Missing...

I thought it would be cute if I made a list of things I think I will miss about Israel when I am back in America and then when I get back to America, write another list about the things I miss and see how my lists compare. Also things I don’t think I will miss, just incase I end up missing them. It will be interesting for comparison. So... 

Things in Israel I will miss back in America:

Aroma

Belmont Cheese Cake

Iced Coffee

Tel Aviv Beach

Kinder Eggs

Things in Israel I will not miss back in America:

The frequent smell of baby poop mixed with olives

11 hours of school a day

Schnitzel

Constant Kosher dining

Lack of ice cubes

Living and sharing a bathroom with 3 other people

Now that I am actually back in America and have been for over a month I think that this can be done. 

Things I miss:

Tel Aviv Beach

Belmont Cheese Cake

Having neighbors that you know and talk to (yes we were all on a program together and so they weren't like "real" neighbors but it was still nice to have that around)

Pita

Sharing a bathroom with 3 other people (thought I wouldn't miss that but I really miss having extra shampoo when I run out and having someone come in and talk to you when you are taking a boring lonely shower, and I miss combing Jamie's hair with her for hours on end)

Aroma 

Hebrew (I can't tell if I miss it or if its still weird that I don't hear it around constantly)

People who understand weird EIE Hebrew slang/lingo

The abandoned hotel

The Tel (only went once but it was so nice)

Long talks with Noah 

Things I don't miss:

Schnitzel

Smell of baby poop and olives

School

Kosher anything and everything

Lack of Ice Cubes (I forgot how seriously amazing ice cubes are until I got back to America... all hail ice cube trays!)

Cooking everything in the microwave

I am sure that I could go on but I just wanted to sum it up a little. It has been good to be back in the US but I do miss Israel. I wouldn't actually want to be there right now because I just got my American life back and living with all the rockets and such doesn't sound too fun. But yes I do miss parts of Israel that American life just cannot satisfy. 

Things are coming to an end...

“Sometimes you're traveling a highway, the only road you've ever known, and wham! A semi comes from nowhere and rolls right over you. Sometimes you don't wake up. But if you happen to, you know things will never be the same. Sometimes that's not so bad. Sometimes lives intersect, no rhyme, no reason, except, perhaps, for a passing semi.”

Coming to Israel was my semi. I was living a life, the only one I have ever known and then all the sudden I was on a plane to Israel.

My intentions coming to Israel were to escape. To use a dark analogy; I was like the person who intentionally drives into the semi hoping to explode. And I did. I exploded from within. With a new life, new opinions, new thoughts, dreams, and hopes. Don’t get me wrong, escaping from reality wasn’t the only reason I came to Israel, but it was definitely a major aspect. 

Over the past four months, I have been introduced into Israeli culture. Into the life that my people are living so many miles away from my home. Before you go to Israel you can’t even imagine what it is like. I couldn’t. When you are in America you hear all these things about the Middle East. Most people hear of bombs dropping and wars, tanks blowing up and you don’t really think of normal life. I didn’t think about all that. I didn’t think anything really. I kinda just assumed I was going to live in a desert. 

When you get here everything is different. Yes there are bomb shelters, and yes there are sirens that go off in parts of the country to run to these shelters. Yes there is army soldiers everywhere, always armed with large guns. Yes the security at malls and general places is much tighter. Yes in the news there is always reports of bombings in the South, near Gaza. But I have not felt unsafe one day in Israel. When you are here you don’t think of bombs. You think of the rich culture. You go to Ein Karem and watch the Christians going to church, the tourists visiting holy Jesus sights. You go to Tel Aviv and look at cool art, swim in the ocean, sun tan and life is a giant party. You go to the North and look at the beautiful landscape, the green grass, trees, and flowers. You go to the market, the shook, and barter with sales men, buying beautiful scarves, jewelry, and delicious food. The culture, land and life here is so beautiful and full. 

I remember the moment I stopped texting friends and family at home saying, “headed back to the kibbutz” and started saying, “headed back home”. And its true over the past four months, Kibbutz Tzuba has become a second home to me. But no matter how much of a home it is to me, the bottom line is, its a second home.

