Azahra Street

I left the Fuchsberg Center and the USY Youth Director trip about 30 minutes ago, in the heart of West Jerusalem. There the buildings are larger than life and gleaming after the storm that passed through this morning while we were davening Shacharit. Rosh Chodesh today, a new month, the month of Adar.
The past two weeks have been one big Israel love fest to say the least. My heart is overwhelmed in kaleidoscopic designs of the majesty and mystery of the Jewish homeland. Through soldiers and peers, tour guides and people on the streets, I am reminded how Israel pulses with life and joy. I remember something I perhaps never understood, the invaluable gift, luxury, privilege and coveted reality of having a country in which one can practice who they are without fear of violence, discrimination or expulsion.
The State of Israel is thriving. It is no longer a Zionist State living a Zionist vision. I think this is important to mention and in the next breath say that it in fact is still the realization of a Zionist Dream. From what I've gathered thus far, Israel and Israelis are at the brink of an identity revolution. These people protect this nation not because they are Jews first, but because they are Israelis. The people they love, the land they work, the inventions they create, the food they eat, all the fruits of their labors as Israelis speaking Hebrew with two cell phones, one in hand, one dorkily clipped to the lapel of a shirt. The girls are dressed in that all too familiar urban boho fashion and the boys range from skater to rasta wannabes.
Capoeira circles with bimbao and sparring duos, and Japanese choirs singing Hallelujah up and down Ben Yehuda Street. Coffee Bean, Aroma, so many shawarma shops you just can't figure out how they all make it.
Hearing Hebrew alone, constantly, is a mind trip. Particularly learning slang and remembering that this language was consciously adapted from Bibilical times as part of the strategy to create a Jewish homeland. The immensity of this vision and its realization continues to wash over me. It's what every people oppressed in this world dream, fight, yearn and die for. It is the desire for this dream's actualization and that it has not yet come true that drapes the street I now find myself on, in an internet shop, with a somber tension.
The muezzin's call. It's time to pray. I hear it behind the hum of the computers, above the din of the radio and the cars sputtering back and forth outside the shop. The rain has started again.
I can't believe I am now here. I had to convince the cab driver across the street from the Fuchsberg Center to take me here. I pulled out the map and showed him exactly where it was and that please, it is after all on the way to the Hebrew University. Two other cab drivers told me to go to the "other side" of the street where an Arab driver would take me. Amazing, because 10 minutes ride later, I have arrived in another world.