Israel, how to live happily despite the Intifada
venerdì 18 marzo 2016 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, 18 March 2016Again the same old philosophic question: what is happiness? An article published yesterday in the "Giornale" repeats expectedly: GDP, healthy years of life expectancy, social support. That's why Denmark heads the list of the World Happiness Report, followed by Switzerland, Iceland third and Norway fourth... Simply put, of course peace and quiet and green landscapes make people happy: namely, all those parameters that one would expect to be effective, actually do work.
And yet, when you look at No. 11 (Italy ranks 50th!), you find Israel. At this point, those who don’t know enough about this country are forced to do a philosophical headstand and think outside the oxygen-rich forests of the northern Europe. Yes, because this country that has always been at war, Israel, is happy, very happy, and is getting happier: indeed, it has risen from 14th place of last year’s list to 11th place this year, despite its continuous terrible human losses, the terrorism, the difficult task of making the desert bloom, the sometimes hot climate, the internal clash between extremely diverse ideological components such as Tel Aviv and the haredim, Peace Now and the settlements, the right wing, the left wing. Despite the obsessive and furious critique from the rest of the world, despite the social inequalities that challenge a nevertheless flourishing economy with the poverty of a part of the population.
Why is Israel so happy with enemies all around the borders? When I, who have lived at lenght and still live there, think about the happiness described in the statistics, the first thing that comes to my mind is a sea of children. I see them messing around in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, in the parks and at the seaside. They crowd the streets, their strollers happily crossing up and down everywhere, dominate the supermarkets sitting up on the shopping carts, they sit on the knees of their mom in buses, coffee place, restaurants, clinics.
They ask, they sing, they insist. In Italy, in Europe, population growth rates are below zero. Instead, the Jewish population has children: it has found in Israel the land of its rebirth, and this is what makes it happy. Israel has a purpose, a meaning: its people has suffered, but it has struggled and survived, therefore making Israel the nest of its moral victory. It has done this to the best of its ability, becoming indispensable to the whole world for its medical and technological discoveries. It has built universities, roads, railways, and satellites. It has invented next generation computers.
It lives faithfully accordingly to the laws of democracy. It listens to music and reads books, and its young people organise parties and its families go for enthusiastic walks every weekend to the discovery of the Land of Israel, exploring now the flowering of the peach trees and soon the flowering of the poppies. Israel is happy, simply happy to be alive and to successfully continue its victorious daily battle just to make it. In doing so it has to produce many heroes, but it has got used to this and doesn’t complain.
The second obvious reason for its happiness is that its community remains united even when it clashes in a super critical confrontation. The people of Israel are happy because they are ‘together’, the family at the end of the day is united;its a very peculiar way, the youngsters of the same generations have a thousand occasions, first of all the army, to feelthat they are as one. Friendship that were born at school continue for a life time, and couples that met when they were six meet again in the tzava, and they get married.
The religious festivities are a way of enjoying an incredible cultural experience together, the religious and the laymen. In the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv turn both into islands of silence, and in the traffic-free spaces the children’s bicycles race back and forth, while thinksquiet, and many dedicate to fasting. The supermarkets sell only unleavened bread in the week of Passoverand everyone knows why: both the religious and the non religiouswere all jewish, both were slaves in Egypt. And now they are free, in Israel. And so they are happy.