me angry that nobody seems to care, no one except the Jews, but it doesn't surprise me. There is so much that they don't understand; like how delicate it all is and why Israel is so important. The Jews, we are a people who know annihilation, and those of us who remain exist by the skin of our teeth. Israel was supposed to be the answer, a place of refuge for when the rest of the world decides that they don't want us – not if, when – because there hasn't been a single century in the past 2000 years where a country hasn't attempted to wipe us from their memory. And we are never really at home in the diaspora, never true citizens; we are oppressors, murderers, Zionists, or Jews, whichever is most wicked. Still, ignorance and indifference respond to hatred in the same way they always have – proudly. So while it does make me angry to watch people complacent in our demise, I'm happy to let them. We have not survived 3000 years by begging them for solidarity or mercy, and our story will not end today. So let them stand idly by, like all those who came before, and let them find their place among the forgotten. 

Mom and Dad didn't like watching the fish, and neither did I, but there was something captivating about it. As we walked along the river Dad made a concerned face and said "you would think they would evolve to do something easier." We continued walking, and he said "why don't they just lay their eggs down here" as I watched a group of onlookers poke a dead salmon with a stick. I won't pretend to understand it, the reason they swim upstream, but it all feels too familiar. This morning, upon the declaration of war, thousands of reserve soldiers were called into battle. Grown-ups, who probably hoped that their service was over, left their families behind. Many of the active soldiers are still children, eighteen years old, and many of them won't live to see the end of the week, but they still proudly return to the place that made them. Those of us who have tried to settle downstream, woke up today with a knot in our chest, thinking of a place we can't remember, and wishing that tomorrow may be easy. The riverbanks, where many of us have found great success and comfort, are riddled with onlookers, prodding the dead or saying nothing at all. And yet, even in our comfort, our heart still points to a land promised to us by a god that many of us don't even believe in. We push back against the unrelenting will of the forces against us, as we always have, knowing that somewhere beyond them there is a future. The soldiers, the children ensuring our tomorrow, respond to the call of instinct and desperation, and they too swim upstream just to die.