WHY WE LIVE IN THAT CRAZY QUILT, ISRAEL.(MAIN)

Byline: ALAN D. ABBEY

JERUSALEM -- ``I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.``

So goes a line from the biblical poem ``Song of Songs,'' recited at a Jewish wedding. Some people, caught up in its lyrical sensuousness, describe it as the first erotic love song. Others say ``Song of Songs'' is an allegorical poem about the people of Israel's love for God.

I view it as an expression of the relationship we are having with the land and people of Israel.

When we left Albany for a six-month sabbatical visit to Israel more than two years ago, some friends and family predicted we would not return to America. We laughed at them. We had a home, employment, friends and community in Albany. Our relatives were within a day's drive.

We had no family or friends in Israel, and we knew only the rudiments of the language and culture.

Perhaps those who predicted we would stay knew something about us, or about Israel, that we didn't. We are still here, and we have no intention of leaving.

What happened is that we fell in love. We did it the old-fashioned way: We didn't expect it, but one day we woke up and realized we were having a love affair with this country.

In our first weeks here we traveled to parts of the country we had never seen. We signed up for classes in Jewish studies and Hebrew language.

The first people we met gave us a flavor of this crazy quilt of a country: Jewish emigres from more than 100 countries speaking more than 80 languages, religious and secular, traditional and ultra-modern.

What impressed us from the beginning was their determination and fearlessness. These were people who had taken history itself by the throat and shaken loose concessions from a world that had nearly allowed their extinction.

There was Rachamim, whose father rode to Palestine from the mountains of Kurdistan on the back of a donkey in the 1930s and opened a plant nursery in a Jerusalem neighborhood on the border of a hostile Jordan.

There was Alexander, who fled the fiery hell of Europe in the middle of the century, fought in three wars for Israel and has spent 55 productive years as a printer, writer and archivist.

There was our Hebrew teacher Ayala, a native Jerusalemite who has lived through five wars but reminisced with pride of the state's early days, when food was scarce but every door in town went unlocked, and people could wander into the homes of the country's top leaders on a Friday night.

``Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves behind thy veil; thy hair is as a flock of goats.''

As we learned the basics of Hebrew, we sang the simple songs of the country's early days. Tears came to our eyes as we sang ``Jerusalem of Gold,'' a 1967 pop song that became a second national anthem when Israeli soldiers liberated the Old City of Jerusalem.

We were in the first stages of infatuation. As we traveled around this tiny land, everything about the country looked bright and beautiful: the Old City of Jerusalem's golden glow at morning and evening, the Judean Desert's sun-baked starkness, the Dead Sea's otherworldliness, the Mediterranean's crisp blue.

An ex-New Yorker invited us to his home for a meal at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, six weeks after we arrived. As we sat at his table, he predicted we would stay here, even though we had not given it a thought. He didn't know it, but he was showing us how we might stay here. The way he overturned his own life at age 40 provided us with the first of many role models.

As we broke the daylong fast of Yom Kippur a week later, we sat in a tiny apartment with another group of people as everyone said what he or she hoped for during the year ahead.

``Clarity,'' I said.

We had stepped past the infatuation stage to a desire for a deeper commitment without noticing it. We expressed our commitment by wanting to stay longer than our original six months. I joined what seemed like a promising company at the dot-com boom's peak.

``I will rise now, and go about the city, in the streets and in the broad ways, I will seek him whom my soul loveth.''

Our love affair bloomed. We had money coming in and the time to travel north and south. The political situation was good, and streets and roads were quiet. We explored the country like a lover explores his beloved's body.

My first job blew away like sand in the desert, but I quickly found a new one, and we stayed. The Internet bubble still had air left in it. Our language skills improved. Our older son entered the public school system.

Like all love affairs, ours began to have its challenging moments. We began dealing with the maddening local bureaucracy in earnest. My wife's attempt to get an Israeli driver's license required a dozen trips to five offices, not to mention driving lessons.

But we began to understand the people yelling at us on the phone, in the market and at the bank. We never spent a weekend alone, as new friends absorbed us into their lives. When another Internet company collapsed under me, I found a third job. Our kids began watching Hebrew cartoons and laughing at the punch lines.

``Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? Whither hath thy beloved turned him, that we may seek him with thee?''

Today, we understand better the reality of our relationship, what it is that we love. For all of the ways that biblical themes resonate here -- in language, religious practice and cultural values -- this is more than the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is a modern state with modern problems.

For the past 18 months we have felt the stress, uncertainty and danger of this very real place. As my wife has come to realize -- to her chagrin -- all the spy novels I read don't even come close to matching the reality we live with every day. Terrible violence, bizarre plots and secret weapons caches are facts of life here.

The pressures of the conflict with the Palestinians are matters of daily concern: Should we avoid downtown today? Is it worth a trip to the outdoor market, or is the chance of a suicide bombing high? Should we send our son to a birthday party in a part of town where a terrorist sprayed gunfire yesterday?

And so, our relationship has matured: from love affair and infatuation to commitment, shared vision and responsibility. Our love for this tough people and rugged land has deepened like a solid marriage. It is real love that we feel. We feel with it a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives that we simply could not experience anywhere else.

Alan D. Abbey is vice president, online operations at The Jerusalem Post. He is former executive business editor of the Times Union.