|
|
June 29, 2001/Tamuz 8, 5761, Vol. 53, No.39
A visit from mom can make a difference
STEFANIE L. PEARSON
Special to Jewish News
My mother stands all of 5 feet two inches, but sometimes she seems like a giant.
The same week that the largest movement in American Judaism cancelled its summer youth trips to Israel, my mom showed up at Ben Gurion airport ready to make up the difference.
Her trip was hastily planned a few weeks ago, squeezed in between major projects at work. Sure, she wanted to check up on her only daughter. But her main objective was really to do whatever she could to stand in solidarity with the people of Israel.
At first, I found this quite funny.
As the e-mails flew back and forth hatching the details of her trip, I'd joke with my friends about my mom's mission: she wants to spend as much money here as she can to make a serious dent in the shortfall left by the tourism drought.
Yet when I chuckled affectionately about the "one woman solidarity mission," I was met not with grins, but with pauses, long moments in which indecipherable emotions crossed my Israeli friends' faces.
"Wow," they'd say, after the pause. "That's great."
The emotion behind the pause, I came to realize, was gratitude.
In normal years, Jerusalem overflows with tourists - Jewish tourists - during the summer months. There are entire swaths of downtown I customarily avoid, lest I be crushed by hordes of baseball-cap wearing kids from National Federation of Temple Youth teen tours. At the Western Wall, synagogue after synagogue trips pose for group pictures. Tour buses clog the already-crowded streets and we Americans-by-birth cringe as we listen to our visiting countrymen try to bargain down shopkeepers' set prices. Not so this year.
We practically had Ben Yehuda, the pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem, to ourselves. The square in the middle of the Jewish quarter of the Old City, ringed by stores, stood empty.
The economic effects are devastating.
Tourism is down by 46 percent compared to last year, according to the Ministry of Tourism. The ministry estimates the loss for the last quarter of 2000 alone at $1 billion.
Even if the situation improved dramatically tomorrow, it would take 12-18 months for the tourist trade to begin to recover.
Hotels and restaurants have laid off staff, closed wings or branches, or even shut down altogether. Tour operators and tour guides are almost completely without work. In the hotel industry alone, a minimum of 15,000 to 20,000 jobs have already been eliminated or furloughed.
As devastating as the economic impact is, the American absence hits deeper. Israelis feel abandoned.
We are going about our daily lives, expectantly listening to the news every hour, hoping and praying that the latest cease-fire violation won't take anyone's life along with it.
We're losing sleep when our husbands, sons, boyfriends and brothers are called for reserve duty in greater frequency and trying to squeeze out the sensation that - no matter what we do - the whole world is going to condemn us.
And then comes the news that our American brothers and sisters are staying home.
My mother mortified me time and again as she whipped out her camera to take pictures.
"I want people to know that life is going on here, that life is normal," she would explain to shopkeepers and passersby as she documented their comings and goings, as I stood, face burning, in the corner.
"I want people to know that it's safe here," she would declare, insisting that she feels less safe on the streets of Phoenix than she does on the streets of Jerusalem.
She told everyone who would listen that she is angry with her fellow American Jews for staying home, for leaving hotels empty, beaches abandoned, tourist sites barren and an economy devastated. She is angry at them for staying home at the very time Israelis need to feel that someone in the world stands with them.
And, like every good daughter, I rolled my eyes when she said all this, until I realized something: I may have thought that what she was saying was silly and overdramatic and maybe even condescending to the tough Israelis.
But the Israelis didn't.
Hearing her speech, a cab driver tried to refuse her money for a ride. Storekeepers, instead of taking advantage of a willing customer, gave her incredibly fair prices.
The $15 or $150 she spent in each store isn't going to make up the huge losses each business has suffered, but her attitude made a huge impact.
In every store we passed, she marched in and bought some sort of trinket, big or small.
"I am here to show solidarity with the Israelis," she'd chirp.
She'd proudly explain to the storekeeper how her daughter lives here and she came to make a difference.
That she did.
Former Jewish News staffer Stefanie Pearson lives in Jerusalem.
|
