Beshert | Inside Our Gates

Josh and I met in Jerusalem, just outside the Jaffa Gate. He was a tour guide before COVID-19 brought the tourist trade shuddering to a halt, but he still made some money giving tours to locals. I knew him remotely through a friend and saw a Facebook post offering a tour of the Old City, my favorite part of Jerusalem.  At 40, I had never been married and was no longer looking for love. “That ship has sailed,” I told myself. I also told myself, “I don’t mind.”  Of course I did mind, but what can you do? On my 40th birthday, I resolved to put all that behind me and to focus instead on enjoying my life. I was happy to take a day off work to learn more about my magnificent city. And there at...

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Jordan and Israel: Awkward Bedfellows

By Samantha Sisskind AMMAN, JORDAN - Two groups met at the banks of one of the world’s most meandering and politically significant rivers in the world. Standing in a rickety wooden hut framed by thick brush on the east bank of the Jordan River was a group of American students, and directly across on the west bank of the river was an equally sized group of American tourists, waiting upon steps leading to a mammoth stone Israeli military outpost. Not twenty feet separated the two groups, yet each pretended that the other wasn’t there.  The tension between the two groups, viewing the same site from opposite perspectives, was palpable. They wondered, “do we acknowledge each other, or do we just continue to ignore each other, take a picture of the river and go?” Finally, a student...

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