On why I'm bored of living here

I have a plan -- at some point in the future, I want to move to Israel. Last night, I came to terms with why I want to. I mean there are the obvious reasons: food, ease of practicing my religion, the possibility of better weather, being near family. Those are all well and/or good. I am driven by a religiously inspired vision of Zion and Zionism and I see the value of a strong state as a bulwark against the spread of anti-Semitism but that's not entirely it.

The average American doesn't wake up each morning and wonder about "what if there was no America?" People in the US go on living without a concern for their future existence. They generally do very little to keep up the country, and they get all the benefits of it, but they see it as a backdrop of facts on the ground that aren't going to change. People generally don't have the very real option of "not living" constantly 30 seconds away. Imagining a world without the US as we know it is the subject of many an alt.fanfic work about multi-verses and other timelines.

But in Israel, the threat is real and constant. Identity is crafted in the shade of a safe room. Personal voice is set to the pitch of an emergency siren. What makes the individual an Israeli is to understand that to be an Israeli is to be "not an individual." There is a collective experience that unites us all. We are all, automatically, on the same side of at least one conflict.. The average American doesn't place any inherent value on "being in America" because there is no concept of "not being in America." And the average American lacks the empathy required to appreciate that others live with existential worry. The world is supposed to be a just place, says the American, and he can't appreciate that the reality doesn't match up to the idea that privilege assures him is true.

Side note -- I get the sense that most criminals in the US would draw the line at victimizing family -- in Israel, everyone starts out as family. So maybe there is less "random" violence because the random person you are mugging will end up sitting next to you in a safe room for the next hour.

Maybe I'll feel safer because I'll live with the sense that the guy walking towards me with a gun deserves my thanks, not my fear, and with the knowledge that most of the people I see there have held that gun and all deserve my thanks. It's like "Cheers" -- I want to go where I know that the troubles are all the same. We may curse at each other but when push comes to shove, we all push or shove together. Maybe it is a cliche or my own naivette speaking, but I want to feel like I belong somewhere, that the perception of me that some stranger has of me doesn't include "automatically different because he is Jewish."

I want to feel like I automatically align in a very essential way with most of the people in my neighborhood, the people that I meet when I'm walking down the midrechov. I don't want to have to "be on" and be ready to explain myself, or be judged, or answer questions about Judaicarcana, or be an ambassador of anything. I feel like there are more places where I can simply exist there.

And maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there is something special about waking up there and already being at the spiritual center of my world.