She gets out of the airport taxi. As the air conditioned air dissipates, heat hits her like a wave. Israel in July. “Thank you,” she says in schoolgirl Hebrew. The taxi driver waves away the proffered note. “No charge,״ he smiles.
Danielle holds it out again, baffled. The taxi driver shakes his head. “Buy yourself a drink,” he says, in words that Danielle’s Brooklyn-trained brain struggles to process. It isn’t just the language barrier. It is the cab driver refusing a fare. This isn’t how it works in New York.
“You join our army. My daughter starts in six months. Maybe you’ll train her, teach her good English.” He laughs, revs the car, spins the wheels down the road. Daniella looks at the hundred shekel note in her hand. It glows back at her, like a promise of family. Yes, she breathes, enlisting was the right, the better, the wiser thing. To be a mensch, among other mensch, Israelis and international volunteers. To defend the Star of David. This, this is what it means.
She tucks the hundred shekel note into her bra, and vows to wear it like a talisman, to defend herself and her home-at-last heart from harm.
He leaves the rude immigration staff at the airport like a bad dream, climbs into the waiting taxi. It’s cooler than he expected. Of course, December. The season when the donkey and the baby wandered, all that jazz. A thrill comes over him, to be in the Holy Land. Ben Gurion airport rises up behind...
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