Going the Wrong Way

I was nervous when I discovered that Coach Dan scheduled a 10 mile run while I am still in Jerusalem.  Though I know the city pretty well, I honestly wasn't sure how I would cobble 10 miles together while avoiding some of Jerusalem's more significant hills and without running in circles.  So I headed down a road that I knew would take me along a relatively straight and flat stretch and hoped it would continue for 5 miles, when I would turn around head back to the hotel.  

At breakfast that morning after my run, my nephew, Ari, asked how I knew where to go for 10 miles.  I told him that turned right, ran towards Bethlehem until I reached a military checkpoint and a security fence, and then I turned around to retrace my steps.  That is, indeed, exactly what I did, which was good for 7.5 miles, after which I explored my old neighborhood for another 2.5 miles.

I wasn't familiar with the majority of my route and I was just a bit anxious about making a wrong turn.  This is the Middle East, after all.  A wrong turn made by a few hikers several years ago landed them in an Iranian prison.  I may not be in the immediate vicinity of Iran, but the reality of life in the Middle East certainly demands a heightened level of caution.

I gave my children, my nephews and my niece the same lecture I remember my father giving me when my parents first brought me to Israel when I was a little boy.  I warned them that life in the Middle East is not the same as it is in the United States.  Children are curious by nature and they don't often think twice about picking up a foreign object.  I firmly forbade them from doing so because, though whatever they might discover would likely be exactly what it looks like, especially in this part of the world those are chances we just don't take.  I know people who fell victim to terrorist bombings in this country, so I am always aware and cautious, though I've truly always felt comfortable and secure when I've been here, even during times of war and unrest.

It has been interesting, this week, to juxtapose these concerns with my feeling about turmoil brewing among various factions of Israel's Jewish citizens.  There has been a growing trend among the extremist sects of Israel's Jews to impose gender segregation in neighborhoods and cities where they are highly concentrated.  Segregated busses travel through certain areas.  And recently sideways have become segregated, relegating women to the other side of the road.  When Israeli authorities removed these signs, extremist Jews staged animated protests, calling authorities, "Nazis."  In the growing popular resistance against this Jewish extremism, counter-protests are beginning to occur, demanding an official Israeli respose to these developments.

Just as I have always been careful to avoid neighborhoods that are dangerous for Jews, so now I feel a need to avoid neighborhoods that are dangerous for non-extremist Jews.  Running through the streets of Jerusalem, the city whose ultimate legacy is meant to one day be one of peace, I find myself treading between so many conflicting worlds that the road before me becomes frighteningly narrow.  

Maybe I cannot run in the middle of the road, but politically and religiously that's usually where I find myself.  I always appreciated the teachings of Moses Maimonides who encouraged his students and readers to find moderation in all things.  That might be an ironic value for an obsessive athlete, but I find it centers me.  I believe my commitment to the middle keeps me from going the wrong way, from becoming too parochial, too partisan, too dogmatic.  And when I forget about Maimonides, running, and biking, and swimming humbles me, defuses that emotional charge that pulls me too far to the right or to the left, and keeps me on the straight and narrow.