Today, while eating brunch at T'mol Shilshom, I was reminded of this poem by Yehuda Amichai:

Tourists by Yehuda Amichai
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.


Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower,
I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists
was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see
that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch
from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it,
left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

I have always loved this poem and it means something different each time I hear it. This time, it makes me think more about who I am in Israel. I am not the man with the baskets, nor do I feel like the tourists. Perhaps I am the guide, seeing both the old and the new but not being certain how to capture either for those I am leading. This is my task as I see it today: to labor to find a way to make real Israel's history and its current pulse.