I tipped my worn sneakers as I lifted them from my suitcase, checking for grains of sand from the Tel Aviv Beach visited the day before. Proof. My memories were real and not a dream. Digging further down, I sniffed the zaatar (hyssop), sumac, dried apricots and dates for tea. In my mind, I am hearing bits of Hebrew conversation and a haunting melody of Min haMa’amakim (“From the Depths”) by Idan Raichel. Closing my eyes, I can see the vistas of flowering cacti, cedar groves, and rocky hills – pictures moving in and out of consciousness.
What did it feel like to go to Israel after 17 years? It felt like replenishing a part of my soul that I hadn’t realized had been empty. It felt like I was absorbing a vitality that nourished my cells.
Meryll and I made this trip to Israel to attend the wedding of our cousin’s daughter. Lisa, our cousin and honorary third sister, took the path less travelled in our family – moving to Israel to start a life with her husband, Giora. We never lost Lisa. She was there for us in the middle of the night when we had a crisis and now I lovingly call her “Radar” because like the MASH character, she can read our minds, and she knows what we need before we do. She was the first reader of Jewish Luck and cheerleader. She and Giora designed this website. But even better than the websites they design is the home they made in Israel. My observant Hebrew-speaking sister Meryll and secular me both found the same words and melody coming to mind as we walked onto the patio overlooking their view “Esa eynai el heharim/ me-ayin, me-ayin ya’avo ezri.” “I lift my eyes up to the hills, the source of my help.” [See the photo of Lisa and Giora’s view].
My image of an Israeli family, colored of course by Lisa and Giora’s, is when you see the semi-automatic by the door strewn down like a high school backpack, there is cause for joy because your child in army is back home. You remind them to pick up after themselves. Somehow, in Lisa’s home, the children and friends float in and out as if Jerusalem, Modi’in and Tel-Aviv are all part of one city. The warmth, the hugs, the intimacy of the kids and their friends is beautiful. Shabbat serves another purpose there besides rest and sanctity – it is the gathering time of the family coming back together. The conversations run from silly to serious with a nuance that is foreign to Meryll and my children regarding army, security and news of the day that affects whether it is ok to take a bus or not. It is very personal. There is grief for each attack.
In each moment, I played a game in my mind – “how do I know this moment that I’m in Israel?” For the most part it was easy. Like Maytal, the bride, her friends had all gone through army and perhaps this accounted for their excellent teamwork as they conducted what I would call, “Operation Wedding,” anchoring the bride every minute of her wedding day and even providing a scheme for how the car was to be decorated. I knew I was in Israel when the celebration of the wedding lasted into the next weekend in Efrat, a community of 10,000 with 34 synagogues. I saw the love and generosity that each family bestowed on the couple to help them establish a household and feel supported. Israel is a place of tenderness and toughness. It is a place where one lives in contradiction – with the daily threat of violence, but the comfort of close relationships and immediacy of life.
Meryll and I, never ones to squander opportunity, also brought our books and talks with us. Exploring the possibility of publishing, at Gefen Publishing, I knew I was in Israel as I counted the lemons on the tree behind the publisher. In Jerusalem, it was the smells of the Old City (absent donkey dung), the harmony of the buildings, the great number of frummies and the sound of the mosque announcing prayer – which seemed sometimes benign, sometimes threatening. I knew I was in Israel when I noticed that on almost every trip there was a historical site, the newer ones being medieval but some, near Hebrew University dating before the Common Era. In Yafo it was the flea markets with myriad immigrants selling random bits of the history of other places and the fresh, fresh, fresh juice.
Where it was most challenging to know that I was in Israel was at a Hadassah meeting book talk. About thirty-five women crowded into a beautiful Modi’in apartment to hear us tell Vera and Alla's true story, a story in which they have also participated if their family grew up in the Pale of Settlement. This apartment was part of a massive complex built in Jerusalem stone atop a hill designed by the famous architect Moshe Safdie, as if it were a Roman landmark. English was spoken with the rhythms and melodies of New Zealand, British, South African,Canadian, Midwest and N.Y. accents. Certainly, the pride they took in the Hadassah Hospital would be similar across any Hadassah group. But what made me know we were in Israel were the women’s own stories. Mostly in their sixties and seventies, many had recently made aliyah to Israel to follow their children. These women had their own “can-do” attitude like our characters Alla and Vera. But they ultimately left lives of comfort and familiarity to be closer to their families and contribute and be a part of their new community.
Since Meryll and I have begun writing Jewish Luck, I have returned to three places that I visited in my youth – Russia, Paris, and Israel. Israel is the most personal. Israel is the place where I feel the molecules of my body changing with each breath. Israel is my home away from home. I look at it lovingly and critically but with a great deal of admiration. History is alive there. Every marriage, every birth is a victory of continuity. – Life matters. That’s our vulnerability, my Israeli cousin would say. Yet that is our strength. Life matters. I come home from this other home inspired. But I know in time, I’ll need to go back for more connection and renewal. I am so grateful to my cousin Lisa who blazed this trail for me and have admiration for each person who made the commitment to build their lives in this special place.