A Kilo of Strawberries, a Handful of Nuts, and a Bundle of Problems

I like to think of it as the only supermarket in town whose shelves showcase oranges and bread and pistachios and cilantro while its isles serve as the stage for local musicians and the canvas for artists. Sometimes I go there to buy ingredients for soup and other times to be part of the cultural melting pot. Some say it’s stuffy and uncomfortable. I say it’s refreshing and invigorating.

It is a microcosm of the Israeli society. A 16 by 16 model, if you may. It invites everyone. It accepts everyone. And it is a forum in which people of all sects and sectors and orientation and religion coalesce in pursuit of a common goal. Its mundane objective, though, need not belie its noble effects.

It’s the Mahane Yehuda food market and it’s a relatively simple place. So They say.

But They aren’t always right.

Because a supermarket that brings me to tears cannot be a simple place. The Shuk is not a simple place for it is a reflection of the reality here in Israel. And the reality here in Israel is anything but simple.

So They say.

And this time They’re right.

I was rushing through the Shuk and I didn’t notice him until he raised his hand and slapped his face again and again. They were both Arabs. The older one was heavy set, around twenty two and he was directing orders at a younger boy who was around twelve. Apparently he did something wrong and violence replaced the orders and the little boy stood silently as the older boy’s punches shaped his face.

As the boy’s hands formed a respite for his broken face and a shelter for exposed shame and a well for the collection of escaping tears—I stood still for a moment. And then I, too, trapped my tears and buried my words and left them as thoughts. Cause everyone else did too.

It was at that moment that I felt unsure. I was meandering through the Confusion and Issues and Division of my mind and thinking about the Complexities and Depth and Contradictions of the Israeli society —and I got lost. Suddenly something so familiar was so foreign and somewhere so comfortable was suddenly so confusing. No one was there to offer a word of salvation. No one spoke. And so neither did I.

These unspoken words, though, expressed the greatest paradox of this society. They say that Israel is a country where opinion is never absent—whether on the line at the bank, the bus ride through town or a stroll through the streets. There’s always something to be said: something deserving of comment. Suddenly, though, after witnessing that frightening scene at the Shuk, no one had a voice. No one had a comment. Where was that opinion that always seems to penetrate the alcoves of every situation?

I tend to say that they were Arabs and I was scared and those are their problems and so I didn't involve myself. But those are just excuses of mine. Just like everyone else’s. They are excuses that create the façade of a society; a society cannot exist under circumstances in which man lives of his own accord and each faction functions within a framework of apathy. The anomalous and the normative continue to exist here in a seeming companionship—an affiliation that is bound to skew the priorities of a country so delicate and reshape its contours to include the atrocious as a ritual of life.

We cannot continue to depend on what They say—cause it seems They don’t always have something to say. And once that day comes maybe the complexities and contradictions of the Shuk will finally fuse into the relatively simple place They say it is.