My first home is in America. I never fully appreciated America until I came here. I never knew what I had, the little things, that I love so much and can’t get elsewhere. Some examples are: salt and vinegar chips, bacon, ice cubes, clothing drier, the price of gas, TV diners, Netflix, 7 hours of school (opposed to 11), and other small things. The things that I have listed aren’t absent here completely, or maybe they are, but they are things that aren’t common, or at least aren’t common for my life here. Being across the world from my family has also made me appreciate them so much more. They were already so important to me, but now they are even more important in my life. 

The thing is, my friends and family are in America. If my friends and family were here than maybe things would be different. Maybe this would be home to me. My first home. But home is where the heart is, and my heart is with my loved ones, back in New Mexico.

Coming here completely changed my life. It opened me up to thinking about new things. It gave me distance from my problems at home to step back and think about my life and how I need to do things from here on out. It also helped me to connect to who I am both as a Jew and as a human in general. 

In the future I know I will have some connection with Israel. Whether it will be visiting my EIE friends who in the future may make Aliya and the friends I have made that live here, visiting my mom who hopes to move her, or just coming to get back to the land. I know that this will not be my last time in Israel. I also know that I want to keep in touch with what is going on here. I want to keep up with the politics and follow the peace talks. I also want to be an advocate for Israel back home and educate my secular community as well as my Jewish community. I want people to be aware that Israel is not a giant war zone. 

I think that this trip has also made me want to keep more in touch with my Judaism as I go on in life. If you know me on a personal level, or just have heard me talk/ give speeches, and so on... then you probably know that I do not believe in god. But my connection to Judaism and my community has not been effected by this. This experience has made me want to continue being Jewish and if I somehow end up to have children one day (which everyone who knows me knows that is not one of my priority at all!!!) then I want them to have the option to grow up Jewish and at least have some aspect of Judaism in their lives. I want them to have an option but I would like them to know about Judaism too.

I would have to say that this trip has changed my life. This trip has been the passing semi that happened to crash into me. And I am very grateful. 

Natalie Portman is Israeli?!?!

Natalie Portman is a pretty cool Jew. Not to mention she was born in Israel. On June 9 1981, in Jerusalem she was born Natalie Hershlag. She has dual American and Israeli citizenship. When she was three years old she moved to America. She is not only an amazing actress who was in my favorite movie, Star Wars, but she is also an amazing activist. She filmed a documentary in Rwanda called Guerrillas on the Brink. She is an ambassador of Hope for FINCA International. FINCA helps to finance women-owned businesses in developing countries. She is also an ambassador of Free the Children. She is filming a new movie in Israel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Although she has lived in America most her life she has said that her heart is in the East. She wrote a very beautiful and touching piece about how she feels about Israel. 

LINK TO NATALIE PORTMAN ON ISRAEL:
http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2014/02/06/what-israel-means-to-natalie-portman-a-touching-description-of-her-homeland/

Women of the Wall

 I don’t know much about this. This is just a personal opinion/reaction. I am not going to pretend like I know about Orthodox views and their lifestyle. I am not going to say that my opinion on this was right. But this is how I saw it...

At the Kotel today with Women of the Wall, a woman came up yelling in Hebrew. She then realized that we had no idea what she was saying and proceeded to tell people around me (in English) that what we were doing was wrong. She told us that we were doing something disgraceful. Here we are, standing up for her rights, the rights of women, and she is telling us that we are doing something wrong. 

I don’t know how she thinks. I don’t know her perception of life. But to me this was like her telling us to let her be oppressed. That she liked the oppression. I understand that our world views, life views, spiritual views, and mostly all our views, are different. But to me it is like she is degrading women herself. Like she is adding to the oppression. It was sad. For me personally it was sad to see a woman who thinks that she is less than a man and therefore cannot pray in the same ways as a man. 

Israeli Movies

Spoiler Alert! 

