Israel: A Million Threads of Light

There are places in the world that are beautiful because of their mountains.

Some because of their beaches.

Some because of their food, their history, their music, their sunsets, their impossible blue skies.

And then there is Israel.

Israel is beautiful because it is all of those things, yes, but also because of its people.

Every shade of skin. Every colour of eyes. Every texture of hair. Every accent. Every language. Every level of religious observance. Every kind of Jew. Every kind of Israeli. Every kind of human being.

The secular and the religious. The traditional and the modern. The soldiers and the students. The rabbis and the drag queens. The shopkeepers and the start-up founders. The old men arguing over politics outside a café. The teenagers laughing too loudly on the bus. The grandmothers who can cure sadness with soup, tea, cake, or a look that says, “You’re too thin. Sit down.”

In my book Legends of the Light, I describe Am Yisrael as a beautiful tapestry woven from a million different threads gathered from a million different places.

And that is exactly what Israel is.

A tapestry.

A living, breathing, arguing, singing, dancing, praying, protesting, laughing, crying, hummus-eating, shawarma-debating, impossible tapestry.

Walk down almost any street in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Afula, Jerusalem, Haifa, Be’er Sheva, Tzfat, Eilat or anywhere in Israel and you will see the whole world squeezed into one tiny, stubborn, miraculous country.

You will see LGBTQ rainbow flags fluttering beside the blue and white of Israel’s national flag.

You will see signs in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian, French, Amharic and more.

You will hear the music of a dozen different homelands drifting through open windows, market stalls and car radios.

You will smell coffee, za’atar, grilled meat, fresh bread, cardamom, sea salt, oranges, hot stone, desert wind and someone’s grandmother’s secret recipe that absolutely nobody is allowed to improve.

You will walk through the shuk and see spices in colours so bright they look like someone poured a sunset into sacks.

Gold turmeric. Red paprika. Green za’atar. Deep brown cumin. Orange, yellow, crimson, copper. A whole geography of flavour.

And then you will notice something else.

The people are just as colourful.

Our police officers. Our medics. Our bus drivers. Our teachers. Our artists. Our soldiers.

African. Ethiopian. Russian. European. Yemenite. Indian. Moroccan. Iraqi. Persian. Brazilian. British. American. Argentine. French. Ukrainian. Druze. Bedouin. Arab. Jewish. Christian. Muslim. Secular. Religious. Traditional. Somewhere in between.

This is not a slogan. This is Tuesday morning. This is the real meaning of a united nation.

Not perfect. Not quiet. Definitely not tidy.

But alive.

You see it in Jaffa, where older, wiser Israelis sit together – Jews, Muslim Arabs and Christians – over a battered sheshbesh board or a chess set that has probably survived more arguments than most parliaments.

The dice snap.

The coffee cools.

Someone accuses someone else of cheating with the confidence of a man who has definitely just lost.

And five minutes later they are laughing together, leaning back into the sun, loving life in that very Israeli way where peace does not always arrive with violins and speeches.

Sometimes it arrives with coffee, backgammon and someone shouting, “Yalla, your move.”

You see it on Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv, where younger, fitter Israelis from every background and faith throw themselves into an impassioned game of beach volleyball, all sand, sweat, shouting and laughter.

Secular. Religious. Jewish. Arab. Druze. Christian. Muslim. Gay. Straight. Left. Right. Somewhere gloriously unclassifiable.

Some on leave. Some between shifts. Some taking a well-earned break from serving alongside one another, studying alongside one another, working alongside one another, building a country alongside one another.

And for a few minutes, the only war that matters is whether that last shot was in or out.

Obviously it was out.

Obviously everyone disagrees.

Obviously this may require a national inquiry.

You see it in the food too.

A Muslim Arab serving falafel with the kind of pride usually reserved for Olympic medals.

A Yemenite Jewish stall owner ladling bright, sharp hilbeh over something hot and fragrant.

A Druze family feeding tourists until they lose the ability to stand upright.

An Arab Christian baker, a Moroccan grandmother, an Ethiopian café owner, a Russian deli counter, an Iraqi kubbeh pot, a Persian rice dish, a Tunisian sandwich, a Brazilian smile, a British accent ordering in terrible Hebrew and somehow still being understood.

They’re all Israeli. And all themselves. That is Israel.

A country where identity does not sit neatly in boxes. It spills over the edges. It gets sauce on the table.

And then, once a year, Tel Aviv turns into one of the loudest, proudest, brightest declarations of freedom in the region, with Pride flags flying by the sea and people dancing in the open air because in this tiny country, surrounded by so much darkness, there is still room for colour.

