The screenshot on the left is from a Twitter post promoting a video that an American media company had made about American Jews living in Judea or Samaria, also known as the West Bank.
The movie itself took a dim view of our living here. The world of media, in general, is full of negativity about Jewish settlers on the West Bank.
The screenshot on the right is from a later Twitter post that changed the order of my names, accenting how “vile” it is for me to be living here.
This negativity is painful not just because it vilifies my personal life experience, but most of all, because it scares away other Jews from coming and experiencing the richness of living as a Jew in our homeland.
After being turned into a West Bank Settler meme, I decided I needed to share a different and more authentic picture of living as a Jew in Judea.
To that end, I am sharing three experiential portraits of my life in the Jewish village of Bat Ayin (meaning “Daughter of the Eye” or “Apple of the Eye” in Hebrew) in the Judean Hills, halfway between Jerusalem and Hebron.
See the other articles in this series:
Connecting to our mothers and fathers
Eating the fruit of the land of Israel
