Beyond the Textbooks

Last week, our Minorities in Israel class took a field trip to visit the Hebrew Israelite community in Dimona and the foreign workers in a southern Tel Aviv neighborhood. This field trip highlighted the difference between studying in the classroom and studying in the field – and was one of the best cultural activities that I have ever taken part in. Although we had read about and discussed both of these communities, actually visiting them in person offered a different perspective on each.

While visiting the Hebrew Israelites in The Village of Peace, a small community of just a few thousand (with a total population of around 5,000 throughout Israel), we learned more about their “live-it” diet, which consists of all vegan foods. We also heard about their Shabbat fast and the roles men and women play in the community. Visiting them and hearing a representative of the community speak offered us a new perspective. For me, a bit of skepticism emerged about the large differences between their community and the one I live in – mainly, their practice of polygamy. However, learning that this group of people faced persecution and discrimination in the United States before immigrating to Israel made understanding their situation a little bit easier for me.

After visiting the Hebrew Israelites, we moved on to a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv that is home to workers from Sudan and Eritrea. They suffer from a lack of decent housing, reliance on illegal businesses that are constantly subject to governmental shutdowns, drug and alcohol problems, and mental illness. Coming from places where they have been persecuted, often violently, to Israel is an extremely difficult transition. When they arrive, they are presented with many new challenges and opportunities.

We already had an academic understanding of these difficulties, but having our guide show us around the neighborhood brought them to life. We began in a park where we could see items on top of coverings over benches. Our guide told us that the men who sleep on the benches put their belongings up high on the coverings because otherwise, dogs will urinate on them during the day. Information like this was not available in the texts we read, and even if it had been, seeing it firsthand was much more powerful. They make sacrifices like this in order to escape violence and have the opportunity to make much more money to support their families than they would in their home countries.

Ultimately, our time in the Village of Peace and the neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv opened my eyes to a broader realization: reading about and discussing a subject is not enough. In order to fully understand the situation, if one is presented the opportunity, one must make an effort to learn about the subject firsthand. My entire time in Israel has affirmed this. Although I had studied Israel in an academic setting in the past, it was not until I came here and lived here that I understood, at least to some degree, the problems that people face here as well as the opportunities and wonderful things people have here.