Reflections on Israel

Well I recently was asked to talk about Israel to my parent's congregation while I was back home for Thanksgiving break and the whole situation felt a little uncomfortable for me. I hadn't been to synagouge in a long time so having to stand up in front of over a hundred temple-goers was not in my vocabulary of ideal ways to spend a Friday night. Further, I've only been to Israel once and feel no more "connected" to it than, well I say this with hesitance, but than your average Jew would. Still, the whole ordeal was important to my parents and so in order to appease I drafted up something to say on the topic of a single moment from our Birthright trip there that had a lasting affect on us... (Warning! Like most things I write, this too comes off as unbelievably corny. Deal with it!)

Growing up having attended Hebrew school, probably just like many of you, my teacher’s would constantly be reminding us that one day we would visit Eretz Yisrael, "the land of milk and honey." It sounded pretty magical to a third grader, but as the years went on and as I slowly ex-communicated myself more and more from Judaism, my dreams of one day visiting Israel subsequently also faded - to the point where if someone had asked me, would you like to take a free trip to Israel? I would have said “no” just out of principle.

Well, things changed in college. I was no longer living in boca raton, a city which tricked me thinking that the world’s Jewish population was more like 30% rather than the meager .01% that it actually is. For the first time in my life being Jewish was something unusual and for the first time I wasn’t forced to stay at home on Friday nights for Shabbat dinner instead of going out. Sound familiar? But despite this newly found independence I missed the traditions and I soon became active in our school’s Hillel - where I was told about birthright and how to sign up.

Well that first summer I found myself on a plane across the world with my sister. So thinking about one of the most memorable moments from my trip, my mind automatically drifts to our visit to the Kotel, the last standing wall from the second holy temple. For whatever reason growing up, whenever I pictured Israel that iconic image of the Kotel would appear in my mind. And you what they say about some places, how they don’t live up to your expectations? Well this experience definitely went above and beyond what I thought it would be. Standing in front of the wall I felt the weight of history upon my shoulders, like thousands of crying voices barring down upon me. I fell apart, it was the closest thing to a “spiritual” experience that I've ever had. But for me personally it wasn’t the divine that gave this location its power, instead it came from humankind. I stood there in that spot which has been so important to so many people’s for so long, it was hard not to feel the force of it.

There at the kotel I saw the past, present, and future of Israel before me. The religiosity, I stood with sobbing women all reaching to touch the small portion of the wall that we were allotted to stand before in prayer; while the men stretched out in their large section. Behind me were Israeli soldiers my brothers and sisters, my age, awkwardly sporting guns. On the other side of the wall which we stood before were arabs also my brothers and sisters. And surrounding us all, on the outside looking in, were tourists from around the world.

And that’s the way I see Israel. A beautiful country, with the collective energy and spirit of a race’s - a human races - love concentrated into a small piece of land. Israel, you kind of remind me of what my parent’s would always tell me in times of tension, “we are so hard on you only because we love you so much, only because we expect more from you.”