We watched an Israeli movie called, “Walk on Water”. In this movie the a man who is in the Mussad (the Israeli CIA that kills potential threats to the country/terrorists) gets a mission to find out what the family members of a man who was once a Nazi know. If he is still alive, his mission is to get rid of him. So this Mussad (המוסד) agent poses as a tour guide for a man from Germany coming to visit his sister who lives in Israel. They are said to be the grandchildren of a former member of the Nazi party. Their grandfather is said to be dead but the Mussad doesn’t believe it and wants to make sure. The movie is basically about his with this German man. In the end he ends up going to Germany to “visit” the man and goes to this man’s father’s birthday party. At the party the grandfather comes out and the Mussad agent knows that this man used to be a Nazi. He goes to finish his mission and kill the former Nazi but decides that he is done killing people and doesn’t. Instead the grandson kills his grandfather.

The whole movie was very good. I had never really understood what the Mussad did/does and I feel like I now have a better understanding of it. I obviously don’t really get it but I know as much about it as I do the American FBI and CIA. It really just shows how much of a Jewish state Israel really is. When the government is tracking down these bad people they are going after Nazis. I feel like in America no one cares if there are still Nazi war criminals alive. But here that is something that effected our people, the people of Israel, and so Israel makes it a priority. I just found that very interesting.

Another movie we watch is called, “Sholmi’s Stars”. It is about a boy with a not so ideal family life. He is very special, he is smart and talented beyond all belief and an amazing cook. When he cooks he puts star cookies on his cakes and such. Hence the name. It is basically about the struggle he is in with his family. His parents are fighting, they aren’t together because his father cheated. His brother is, for lack of a better word, an asshole. His sister has children and is constantly fighting with her husband. And Shlomi is stuck in the middle of all this and taking care of his senile grandfather. He is a teenager and struggling with the girlfriend aspect of his life. He is fascinated with this one girl who may or may not be/have been sleeping with Shlomi’s brother and his brother’s best friend. It was a pretty confusing movie. But very cute. In the end Shlomi’s family sort of mends themselves and Shlomi and the girl he loves move to Haifa together and he goes to a school there that is more fitted for his brilliance. To me this movie just really showed that even in a completely different country they still have the same issues. When I would talk to my American friends about Israel they would all say, “Why are you going out there? Isn’t it a war zone? What if you get bombed?” and I would try to explain to them that while there is more things of that sort out here, that is not what people are thinking about. People out here have some of the same concerns we do back home in the states. It also just goes to show that everyone has a crazy family, or some sort of crazy in their family... not just me. I really enjoyed it. 

Pipeline to Heaven

In Jewish History, for homework we were told to read one short story by Etgar Keret. I read a short story called Pipes. Etgar Keret is a very dark, but wonderful writer. I will attach pictures of this story as well. That way anyone who wants to read it has a chance. 

It was about a guy who doesn’t exactly fit in. He is talking about how he didn’t fit in and got moved elsewhere and didn’t enjoy it when he says, “I didn’t really enjoy anything in particular”. He starts working at a pipe factory and after work he makes odd shaped pipes that he rolls marbles through. One day he makes a special pipe that when he sends the marbles through, they disappear. He gets the idea that if he makes a big enough one he can crawl in, and disappear as well. He says, “When the idea came to me, I was so happy that I started laughing out loud. I think it was the first time in my entire life that I laughed”. So he gets to work on a pipe big enough for himself. Once the pipe is done he talks about how people invent things because they need it. If someone doesn’t need something, no matter how capable they are, they probably won’t be the one to invent it. He goes on to say, “I don’t think there was another human being in the whole world who wanted to disappear more than I did, and that’s why it was me that invented the pipe”. 

In the end you find out he had committed suicide. He talks about how he once though Heaven was a place for good people who lived good lives. But now he believes that Heaven is a place for people who were unable to be happy on Earth. He goes on to talk about how everyone found their own way there. The last paragraph is as follows.

“There are pilots who got here by performing a loop at one precise point in the Bermuda Triangle. There are housewives who went through the back of their kitchen cabinets to get here, and mathematicians who found topological distortions in space and had to squeeze through them to get here. So if you’re really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you’re suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, ‘cause we’re getting pretty tired of the marbles.”

I thought that this story had a very cute, yet sad ending. But in the end he was happy. He talks about finding a place he fits in, even if he wasn’t able to live to find that place, its still cute. At the same time this shows a harsh truth. It is very hard to realize that so many people are unhappy with their lives. 

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