Tuesday, November 24, 2009
A small tribute
I've realized – men are amazing. I don't know where so many women in this world would be without their men. Just in the past couple days of catching up with old friends and reflecting on my new ones in Israel, it dawned on me that our men are holding us together. The 20's are a difficult time, and without naming specific names, many of my close female friends and relatives are going through some very challenging changes. And it's the boyfriends that seem to offer the ultimate source of strength, and support, and sustenance. But not in an unhealthy dependent way. In a beautiful way. In a selfless, purely loving, mutually surviving way. Like in Israel, I can't even begin to describe the number of olot chadashot (new female immigrants) who are making it through the daily Israeli challenges because of the love and support of their boyfriends. Myself included. I don't know if the olim chadashim (new male immigrants) are getting the same level of support from Israeli girls. I doubt it. But we new Israeli women are so lucky to have our strong Israeli men – without them, god knows, the number of long-term surviving olot chadashot would surely be much less! Thank you God for our men. Amen!
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Back in the USA
Well, I made it to America. It was quite an exhausting journey, more so than past trips. There were some new challenges. Like when I was going through Israeli customs, there is a line for "Israeli Passports" and a line for "Foreign Passports", and I didn't know which line to go to. Technically I don't have an Israeli passport yet, I have a teudat ma'avar, so I asked an airport employee which line to go to, and they told me I had the option to pick. So I went with "foreign passports" only because at that moment the line was shorter. When I got up to my turn, the employee scolded me for being in the wrong line, because "I'm an Israeli now" so I should be in the Israeli line, even though I don't have a passport yet. Oh, whatever. Then when I got to America of course I used my American passport, and it was strange answering the custom man's questions - such as, "What are you doing in Israel?" "Um, I live there now," was my reply. "Well, welcome home," he said, and it just felt strange, like he didn't realize that for me, this trip was more than a visit than a return home. But I realize the truth is that I have more than one home. New York is one of my homes, Boston is one of my homes, and Israel is now my ultimate home. The most striking thing since I've been walking around NYC the past couple days is just hearing English all the time everywhere on the streets. It's so strange not to hear Hebrew! and when we go to a restaurant, I can easily understand the menu. It feels so easy, too easy. It's also weird to see how much water there is in the toilet bowls. I forget how much water! I don't have to be conscious so much of letting the water run in the sink. America is the land of plenty! We went to CVS and there's just so much, so much of everything - and we went to a typical NYC bagel deli, and it was just heaven. American heaven. Cupcakes and muffins and cream cheeses of every flavor, in tofu version, in lite versions, in every variety a New Yorker could possibly desire. It's easy to love New York. And the service felt like a shock too - at dinner last night, the waitresses were so nice. And so attentive. Always refilling our water glasses without our even requesting it. I can't wait for the day that Israelis learn the concept of customer service. It's such a beautiful thing! But, on the other hand, it's cold here. It's not even cold for northeast winter standards yet, but to me and my Tel Aviv-accustomed skin, it's cold. But its ok, I can handle it for 10 days :-)
and its wonderful to be with my family. there's nothing better, nothing more comforting than hanging out on the couch catching up with my sisters and playing with my 1-year-old nephew and eating home-baked banana bread. really, nothing better. its just amazing how airplanes can bring you so quickly from one world to the next. this world is so familiar to me. but israel is the world of my heart. and in one day of travel, it feels like i've swapped lives. but its comforting to know that all of this is only a plane ride away.
and its wonderful to be with my family. there's nothing better, nothing more comforting than hanging out on the couch catching up with my sisters and playing with my 1-year-old nephew and eating home-baked banana bread. really, nothing better. its just amazing how airplanes can bring you so quickly from one world to the next. this world is so familiar to me. but israel is the world of my heart. and in one day of travel, it feels like i've swapped lives. but its comforting to know that all of this is only a plane ride away.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Signing off to America
Tomorrow I'm flying to America, for the first time since I made aliyah. I'm going to NYC and Boston for 10 days to visit family and friends and celebrate Thanksgiving.
I have such mixed feelings about my trip "home" that it's hard to reconcile how I'm feeling right now. On the one hand, I'm SO excited to see my family and friends... on the other, I have no desire to leave Israel. Not even for a minute.
I've realized that my feelings for Israel are much the same as my feelings for my boyfriend -- I'm madly in love with both. The same passion, intensity and devotion I feel towards my boyfriend, and the feeling of wanting to be with him all the time and how hard it is to be apart from him for even a day, captures exactly how I feel about Israel. Being outside of Israel feels so unnatural - this is the place I want to be, all the time! This is my life, my heart, my soul mate! I know that when I'm in America I'll feel sooo happy to be reunited with my loved ones. But ultimately, my heart is here, in Israel, and I know I'll never feel as happy on the plane ride to America as I will on the plane back to Israel.
