Thus said the Lord
The heaven is My throne
And the earth is My foot­stool.
(Isaiah 66:1)

It is just hours before Shabbat on the eve of the Hebrew month of Shvat. I am reading over tomorrow’s Haftorah, the final chapter of Isaiah, in an effort to prepare myself spir­i­tu­ally for the tran­si­tion from weekday to holi­ness. In just two hours, the sun will set, and I will try to take the peace of Shabbat upon myself. But it is hard right now to feel that the earth is filled with God’s presence.

I spent the past two days in Bethlehem on a two-day program called Encounter, which brings future Jewish leaders to meet with Palestinians. We spent our days hearing from Palestinian polit­ical activists, profes­sors, school­teachers and parents, both Christian and Muslim, who live in Bethlehem. As a group of 40 American, British and Australian Jews who kept together at all times, we had to work to main­tain a low profile in a city that is largely hostile to Jews. We tucked in tzitzit, wore base­ball caps over kippot and refrained from speaking any Hebrew except inside a private room in the hotel where we were based. At night, we were offered home hospi­tality with Palestinian fami­lies, who welcomed us with open arms and tried, as much as possible, to show us the situ­a­tion from their perspective.

Where could you build a house for Me?
And what place could be for My resting?
(Isaiah 66:1)

Again and again, wher­ever we went, the same ques­tion turned itself over in my mind: how would this place ever become a place of peace, a place where a God of peace would want to dwell? Today, Bethlehem, along with the neigh­boring villages of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, is surrounded by Israeli check­points and road­blocks. Bethlehem resi­dents are only allowed into Jerusalem with special permits that are very diffi­cult to obtain. Travel to other parts of the Palestinian-controlled terri­to­ries of the West Bank is also impeded and some­times prevented entirely. The city has peri­od­i­cally been placed under strict curfew, preventing resi­dents from leaving their homes.

“It is terrible here,” said Fadi, my home hospi­tality host, who lives in Beit Sahour and works cleaning churches in the Old City of Jerusalem six days a week. “I have to leave my house at 6 a.m. to be at work at 8 a.m., even though work is less than a half-hour away. But I never know how long it will take me to get through the check­point. Sometimes the Israeli soldier is in a good mood, and I’m out in five minutes. Other times, there is a long line and I wait for over an hour.” He does not get to eat break­fast with his wife or his two young sons, Michael and George, ages five and three respec­tively, because he needs to leave his home so early in the morning. And his chil­dren, wide-eyed and curious about the world around them, have never seen the sea, though they live just over an hour from the Mediterranean.

Fadi dreams of leaving Bethlehem and making a new life in Greece, where he and his wife went on their honey­moon six years ago. They are trou­bled not just by the increasing Israeli mili­tary pres­ence and the restric­tions on their freedom, but also by the growing Muslim popu­la­tion. Christians, who were once the majority in the city where Jesus was born, now account for less than 30 percent of the popu­la­tion. “We wake up every morning at 4 a.m. to the sound of the muezzin,” said Fadi, assuring us that we would hear it as well when we woke up in his spare bedroom the next morning. “They veil their women so they can look at ours instead. Can’t they just keep to themselves?”

Fadi lives in a small house he built himself, with three bedrooms, an enclosed veranda and a living room with crosses on all the walls. Behind one of the old-style beige leather couches is a 3-D portrait of Jesus with spooky eyes that are either raised to the heavens or solemnly closed, depending on the angle of the viewer. Fadi, who is right­fully house-proud, has trouble imag­ining leaving his home and his life. “I have over a hundred cousins in Bethlehem,” he tells us. “Everyone here is related to me.” He shows us his wedding album and serves us white wine from grapes he harvested in his own vine­yard. In the morning, we are treated to a full break­fast of fried eggs, pita, zaatar, labana, fresh coffee and steamed milk. When we rejoin the members of our group at 8 a.m., it is with full stom­achs but heavy hearts.

All this was made by My hand,
And thus it came into being,
declares the Lord.
Yet to such a one I look:
To the poor and broken­hearted
Who tremble at my words.
(Isaiah 66:2)

“This place is very special to me,” says Leila Sansour, who is standing on a large rock over­looking the valley that sepa­rates Bethlehem from the surrounding Israeli settle­ments. We stand clus­tered around her, watching as she over­looks the hills like Moses at the foot of the Promised Land. “In that green area over there, we used to come as chil­dren and play. It’s the only green area in Bethlehem. But now it is covered with litter because we cannot afford sani­ta­tion. Much of the land­scape terracing has been destroyed by the building of settle­ments. The Bethlehem where I grew up is not the Bethlehem I live in now.”

Leila, who is in her early 30’s, returned to her birth­place after studying abroad to found Open Bethlehem, a campaign to save Bethlehem from the Israeli settle­ments that surround it on all sides and from the settler-only roads that criss­cross through the area and impede Palestinian mobility. She points to the orderly rows of terracotta-roofed houses on each hilltop across the valley. “Those are your settle­ments: Har Homa, Gilo, Har Gilo—they are stran­gling my Bethlehem,” she tells us. I have visited friends in Gilo, I think. Isn’t it part of Jerusalem?

As Laila speaks about a friend of her family who lost all his olive trees when his land was appro­pri­ated by the settlers, I remember that in two weeks we will cele­brate Tu Bishvat, the festival of trees. We will eat our dried fruit and sing about rebirth and re-growth. We will quote Biblical passages like “When you besiege a city to fight against it and capture it, don’t destroys its trees or wield the axe against them … Are trees of the field human to with­draw before you into the besieged city?” This city is besieged, I think, and even the trees are cowering.

