by Alizah Holstein
Hebrew or English?
English.
How long were you in Israel?
36 hours.
So short?
Yes.
That’s unfortunate.
Maybe.
What was the purpose of your trip?
To visit my mother.
Is she ill?
No.
Where does she live?
Tel Aviv.
Did you stay with her?
Yes.
Did you visit anywhere besides Tel Aviv while you were here?
No.
Do you have other relatives here in Israel?
No.
How long has your mother lived here?
Twelve years.
Why did she move here?
For a job.
How many times have you been to Israel since your mother moved here?
Three or four times.
When was the last time you came?
More than five years ago.
So, you have not visited your mother here in more than five years?
No.
Can I ask why not?
She has been visiting my family instead. It’s easier that way, now that I have children.
How many times have you been here?
I don’t know. Twenty, maybe, thirty. I have not kept count.
So, you have spent a lot of time here.
Yes. I had a boyfriend here once.
Do you speak Hebrew?
I did once, but I have forgotten most.
Did you learn it from the boyfriend?
Not really. I lived on a kibbutz and studied it.
Did the boyfriend speak Hebrew?
Yes.
Did he speak other languages too?
He spoke English.
Any other languages?
No.
Where was this kibbutz?
Near Jerusalem.
Was it Ramat Rachel?
Yes.
Were you dating this boyfriend while you were living there?
No. But at the very end, yes.
Where was the boyfriend from?
Up north.
Where up north?
Kfar Vradim.
Ah! Very pretty up there.
Yes, it was.
And when you studied Hebrew on the kibbutz, were you learning the language for the first time?
Yes.
So you did not know Hebrew before you went to the kibbutz?
I knew only the alphabet, from Hebrew school.
Do your children go to Hebrew school?
No.
Do they know the Hebrew alphabet?
No.
Does your mother speak Hebrew?
Yes.
Did she learn it at home?
No.
What about your father? Does he speak Hebrew?
Not really.
Hmm. Can I ask why your visit was so short?
I did not want to leave my husband alone with our children for so long.
Does your husband speak Hebrew?
No.
But your marriage is happy?
I’d say so, yes.
And where, did you say, your husband is from?
From Spain.
From Spain Spain?
Spain Spain?
I mean, is he from the place we think of as Spain? Or did his family come from Spain a long time ago but then live somewhere else, like in Africa?
Africa? No.
So, Spain Spain?
Yes.
Ah. So. [Places stickers on my passport and my luggage.] You may proceed to the check-in area.
Thank you.
This was the conclusion of our dialogue. After checking into my flight, I pulled out my laptop and transcribed what we had said. It was early March 2020. I had been through interviews like this many times before, but I jotted this one down because it felt out of the ordinary for me. I remember feeling as if the questioner and I were locked in a game. This game was invasive in a one-sided way, but I did not feel compelled, as I had when younger, to offer up full and satisfying responses to the questions. I answered the questions truthfully, but I allowed the gap between the response and the larger story to remain unarticulated. I noticed but did not address the discomfort caused by that gap. That I appeared to be a perplexing case even gave me some satisfaction.
At the same time, I found the questioner’s angle interesting. He was working hard to pinpoint my language competencies. Whether or not I spoke Hebrew, and which members of my family spoke or studied Hebrew, were clues for assessing the degree of my group belonging. It’s an idea that must be as old as humanity. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Judges contains a story about a battle between the tribes of Ephraim and Gilead. After the Gileadites won, they wanted to prevent Ephraimites from fleeing to their territory across the Jordan River. To distinguish between tribesmen, they required anyone wishing to cross the river to say the word “Shibboleth.” Ephraimites, whose language lacked the “sh” sound, invariably said “Sibboleth.” And when they did, they were slaughtered as the enemy. The fact that my mother spoke Hebrew, but not from her youth, that I had once spoken Hebrew but no longer did, and that my children did not, made for a confusing collection of datapoints. Was I saying “Shibboleth” or “Sibboleth?” Was I in or out? Could I cross the river?
There were moments in my youth when I fairly urgently wished to belong to a group. In eleventh grade, my history teacher in Massachusetts asked us to name our family origins and my classmates rattled off one solid-sounding identifier— “Argentinian,” “Haitian,” “Russian”—after another. When it was my turn: “mutt.” And everyone laughed. So I understand that wish to belong to something that feels more concrete, more specific, than “America,” and that desire, in all likelihood, played a role in propelling me to Italy and to Israel—two countries with strong national identities. I wanted very much, in those days, to look like I belonged in these places. And in Italy, I experienced a confounding, obviously unattainable desire to be “from” there. An impulse, essentially, to be someone else. In my late teens, I was gifted an Invicta backpack—a product indispensable to the school uniform of Italian youth —by my first Italian friend. Over the years, it prompted many strangers to mistake me for Italian. I couldn’t have been more delighted.
It occurred to me during my pre-flight questioning that I no longer desired a singular, easily categorized identity, national or otherwise. Perhaps this is why I transcribed the conversation, because it clarified for me a change that had taken place in myself. I had come to value the complexities of who I was, especially in relation to nations, cultures and languages, to a degree I had not been capable of when younger. This, as it turns out, is the river that matters to me.
***
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