I also had an emotionally mixed week this week because I was filmed for 2 "movies" -- one was a promo movie for Ebenezer, a pro-Israel Christian group, and the other a documentary about olim chadashim in Tel Aviv. In both interviews I was asked to describe my feelings about my aliyah experience, and the questions probed me to deeply contemplate and articulate my feelings about life in Israel. In both interviews I was asked whether I believe all Jews should move to Israel, and I realized that's a difficult question for me to answer. I was asked to define the city of Tel Aviv, and what I would do if God forbid bombs rained down on Tel Aviv. All the heavy questioning combined with the fact that I'm "packing up" for my first trip back to the states has culminated in a contemplative Libbie.
What I do know is that I'm very excited to see my people, and 10 days will go by quickly - which may be a good thing and not such a good thing. But like my love, Israel will be here waiting for me, and that's my ultimate comfort.
I have such mixed feelings about my trip "home" that it's hard to reconcile how I'm feeling right now. On the one hand, I'm SO excited to see my family and friends... on the other, I have no desire to leave Israel. Not even for a minute.
I've realized that my feelings for Israel are much the same as my feelings for my boyfriend -- I'm madly in love with both. The same passion, intensity and devotion I feel towards my boyfriend, and the feeling of wanting to be with him all the time and how hard it is to be apart from him for even a day, captures exactly how I feel about Israel. Being outside of Israel feels so unnatural - this is the place I want to be, all the time! This is my life, my heart, my soul mate! I know that when I'm in America I'll feel sooo happy to be reunited with my loved ones. But ultimately, my heart is here, in Israel, and I know I'll never feel as happy on the plane ride to America as I will on the plane back to Israel.
I also had an emotionally mixed week this week because I was filmed for 2 "movies" -- one was a promo movie for Ebenezer, a pro-Israel Christian group, and the other a documentary about olim chadashim in Tel Aviv. In both interviews I was asked to describe my feelings about my aliyah experience, and the questions probed me to deeply contemplate and articulate my feelings about life in Israel. In both interviews I was asked whether I believe all Jews should move to Israel, and I realized that's a difficult question for me to answer. I was asked to define the city of Tel Aviv, and what I would do if God forbid bombs rained down on Tel Aviv. All the heavy questioning combined with the fact that I'm "packing up" for my first trip back to the states has culminated in a contemplative Libbie.
What I do know is that I'm very excited to see my people, and 10 days will go by quickly - which may be a good thing and not such a good thing. But like my love, Israel will be here waiting for me, and that's my ultimate comfort.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
With the rain, Israel feels like a reality
The rainy season is officially upon Tel Aviv. It came so suddenly. One day we were suntanning on our balcony in 82 degree weather, and literally 3 days later it was cold, dark, and pouring rain. It suddenly didn't feel like Israel anymore. With the rain and gloomy atmosphere, it feels like a totally different place.
What's funny is that every Israeli knows that the rain will come eventually, around this time of year. And yet, it seems that everyone waits until the first torrential downpour before rushing in the masses to buy umbrellas and rain boots. You can picture a madhouse, to say the least! I wasn't prepared for the rain either because I never check the weather forecast here. For the past 6 months the forecast has literally been the same every day -- "hot and sunny." "hot and sunny." But now we have entered the time of year I have come to think of as: "check the forecast" season :-)
Like the rain, Hebrew is permeating my brain. I'm trying to swallow so much Hebrew each day - between my classroom hours, homework, and social immersion - that I even dream about Hebrew grammar. I guess that would make my teacher proud. It never ceases to amaze me what learning a language so intensively like this does to the brain. I am losing English words. I dream in an elaborate conglomeration of Hebrew and English. I find myself speaking English incorrectly at times, with the same intonations that Israelis speak it. While I still feel a natural need to turn to English in most serious situations, at the same time I feel certain Hebrew phrases express my feelings the best. I understand TV in Hebrew ten times better when there are Hebrew subtitles than when there aren't. There are times I have exciting accomplishments, like going to see a movie in Hebrew and understanding half of it, or watching children's TV shows with the girl I babysit for and I understand nearly everything. But then, after feeling like I've come so far, my boyfriend will say one simple sentence to me and I don't understand him at all. That's the ultimate in frustrating. So it's hard to guage what level I'm at -- I just feel like I'm in a brain overload most of the time!
My fellow olim chadashim (new immigrants) in my ulpan class and I are getting closer after all these long mornings together, day after day. I don't know if my teacher planned this on purpose, but this week we started learning all the words for feelings. She was smart to wait until we were really comfortable with one another before doing the exercise that we did. As with all new material, we practice the vocabulary by using examples from our lives (our teacher is opposed to hypothetical examples because they don't 'stick to the brain' as well - and she's right). anyway, it was a small class that day, and we went around sharing sentences using the feelings "frustrated" or "scared" or "disappointed", etc. I don't know if it was the sound of the rain or the small class atmosphere that day, but whatever it was, people started sharing personal things and really opening up. There is one woman in particular, a 42-year-old immigrant from Russia, who came here with her 18-year-old daughter to be with an Israeli man. Things didn't go exactly as planned and they broke up. Now she is trying to make ends meet by cleaning buildings all night, and struggling to build a social life on her own. She shared with us how depressed and hopeless she feels, and I could see by our teacher's reaction that she's not only an experienced Hebrew teacher after working with olim chadashim for several decades, but also an experienced therapist. There were tears in my class that day, and it became clear to all of us that we're not just struggling to master this language together, but we're all sharing a simliar struggle outside the classroom as well.