They have chosen their ways
And take plea­sure in their abom­i­na­tions,
So will I choose to mock them,
To bring on them the very thing they dread.
For I called and none responded,
I spoke and none listened,
They did what I deem evil
And chose what I do not want.
(Isaiah 66:3–4)

As a group, we walk a good stretch of the sepa­ra­tion fence that surrounds Bethlehem. Here it is not a fence, though, but a 25-foot-high elec­tri­fied wall comprised of adjoining two-foot-wide slabs of concrete with surveil­lance towers every few hundred feet. The wall is gray, ugly and sad, and gives the resi­dents of Bethlehem the feeling that they are living next to (if not inside) a maximum-security prison. While I under­stand that the wall was built to prevent death and destruc­tion, it seems to have prevented much more. By impris­oning and some­times dividing commu­ni­ties, it rein­forces a siege mentality and asserts Israel’s mili­tary and logis­tical supe­ri­ority. Everything about this hulking monstrosity seems to cry out, “We control you! You are not to be trusted!”

In truth, though, the wall does have a voice of its own, for it is covered in graf­fiti (mostly in English) for much of its length. As we walk along, I listen as the voices of my brothers cry out to me from the concrete slabs:

THIS WALL WILL NOT MAKE PEACE

IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL A FENCE?

WALL = EVIL

AMERICAN MONEY BUILT THIS WALL

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, TEAR IT DOWN NOW

I do not know who has written these words, but their cries will go unan­swered. Nobody is listening to the people of Bethlehem. We hear from a man whose daughter was killed when Israeli soldiers suddenly and inex­plic­ably opened fire on their car; we hear from a father who warns us that if oppres­sion of the Palestinians continues, his chil­dren will become the next Taliban. “You are driving us to desper­a­tion,” he tells us. “I do not condone violence, but given the situ­a­tion, I am surprised that there have been so few suicide bombers.” I feel a shiver of dread up my spine, and, as Isaiah proph­e­sied, I tremble at his words.

Can a land pass through travail
In a single day?
Is a nation born
All at once?
(Isaiah 66:8)

On Friday after­noon, we prepare to return to Jerusalem. Our group leader explains that we will go back a different way than we came. On our trip into Bethlehem, we went through the tunnel road that connects Israel to the terri­to­ries; on our way back, we will go through the mili­tary check­point. On this return route, we will expe­ri­ence what it is like for Palestinians to try to get to Jerusalem, a city that is not only reli­giously signif­i­cant but also, for many, crucial for their livelihoods.

As we approach the check­point, someone in our group comments that it resem­bles an airport. I see her point; in some ways, it feels like we are entering another country. We place our bags on conveyer belts and walk through a metal detector with an Israeli soldier watching us. Next we go through several aisles marked off by metal barriers. Every few meters, we see another bright yellow sign in Hebrew, Arabic and English, which reads:

THIS IS A MILITARY COMPLEX

PLEASE HAVE ALL DOCUMENTS READY FOR INSPECTION

PLEASE ENTER IN AN ORDERLY MANNER

At 1 p.m. on a Friday, the check­point is not crowded, but as we near the final turn­stile that will mark our passage out of the Palestinian Authority and back into Israel, we see about 40 Palestinian men and boys waiting in line, looking exhausted and worn. An old Arab man with a red-and-white kaffiyeh is carrying a sack of bread; a small boy in a tight green sweater has an expres­sion far too serious for his young face. I smile at the young boy, and he smiles back across a door made of metal spikes. I think about the hope­ful­ness exer­cise we did the night before with students from Bethlehem University. Hopefulness, I had written on the post-it note I was handed, is when I look into your eyes and you smile back.

The Israeli soldiers in the booth beside the turn­stile see our navy-blue American pass­ports and release the magnetic gate, waving us through. We walk out into the blinding Jerusalem daylight; it is a bright winter day and the sun is high in the sky. As I turn around once more to look back at the check­point complex, I see a huge, six-foot-high bright multi­col­ored sign that reads:

WELCOME TO JERUSALEM

ENJOY YOUR STAY

—THE ISRAELI MINISTRY OF TOURISM

Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her
All you who love her!
Join in her jubi­la­tion
All you who mourned for her …
As a mother comforts her son
So I will comfort you;
You shall find comfort in Jerusalem.
(Isaiah 66:10–13)

Outside the check­point, our bus is waiting for us. The ride back takes less than 15 minutes. Before I have time to put my pass­port away, I already recog­nize familiar land­marks: the turn-off to Gilo; the towering new apart­ment build­ings on Derech Hevron; the side streets of Baka. I realize that now we are returning derech eretz plishtim (through the land of the Philistines), the quick and direct way. Yesterday our leader took us on a circuitous 40-years-of-wandering route to estab­lish some distance between the familiar and the unfa­miliar, lest we grow panicked or jolted by the shock of our new surround­ings and want, suddenly, to turn back. But now that we know Bethlehem is only a 15-minute drive away, there is no turning back. We are resi­dents of Jerusalem, and we rejoice in our Jerusalem lives. But we know now that Bethlehem is in our back­yard, and Bethlehem is not a place of rejoicing.

The next day, on Shabbat morning, I rush to shul in time to recite Parshat Va’era, with its hard­ened hearts and its nation afflicted by plagues. I have to hear Isaiah’s message of rebuke and retri­bu­tion. And I have to welcome the new month of Shvat, and believe, somehow, in its promise of renewal.

The time has come to gather all the nations and tongues …
And new moon after new moon
Sabbath after Sabbath,
All peoples shall come to worship me.
(Isaiah 66:23)

Ilana Kurshan is a literary agent and editor living in Jerusalem. © 2007 World Jewish Digest