On the way to Tel Aviv

Last week we had to go to Tel Aviv to take care of some business.   I love watching the scenery out the window.  It's just amazing.  We were in a bit of a hurry and I forgot my camera but I'll describe what I saw.  I have taken this same trip quite a few times and yet every time, it's an experience.  What one sees is a tapestry of very different things juxtaposed next to each other.  Bucolic scenery next to industrial type structures, archeological digs right in the middle of very ordinary surroundings, beautiful untouched wild spaces next to modern architecture and cultivated agricultural fields.   Orchards next to railroads,  ancient ruins next to modern buildings,  very Middle Eastern next to very Western.  And once one gets to Tel Aviv- old dilapidated buildings next to snazzy slick modern ones, religious and secular, old and new, tightly packed spaces and industrial architecture on one side and the gorgeous blue sea with sailboats placidly gliding in the sun on the other.  I looked up for a second, we were on Kibbutz Galiyot (Ingathering of Exiles) Blvd.  And it got me thinking that this kind of hodgepodge of very different elements in a small space reminds me of the current state of modern Israel.  Different people from different places, yet part of the same nation and with plenty in common. So much already built and so much that remains to be done.   All this in just a few years on the place where sand dunes used to be, amazing!  The Jewish people had come home.  Some things so beautiful and so perfect and some so far from perfection that it makes one's heart ache, some things so clear and some really perplexing.  Will it ever be fixed, will it ever get better, how much more and how much longer can the Jewish nation take it.    And then I remember, we are indeed on the Kibbutz Galiot Blvd.  It will be made right and beautiful and perfect and harmonious in the end.  G-d has His plan and He will get us where we need to go.