Huge colour. Defiant colour. Joy as a public service. Hope with glitter on its face.

And then there are the moments that make you stop – because they are so Israeli they almost defy logic and understanding.

A wedding where the bride is stunning in white, glowing with love, with a rifle slung over her shoulder – because life did not pause for beauty, so beauty simply turned up anyway.

Her groom beside her, snatching a few precious hours away from duty, still in uniform, dusty, tired, smiling like the sun has chosen him for special attention.

Two people standing under a chuppah with love in their eyes, rifles nearby, friends in uniform, family crying, music playing, history leaning in close.

That is Israel too.

Not because war is beautiful. It is not.

But because life is. Because love is.

Because even when the world presses hard against us, we still marry. We still dance. We still sing badly at the top of our lungs. We still build families. We still choose tomorrow. We choose life.

Yes, we argue. Of course we argue. It’s almost a national sport.

We argue about politics, religion, football, parking, music, history, whether the bus driver definitely saw us running for the bus and chose to keep driving anyway.

And yes, we argue about hummus.

Because obviously my grandma’s hummus is better than yours.

And your grandma probably says the same.

And both grandmas are offended.

And both grandmas are right.

That is Israel.

A family table with too many opinions, not enough chairs and somehow always more then enough food.

But beneath the noise, beneath the shouting, beneath the Israeli art form of interrupting someone before they have finished the first half of their sentence, there is something extraordinary.

There is belonging. There is family.

There is a people who came home from every corner of the earth, carrying languages, recipes, songs, memories, scars, prayers and dreams.

There are sabras whose families have lived in this land for millennia, centuries rooted deep in Jerusalem stone, Galilee hills, desert towns and coastal streets long before the modern state was born.

And there are children whose grandparents came from Poland, Iraq, Ethiopia, Yemen, Morocco, Russia, India, Syria, Iran, Argentina, South Africa, France, England and a hundred other places, all now sharing classrooms, army bases, beaches, cafés, weddings, markets and Friday night tables.

That is not a melting pot. It is much better than that.

A melting pot turns everything into one flavour.

Israel is a salad. A glorious, chaotic, over-dressed, slightly noisy salad.

Each ingredient still itself. Each one bringing something different. Each one making the whole thing richer, brighter, sharper, sweeter and more alive.

And then there is the land itself.

Come to Israel and dive through mind-blowing colour in Eilat, where the Red Sea looks like it hired a team of jewel thieves to decorate the coral.

Hike through the hills of the Galilee, the Golan, the Carmel and the Judean mountains, where every path seems to whisper, “Yes, someone was here long before you. Keep walking.”

Float in the Dead Sea, where even the water has an opinion and refuses to let you sink.

Stand at the top of Masada and feel history rise from the stones.

Walk through Jerusalem and try to understand how one city can hold so much longing, beauty, argument, holiness, heartbreak and hope in the same breath.

Visit Nazareth, Bethlehem, Bet She’an, Akko, Tiberias, the Jordan Valley, the Kinneret, the Negev, the Mediterranean coast.

Stand in places where empires rose and fell, where prophets dreamt, where armies marched, where families prayed, where children now eat ice cream and complain that it is too hot out.

That is Israel too.

Ancient and young. Sacred and ordinary. Exhausted and unstoppable.

A place where history does not sit behind museum glass. It walks beside you in sandals, carrying groceries.

And yes, Israel is complicated. Of course it is. Anything real is complicated.

Families are complicated. Love is complicated. Home is complicated. Survival is complicated.

But Israel is not the flat cartoon people are so often sold by those who have never walked her streets, never tasted her food, never heard her languages, never looked into the faces of her people.

Israel is not one colour. Israel is not one voice. Israel is not one story. Israel is a million threads.

A million colours. A million songs. A million recipes. A million prayers. A million arguments. A million open doors.

And somehow, impossibly, beautifully, defiantly, they weave together into one small country with a very big heart.

That is the beautiful, chaotic, loud, crazy life in Israel.

So go visit and discover or rediscover Israel.

Go with curiosity. Go with an open mind. Go hungry, obviously, because turning up in Israel not hungry is both impractical and mildly offensive.

Go walk the streets. Taste the food. Meet the people. Hear the languages. Swim the seas. Climb the hills. Sit in the markets. Watch the sunsets. Ask questions. Get lost. Find yourself somewhere between a beach, a shuk, a stone alleyway and someone insisting you try just one more thing.

Go visit the country I call home.

Not the headline. Not the hashtag. Not the shouting.

The real place.

The beautiful, maddening, dazzling, wounded, healing, hilarious, holy, human place.

Israel.

A tapestry of a million threads. And every thread brings light.