I now sit aboard El Al hoping a trip in business class will make this 9½ hour flight more tolerable. My nausea is gone now after 3 years but my nerves are still quite uppity – my father “strongly suggested” that I abort this trip after hearing just an hour before I was to leave that a plane enroute from Israel had blown up over the Black Sea (an act which we now know was an accident). Of course, my father is against all trips I ever make but he did not “command” me to cancel the trip. My brother tells me on the phone at the airport that my mother is “very frustrated” as to my travels and that he agrees with her. I certainly wavered as to this trip, changing my mind several times before deciding over Yom Kippur to go ahead and booking the trip less than a week ago. 

This trip has no valid purpose except to visit Israel and friends for the conclusion of the fall Jewish holiday cycle. It’s been a year of achievement for me personally; my flatmate / business partner and I are here to celebrate 5 years of being flatmates and having built up a business from zero to over $1 million in revenues over the past year which is presently turning a profit. Sure, stocks have lost ground but the results could have been much worse – I consider myself lucky having liquidated just before September 11. Better to spend some of the money before losing it, eh?

Brother Jason says I will be spending a week in a golden prison. I feel it is an even exchange; life in New York and the USA has become scary enough – danger lurks in all sorts of everyday activities, to say nothing of just being around. If I am going down, it shall be from the high of celebrating a holy day from a suite in the King David Hotel as opposed to cowering in fear in the New York subway system underneath Times Square at rush hour going to work which, after all, is for the purpose of living. 

I had hoped Israel would have quieted down during the past year since I left but the future from afar appears as bleak as ever. My life would be less complicated had I been raised not to give a shit about this country called Israel or a Jewish state enterprise but I cannot escape my heritage and socialization. If I must avoid El Al and the country on our holy days, the enterprise is lost and abdicated – how many people in the universe make up Israel’s mainframe tourist and support network? What is good for the other 5 million Jews in Israel is not good enough for me. We have surrendered to our fears and do not really believe that God is our backup. So as much as I respect the feelings of my family and my colleagues of all persuasions whom I hope will realize their aspirations, I also insist on my right to live and pursue the joys of life. I did not get up from my bed 2 years ago to drudge through the rest of life.

Perhaps this is a last hurrah and future joy rides will become impossible. Maybe only single people can be so irresponsible as to keep moving forward. But if so then we are not really living, surviving perhaps. We will sit in our cages counting the days and collecting our marbles toward an end that may come at any moment. Something that was true even before September 11. Something true for everyone, be they American, Saudi, Jordanian, Russian or whatever.

So let us all respect each other’s space and celebrate life. I cannot vouch for the hereafter but propose that life as we have come to live it is worth living. Our culture and religions celebrate life – our most compelling challenge today is to convince those who prefer death due to the hopelessness they perceive in life that they can see promise in life for them as well. L’Chayim, to Life.