My loving mother drove me first to IHOP because I missed those pancakes so. As we passed through northeastern Philadelphia, I took note of the dress, the large vehicles, and the street signs. They reminded me of this odd emptiness I felt when I got off the airplane at Newark Liberty and crossed the threshold. A large sign above me welcomed all to the United States of America. But there was nothing to it. No pictures. No quotes. No Hebrew, Arabic, French, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, German, Hindi, Marathi. Just English. Just one language, that I speak fluently.
That night I went with my family to a Phillies game. While fighting away the sleep from jetlag, I waited for my parents names to show up on the big screen for their anniversary, but it was in vain (I had made arrangements on Passover. They also got a picture frame that plays a message and "take me out to the ballgame"). At one point, I ran around the park to complain to the Phillies staff. They promised to reimburse me and play the names on the auxiliary displays. When I got back I had missed the first run of their names, but the list repeated. We shopped around the clubhouse store and discovered officially licensed skullcaps with the Phillies logo on them. I wondered how comfortable and successful the Jews must be in America to attract religious articles in a store of sporting apparel. I thought about how I had strayed from the religion of baseball over the year, after staying up til 6 each morning in Jerusalem last postseason to watch the Phillies play.
We left after the 9th inning. The game went a whopping 19 innings. I stayed up to catch the end. Not a good choice for jetlag. Before going to sleep I brushed my teeth with tap water, as opposed to bottled water, for the first time in 2 weeks. I plugged in my computer charger without an adapter for the first time in 9 months. I reviewed my diet of traditional american foods made out of corn and icing that I had missed for so long. I watched in amazement as the TV advertised foods I couldn't eat. I saw a story on the news about Memorial Day and the beginning of beach season, and thought how Israelis celebrate their Independence Day the same way. This concluded a sequence of 20 hours in the air separated by 20 hours in Israel. With the time changes from India to Israel to the American east coast, Tuesday was 26.5 hours long. Wednesday was 31 hours long.
Saturday I went to my Synagogue, where I grew up, and listened as my Dad discussed recent events in Israel and with Bibi's address to Congress. I wondered how informed anyone in the congregation was with Israeli events. I questioned how informed I now was on American events. I considered how probably nobody thought for a moment during that service that their tradition places them in exile, removed from their real home. I thought about the symbolism of praying in Hebrew.
On Sunday, my family and I went to the beach. This was a fantastic opportunity to return to the heat, the coast, rickshaws, and the Taj Mahal (hotel). I nearly choked on cold water; I still don't know how to drink it after the weeks of warm or hot water in India.
Then this week I began to visit and catch up with friends from home, from college, from camp. In each meeting, I spill the details of the program, the challenges I faced, the extraordinary realization that this year actually happened. Then I realize how little I actually shared.
Yesterday I sat through a seven hour seminar on ways to further immerse Ramah campers in Hebrew over the summer. I wrote down notes in the margin, exploring why Americans even care about Hebrew. I'm reading "Outwitting History," a memoir about the founding of the Yiddish Book Center, and the sad casting away of Yiddish culture following the establishment of Israel. Jewish history, thousands of years old, has become only 60 years long. This is the story of American Jewish history: Struggling to forge an identity that, in continuation of German Jewry was assimilated while still unique, and still Zionistic. Tough. Whereas we as American Jews could try to preserve the Jewish culture we came from, known as Ashkenazic Judaism, we now aspire to incorporate as much Israel and (modern) Hebrew into our lives as we can. Students at the Yiddish Book Center have a running line that Yiddish has become the language they speak so their parents don't understand what they're saying. It used to be different, but in this way, Israel's image has been very effective in captivating Jewish communities in America.
Tonight I gave a presentation to a group of elderly Jews at a nursing home near my house. I introduced them to the Jewish and non-Jewish communities of Israel, Morocco, Budapest, Prague, Berlin and Mumbai. They were very moved by the colors of the lanscapes, the faces, and the sounds of Jews from around the world speaking and praying. Some of them shared their stories.
Kivunim, for better or worse, is complete, but the tools of the year have stayed with me over this last week. I wanted to conclude this chapter, (prematurely because I will include more posts according to their appropriate dates, so check back to previous posts to see what else I've written) with some words I wrote at 3am Israel time on an ipod while flying back to Tel Aviv. I shared these words with the students on our last day together. The day was meant to focus on the past, present and future of their year together on the program. They shared stories with each other, received pieces of a giant map of Israel so they could offer some reflections of their home for the past year, and they talked about where their lives might go from here. In the early afternoon I told them to listen to my words as if they were hearing them hours in the future, knowing that these words were about the past, and that all of this was happening in the present. This was, to me, the culmination of their last day together, a rushed conclusion to a very rushed year together, and what will become a smaller and smaller moment of limitless information as it crawls farther back in our memories.
Their clapping response was the closest I came to feeling appreciated by the collective.
Thank you for following...
"You have
Sung your last Ana bekoach
Made your last efforts of social responsibility
Sat or slept through your last lecture
Adjusted to the last scheduling change
Ate your last coffeeshop lunch
bebos falafel
Eldad vazehu burger
Frozen yogurt
Ice cafe
Darna tajine
Glens beer
Scream shot
And ben sirah hummus
You've sung your last crack square anthem
Learned your last arabic word
Microwaved your last apple and cinnamon
Made your last purchase
Slept your last night
Met or missed your last curfew
Took your last shower
Turned in your last key
Packed your last bag
Turned off your last room light
And perhaps even rubbed your last belly of Kivunim 2010-2011
One year ago yesterday, i graduated college having learned to focus over the last 4 years. It won't take long for me to face the challenge of refocusing myself now. You see, since September, I've been doing my best to put up to 57 people before myself. At times I've failed to do so, and been distracted, often by the same thrilling and otherworldly privileges offered to you. For that I am sorry. Kivunim shares a root with כוונה both a term used in prayer and meditation and a modern Hebrew word for intention. No doubt the intentions of Kivunim have changed, sometimes at the turn of a bus in traffic, the tick tock of a clock, or hardest of all, for unknown reasons.
Here at this moment I look at your faces without the faintest idea of what I expected this year and what I expect in the future. I just know tomorrow when I return to a country whose language I speak fluently, I'll be looking for passports, projectors, kal beten, hand woven kippot, and Masha, but I won't find them. I leave here unsure as to who what or where my home is, and why I will no longer be woken up by arabs singing in the hallways. In these final moments as this group concludes its life together, perhaps never to be whole again, I want to thank you for the experience only you could have given me. Thank you for the brilliant thoughts, the volunteering to help clean up, the weekend hikes in unknown lands, the cafe and bar visits, the groopbuy discount dates, the midday and midnight hospital visits, the inflight and missed flight experiences, the challenges of living lives without identities abroad, the awareness of being yourself and the other at all times, the pain of those who left us, the insufficiency of adequate accommodations, roommate conflicts, and inebriation. Thank you for dealing with lives of continued challenge, for that is how we grow, and many many questions, especially, "what is kivunim?" Thank you for the photographs, the songs, the films, Mohawk haircuts and animal costumes. Thank you for making my job so encompassing and complicated that the term madrich has become among the most meaningless words I know. Thank you for opening your minds and hearts up to me and risking discomfort. Thank you for concluding this year with the intention כוונה to continue living differently. I hope I might be included in your plan."
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