I left class feeling my heart open. I went to a yoga class and poured all my effort and energy into the postures. I sweated as if it was the rain drenching me. During the rest period at the end, our instructor turned off the lights and placed scented eye bags over our eyelids, and we relaxed into the ground, soothed by the gentle rhythm of the rain on the ceiling. I felt a glimmer of realization that this is it - at the end of the day, it's just our heavy bones that are left on the ground, in the darkness and the silence and the rain - and our souls are so much more than that. God gave us the power to create anything that we want, to become anything we want to be. That is why the world is full of so many wonderful and so many horrible things - he wants us to see our endless potential. And by not letting us know what happens after we die, he gives us the only true motivation possible to strive for the absolute best. There is reason why we don't know what will happen. How else can we appreciate life?
I invited my Russian ulpan friend to come to a yoga class with me next week. I hope it will be a positive experience for her. We all need to be reminded of how precious life is, and how much infinite power rests between our simple bones. Israel can be a struggle, and Israel can be wonderful. We have to seize her with a determined smile.
What's funny is that every Israeli knows that the rain will come eventually, around this time of year. And yet, it seems that everyone waits until the first torrential downpour before rushing in the masses to buy umbrellas and rain boots. You can picture a madhouse, to say the least! I wasn't prepared for the rain either because I never check the weather forecast here. For the past 6 months the forecast has literally been the same every day -- "hot and sunny." "hot and sunny." But now we have entered the time of year I have come to think of as: "check the forecast" season :-)
Like the rain, Hebrew is permeating my brain. I'm trying to swallow so much Hebrew each day - between my classroom hours, homework, and social immersion - that I even dream about Hebrew grammar. I guess that would make my teacher proud. It never ceases to amaze me what learning a language so intensively like this does to the brain. I am losing English words. I dream in an elaborate conglomeration of Hebrew and English. I find myself speaking English incorrectly at times, with the same intonations that Israelis speak it. While I still feel a natural need to turn to English in most serious situations, at the same time I feel certain Hebrew phrases express my feelings the best. I understand TV in Hebrew ten times better when there are Hebrew subtitles than when there aren't. There are times I have exciting accomplishments, like going to see a movie in Hebrew and understanding half of it, or watching children's TV shows with the girl I babysit for and I understand nearly everything. But then, after feeling like I've come so far, my boyfriend will say one simple sentence to me and I don't understand him at all. That's the ultimate in frustrating. So it's hard to guage what level I'm at -- I just feel like I'm in a brain overload most of the time!
My fellow olim chadashim (new immigrants) in my ulpan class and I are getting closer after all these long mornings together, day after day. I don't know if my teacher planned this on purpose, but this week we started learning all the words for feelings. She was smart to wait until we were really comfortable with one another before doing the exercise that we did. As with all new material, we practice the vocabulary by using examples from our lives (our teacher is opposed to hypothetical examples because they don't 'stick to the brain' as well - and she's right). anyway, it was a small class that day, and we went around sharing sentences using the feelings "frustrated" or "scared" or "disappointed", etc. I don't know if it was the sound of the rain or the small class atmosphere that day, but whatever it was, people started sharing personal things and really opening up. There is one woman in particular, a 42-year-old immigrant from Russia, who came here with her 18-year-old daughter to be with an Israeli man. Things didn't go exactly as planned and they broke up. Now she is trying to make ends meet by cleaning buildings all night, and struggling to build a social life on her own. She shared with us how depressed and hopeless she feels, and I could see by our teacher's reaction that she's not only an experienced Hebrew teacher after working with olim chadashim for several decades, but also an experienced therapist. There were tears in my class that day, and it became clear to all of us that we're not just struggling to master this language together, but we're all sharing a simliar struggle outside the classroom as well.
I left class feeling my heart open. I went to a yoga class and poured all my effort and energy into the postures. I sweated as if it was the rain drenching me. During the rest period at the end, our instructor turned off the lights and placed scented eye bags over our eyelids, and we relaxed into the ground, soothed by the gentle rhythm of the rain on the ceiling. I felt a glimmer of realization that this is it - at the end of the day, it's just our heavy bones that are left on the ground, in the darkness and the silence and the rain - and our souls are so much more than that. God gave us the power to create anything that we want, to become anything we want to be. That is why the world is full of so many wonderful and so many horrible things - he wants us to see our endless potential. And by not letting us know what happens after we die, he gives us the only true motivation possible to strive for the absolute best. There is reason why we don't know what will happen. How else can we appreciate life?
I invited my Russian ulpan friend to come to a yoga class with me next week. I hope it will be a positive experience for her. We all need to be reminded of how precious life is, and how much infinite power rests between our simple bones. Israel can be a struggle, and Israel can be wonderful. We have to seize her with a determined smile.
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