Appreciation for One's Homeland

My time in Israel was an experience that I hope I never forget. For someone who loves history, politics and security studies, Israel was truly amazing. To be able to take what I had learned back in the spring and to see it in person brought a lot of things into better focus and understanding. I think what has come into the greatest focus for me is the appreciation of the nation I live in, the United States.

            It is not to say Israel is a bad nation or that I didn’t enjoy what it had to offer. What I mean by the appreciation of where I am from rests in some of the many problems that face Israel. These include, and are not limited to, the separation of church and state, the identity of the nation, security and peace deals. Take for example the issue of divorce in the Jewish rabbinical courts. In Israel women have to wait sometimes years in order to get a get, placing undo stress on them and in many cases forcing the wife to pay the husband thousands of dollars to receive the consent for the get. While uplifting there are groups that fight for these women, it makes me appreciate a whole lot more the civil marriage system we have in the United States. But it isn’t just in civil marriage I feel I have a deeper appreciation for my homeland. When it comes to prices for even food I notice the high cost of living here, and so does my wallet. It becomes clear why there were such large public protests only a few years ago over the rising cost of living in this country.

            To say that America is better than Israel would be wrong, and it would be equally as wrong to say we don’t have problems of our own. Just look at the United States and race relations, which in some ways parallel the tension between Jews and Arabs here with the recent stabbings in the Old City. But at the end of the day I can say that I have taken for granted a lot of what we enjoy in our country, and by experiencing another nation I have a renewed sense of what an amazing nation we live in.