Home
A 12 hour sleepless flight, with a group of 40 complete strangers, and a unforgiving sweat from the moment I stepped off the plane - I really didn't know what to expect from my trip to Israel.
The weeks leading up to take off I was bombarded with the usual birthright slander. "It's a brain washing trip", "you'll come back super jew", "it's called birthrate for a reason". All of these pre anticipations of what to expect, how I should feel and what I would come back as. The truth is, I had no idea what I would feel. I'm already a Jew, but Israel, a foreign land that I only knew through folklore stories from the torah and a propaganda war showering media outlets across the world. As a child I remember hearing my family chant, "Next year in Jerusalem", "The land of milk and honey"... Everyone seemed to have had the most incredible experience, but what would mine be? How would I connect with this land so many call home, without even really knowing it?
Like I said, I stepped off the plane and my first impression: HOT. Everything was sticky. I was tired, cranky, sweaty and had just sat in a puddle of muddy water. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the rest of the day in the heat, which is exactly what we did. We strolled around Jaffa trying to find the perfect falafel, played a series of ice breakers and were teased by the sea, which lingered in our peripheral for the whole day. Where was this magical feeling everyone told me about; when would I have my profound moment of... Israel!. I didn't know how much I could take of the heat and the history lessons, I was ready to rip of the clothes, which barely hung on my body and reeked of recycled plane air to crash in a dingy hotel bed.
One last stop. We ended our day at Independance Hall. As half the group slept, mouth open and all, the woman leading the discussion played the 1947 recording of Ben Gurion making the proclamation of Israel's independence as a state. As I listened to her translation of this impassioned speech, I felt the stirring of an emotion I couldn't descirbe. She proudly exclaimed the translation in English, "This right, is the natural right of the Jewish people, to be masters of their own fate like all other nations in their own sovereign state". 'Never again' was the over riding theme in his speech and with his words, he lifted us from a debt of a diaspora and gave us a home we could finally again call our own. Shortly after the applause of the tape played out, the Hatikvah cracked through the speakers and for the first time I truly understood what it meant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJObtrw_E6g For years I stood in Hebrew school listening and singing along with no appreciation, but on this day, in this dusty room filled with legends of past, I felt the most intense connection to my Jewish identity. I could feel the tears streaming down my face and the redness of my complexion bubbling beneath the surface of my skin. I felt so proud and at the same time shameful that it took me this long to get it. Rather than waiting for the anvil to hit me on the head, I should have parked my stuborness towards Israel and read between the lines. All along, a place I could call home that the Jewish people before me fought for so that we could finally decide on our own fate. Here was a connection so deep, I believe I can never really feel anywhere else.
I travel quite a bit and always find a way to make home out of something: a friends apartment, a restaurant, a hotel room, a park. But here in Israel was a different type of home. I didn't have to search for the familiar or make a feeling out of nothing. It existed already without any judgement or expectations. Israel is home and I'm lucky to be able to call it that.
This was only the first day and the experiences and emotions that would unfold the following nine days and then the week following in Tel Aviv is a whole other story. I'm not planning on making an aliyah or looking out for the next available discounted air fare to Israel, I just truly believe I come home with a greater understanding of my people and this place, I was never really prepared to call home.
To be continued....