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Normal life goes on For Israelis, 50 years of wars and insecure statehood have made stress an everyday experience. Never a day goes by without Americans like Eric and Naomi Weiss reading news from Israel, where so much of their family still lives. Usually, the reports are of war or peace plans, riots or rock-throwings. There is an edge to life in Israel that most people in most places outside the Mideast never experience. But familiarity breeds routine, and life in Israel can seem quite ordinary, too -- if you don't dig too deeply into the paradoxes. The focus of Americans is too often on Israel's woes, said Jacob Winternitz, Naomi Weiss' cousin. "You can see, if you're here for awhile, the daily life is normal and the people feel safe," he said. "If you watch CNN, it looks like the people are in a terrible situation, but we are not." Winternitz, 52, and Miri, who is 48 now, and their sons, Dvir and Dan, live in Mazor, on the moshav where Miri grew up. Depending on the traffic, it's a 30- to 45-minute commute from Tel Aviv, where Jacob works in a government agency and Miri has a temporary consulting job. Dvir, 19, was inducted into the Israeli army in January; Dan, two years younger, is in high school. They live in a new neighborhood of cul-de-sacs and side-by-side houses sprouting from what once were fields. The houses are familiar-looking, though small, by the standards of new American suburbs. Miri and Jacob and Jacob's sister, Ruthi Blank, are sabras, native-born Israelis. Early Zionists took the name from the sabra cactus -- thorny, but with a sweet pear -- that grows in Israel's rocky soil. The Zionist immigrants said their children had to be like that cactus pear -- tough to withstand the dangers of a settler's life, but sweet with each other, and idealistic. Ruthi is 45 and divorced. She teaches physical education to junior-high-aged kids and lives in an apartment in Herzliya, a leafy suburb of Tel Aviv, with a son Yaniv, 21, who has done his mandatory military service and is in school. Another son, Assaf, 18, went into the tank corps in December. The Winternitzes built their house about a year ago on a lot that measures 1/2 dunam -- about 3,000 square feet. Miri won the lot through a drawing for sons and daughters of the moshav. The lot is worth about $200,000, Jacob guessed, the house another $200,000. In Herzliya, where Ruthi lives, the price would be two to three times more, he said. Miri's father, Peres Sych, still lives a few blocks away in a tidy stucco cottage he helped build years ago. Sych, who suffers from ulcers and other troubles of age, can't farm any longer. He has turned two smaller houses on his property into rentals for Russian immigrants and leased his fields to a flower grower who airlifts carnations by the truckload to Amsterdam florists. There is a little crime, Jacob said. His car was stolen from his driveway and never seen again. He thinks it was probably driven to the West Bank, out of Israeli jurisdiction. |
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