Beit Shean? You're going to BEIT SHEAN???

Young, naïve, and charmingly impulsive: how a newly out queer woman finds herself in an orthodox Jewish village with the Jordan Valley as its backdrop

The periphery in Israel offers a uniquely challenging yet incredibly valuable experience. With a total population of less than 20,000 people, Beit Shean houses North African Mizrahim Jews. After the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, Mizrahim arrived in wagons to tents, marking their new home on barren, dried land. Through generations of conflict and enduring long hardships, Beit Shean now boasts an impressive eight-floor apartment building, that serves as a lighthouse, marking the town’s skyscraper.

As part of the target audience of young North American Jews, I embarked on a social justice and Zionist program to the Valley of the Springs, the "hottest city in all of Israel," Beit Shean. There, I lived in an apartment with 6 strangers and assisted the local English teacher. My days began early in the morning with a routine walk through the park to one of the secular schools in town. On the way, I encountered locals smoking cigarettes, stray cats, and the same dessert-dusted buildings. I conducted a personal anthropological investigation into the experience of a young, newly out queer person who found themselves in an orthodox Jewish village, with the Jordan Valley as its backdrop. I discovered the role of language as an essential tool for advancement, saw how Jewish values drive the community, and learned about the mental gymnastics required to exist in a country with perpetual conflict permeating its society.

Isolated both internally and externally, Beit Shean is indeed an interesting place. On a good day, the commute to Tel Aviv takes three hours, that is, if you take the train. On a bad day, the ride can easily stretch to five hours. They weren’t kidding about Israeli traffic… Needless to say, the commute to civilization thoroughly exhausted me. At first, the spirit of adventure and the pursuit of deepening connections propelled me. Fueled by the adrenaline of “putting myself out there,” poor planning, and not accounting for heavy traffic, I didn’t pack a snack. Well, that, coupled with my impulsivity and living out of a backpack, created a perfect storm of exhaustion.

With all of that said, arriving in Beit Shean in the middle of the scorching summer heat of August was close to torture. The suffocating heat of Northern Israel made existing outside impossible, triggering aimless sheltering inside our central AC apartment. Thank God for central AC. At the start of the program, our squadron of roommates only knew each other. The wider cohort was literally inaccessible to us. I’ll speak for myself. Spending time with the same six people got old pretty fast. So, in order to individualize myself from the group, I had to establish wider support within the rest of the program. In other words, a wider sense of community was necessary to escape the cool marble-tiled floor of the apartment I shared with six people.

The inaccessibility to familiar comforts like coffee shops, kombucha, and yoga presented a familiar feeling. The teenager living back in the suburbs feeling. Familiar phrases like “there’s nothing to do” and “this place sucks, I wish I had my license” echoed towards my so-called home. Only this time, I’m not a teenager. In fact, it became cathartic to me as I wrestled with my adolescence in my early adulthood. Major personal breakthroughs took place as I was forced to confront myself. As my queerness rapidly flourished in fertile ground of self-discovery, I found a new version of myself. A more “masculine” identity took force, a return to my tomboy spirit- one that expanded my femininity where body hair and pubes were no longer a source of shame. The freedom to exist in a body I no longer relentlessly fixated on but grew to appreciate. The periphery, in this sense, was a huge cycle back to my teenage years. Reflecting on the body dysphoric content in the 2014 media cycles for thigh gaps, now, in 2023, became a huge source of sadness as I look back on the media’s influence on body trends for women. Living in a Jewish village further deepened societal pressures on women’s bodies as modesty is a frequent sight. I learned to look at myself with more gentle eyes, to not punish myself, to be kinder because when I think back to my 14-year-old self, I know that she deserved way more. And not having a ton of distractions certainly created only one kind of environment for me. The deeply uncomfortable yet wildly transformative experience of introspection. The consequence was leaning into androgyny as my self-expression took on a new form. Taking up SPACE in a very physical way as I took the ever so liberating liberty to man spread in any context. The “gay foot up,” as the queer community would note. Bleaching my eyebrows blonde also drove the point home that perception was something I could rise above and also love. Embracing my weirdness and adopting a fun sense of style became a huge source of empowerment for me.

My time in Beit Shean was invaluable. I went back to visit a few months after I relocated to Tel Aviv and a wave of nostalgia hit me. The same quiet streets I walked around whistling, stood unchanged. The national park that I sought refuge in was the same as I had left it. My favorite bakery across the street from our eight-floor lighthouse still had the same employees in it. I found it shocking that I had spent five whole months in this town. And,

would I do it all over again?

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