|
|
 |
|
|
|
Friday November 17, 2006 Tuesday September 27, 2005 27 Erev Shabbat
ARCHIVES
Israeli
kids off to find themselves ... often in Thailand
By: MELODY AMSEL-ARIELI Special to the CJN
Israeli kids
mature early. As they near high-school graduation, they don't collect college catalogs or worry about SAT scores like their
American cousins.
Instead, they're inducted into the Israeli armed forces, boys for three years and girls for slightly
less. Most hope for acceptance into elite battle units or, at the very least, army assignments like computer programmers,
radio announcers, or air controllers.
But as time passes, their initial gung-ho Zionism and youthful optimism may
pall. Daily pressures and dangers seem to go on forever. Some are injured; some bury their friends.
Israeli soldiers
live for visits home when they can exchange their army uniforms for style and glitter, dance the light fantastic, cozy up
with their friends around a hookah, and chill out. As the pungent, apple-flavored smoke fills the room, they dream of returning
to civilian life, real life.
When they are finally discharged from the army, many kids toss a couple of things into
their backpacks and set off for faraway lands. It is almost a rite of passage, exploring an exotic country like Peru or Columbia,
first losing themselves, then finding themselves.
No adventure is too dangerous. Bungee-jumping? In a flash. Scaling
mountain peaks, riding rickety local buses over breathtaking gorges? No problem. These kids are in top physical shape, brash,
and self-confident. They come as gods, afraid of nothing.
Many kids are lured to India, then push northward to Nepal
and Tibet, all exotic by Western standards and all cheap, too. Kids with a couple of hundred dollars in their pockets can
get by for months on end if they live like the natives. And anyway, they're sure to meet other kindred spirits, Israelis like
themselves, however far they venture. So many Israelis ply these routes that the Lubavitchers have set up centers in Kathmandu,
Shanghai, and Bankok where kids can get a helping hand and a meal spiced with Yiddishkeit.
Naturally, while the kids
are gallivanting around the world, their parents are plotzing. But what can they say? Their child has grown, he's been tried
and tested and he's survived. Doesn't he deserve these last moments of freedom before shouldering the yoke of higher education,
before marriage and children? So they grit their teeth and prepare for yet more nights of worry. Only now, they don't even
know what to worry about. It's probably better that way.
Yair expected to spend a day or two in Thailand on his way
to China. But before he knew it, the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months. He was not alone. The same thing
happened to Yonaton. Other Israeli kids, on their way to New Zealand or Australia, stopped over in Thailand, too. And little
by little, word spread of the country's beauty, especially the remote, peaceful islands in the south. More and more young
Israelis were drawn to Thailand, to the sea and the sand, to paradise on earth.
When the tsunami struck last week,
there were over a thousand Israelis in Thailand. Many of them were our children, beautiful as gods, off to find themselves.
Some of them may never be found.
Copyright 2005 Cleveland Jewish News
|
| amsel |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
