A visitor from Vermont blogs the faces of Israel

Judith Hertog was tired of hearing uninformed commentary about Israel.

Hertog, a Dutch Jew, lives in Vermont with her Israeli husband, whom she’d met during her university studies in Israel and who now teaches Asian studies at Dartmouth, and their two children.

But she found that local comments, whether pro or anti-Israel, were often uninformed, and came with little comprehension of the “real situation,” said Hertog.

One acquaintance posted journalist Helen Thomas’s anti-Semitic comments about Israelis “getting the hell out of Palestine” on her Facebook page. Hertog found that jarring.

“The only way to really respond is to show how complex it is,” she said. “I wanted to show how different people are in Israel, the varieties and opinions.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. The family was planning on spending the year in Israel during Hertog’s husband’s sabbatical, in order to be closer to their family and give their children a chance to learn Hebrew.

Hertog, a writer, had planned to work on a book. Instead, she has ended up spending most of the last months working on a photography blog, talking to Israelis all over the country, and posting their pictures and quotes on her website.

Called “Views from a Real Place,” it’s a collection of images of people that Hertog has met. She asks each one the same questions: “What are you doing here right now, what is your occupation, where is your family from, how do you describe your religious or national identity, what are your hopes and expectations for the future of this land.”

And what she’s found is that everybody has a story.

“Everything’s surprising about it,” she said. “People aren’t what you expect them to be. I set out to subvert other people’s prejudices about Israel and I find out that I constantly upset my own expectations. It’s wonderful when that happens.”

Hertog found her variety of subjects as she made her way around the country this year. They’re often shopkeepers or people sitting in cafes — “because that’s who has time to talk” — but she’s also interviewed people on the train, on the beach and with her kids in tow.

With the year winding down, Hertog’s project hasn’t necessarily answered any questions, although she did see that the acquaintance back home with the Helen Thomas quote “liked” her photography project on Facebook.

There’s some satisfaction in that response. For herself, however, the questions continue to present themselves.

“We always have this question of what it would be like to be back here,” she said. “So I wanted to meet people who are positive about Israel. Unfortunately, I haven’t met that many of them.”

“But when everything seems so negative, it feels good to talk to people, even people I completely disagree with, because when you speak one on one, you discover the humanity of people. I think the conflict makes people more aware of society.”

Hertog and her family will return to Vermont in June, but before they leave, she plans on wrapping up the project with a final interview, her own.