What is a Camper Van?
Updated: 11 hours ago
But we, (sometimes I use the Royal We because that's how queens talk), are afraid of flying. The image of a seat in the sky, flying at a speed of eight hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, with the earth and the waters below at a distance of thirty thousand feet, which is over nine thousand meters, does not sit well with us, I mean, me. Therefore, the first question is how do you leave a place, which in principal is a large prison even though anemones and violets bloom in it and ancient oak trees stand in it, and the sun rises from its ridges and sets into its sea, and the moon whitens the roofs of its settlements. Yet, to me, it is still the largest detention facility in the world for legal immigrants. So, if we return to our question, how do we leave the homeland without having to fly?
In Canada, for example, one can get into a car, not just any car, but the light Dodge truck that has become the dominating RAM of the roads, which can cross a distance of 4,583 kilometers from Nova Scotia in the east to British Columbia in the west in a week. Upon reaching the Pacific Ocean, it can turn left, and head down to the western coast of the United States, and from there continue straight to Mexico and South America right down to Patagonia, which is the one and only piece left of the original Garden of Eden. Thus, with a few accelerations, turns and stops we have already traveled half the world without leaving the ground even once.
We, The Israelis, on the other hand, driving north, collide with the separation barrier; to the east, we encounter the big wall; down south, we have to deal with Bedouins who may or may not be making a living off assisting ISIS or Hamas which constitutes a travel warning for the beaches of Sinai, and to the west, we fall straight into the sea.
I would like to leave this country in a CAMPER VAN. But there is a but. In English you have the word "camper van" because you have a tradition of using camper vans as a means of traveling and vacationing. But in Hebrew there isn't a proper word for "camper van" because a) we have nowhere to travel to and b) it is not part of our heritage. So, before we embark on our journey, let’s find a word for CAMPERVAN. A caravan in English is CARAVAN, and a caravan is a trailer pulled by a towing vehicle. "Minibus" is a small bus, but this term lacks the camping aspect, and "van" has no inclination toward vacationing or traveling. Perhaps we can combine "van" which in Hebrew is Nayedet" with "wandering" which in Hebrew is "Nedudim"? Maybe "Nadédet"? Yes. We think "Nadédet" is good.
Maybe part of building our self-definition is to build our Nadédet, with our own hands and then simply drive out of the our country. But, as we have seen, that is impossible. So, for the moment, this specific dream is cancelled. The worrying point is; if there were no wall around us, how would we know who we are? As of late it seems that the stronger the belief in the God of our people, the higher the wall becomes.
Imagine there were no walls around our shtetel*. We would get into Nadédet (of course, after we built and designed it according to all the YouTube videos we'd watched), drive to Rosh HaNikra, pass a friendly checkpoint quickly, drive up the Lebanese coastal road, stop for shawarma in a pita in Beirut, turn east toward Damascus on Highway M30, cross the Syrian border into Masnā‘a, enter the recovering country, turn left again on the highway M5, drive to Homs, Aleppo, and to the border crossing between Syria and Turkey, and oh so quickly we'd have one foot in Asia and one foot in Europe. And all this in 823 kilometers which takes only two days of driving and not even a minute of flying. So what have you got to say about that?
* Shtetle (plural: Shtetlach) is a Yiddish term used to describe small towns or villages in Eastern Europe, particularly those that had significant Jewish populations before WWII. The term is often associated with the cultural and social life of the Jewish communities that lived in these areas.
National Journal
19 of January 2023
WhatsApp:
Anat: Hello my dear, how are you? want to come to the demonstration on Saturday? There's transportation from the kibbutz.
Me: Why not? I think it'll be fun. What time will we be leaving?
Anat: I'll let you know.
20 of January 2023
WhatsApp:
Anat: Good morning, departure tomorrow at 5 pm. I'll meet you at the parking lot. Come for coffee at four. Shabbat Shalom!
Me: Aye, aye sir! Shabbat Shalom.
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