It starts in Ben Gurion International Airport, as any good story does. Already exhausted, daunted by the thirty six hours of travel still ahead, I wait in line to be interviewed by security personnel. Five minutes pass, then ten. Finally I reach the front.
English or Hebrew? She asks. Hebrew is fine, I reply. Or we could even try Spanish.
She begins the interview, and, as par for the course, the pre-flight screening seems oddly similar to a rabbinical school interview.
What is your home synagogue? Tell me about the last holiday you celebrated? How did you celebrate it? Your dad, Nir, does he speak Hebrew too?
I get caught on the mispronunciation of my father's name but quickly give up on trying to teach this Israeli "Neal". Natan, I respond.
What a nice Jewish name he has.
And then I look around. Plastered on the wall in front of me is a large add for Strauss foods, reminding me, in Hebrew, of course, of the amazing foods that can be made from the simplest of ingredients. Belgium for a waffle? it asks. Have one here!
Of course. Israel, the cosmopolitan center of all the world's gourmet foods.
After all, too my left stands a group of Indians, in front of me Russians, to my right Americans. I dare not look behind lest I be cut in line in the process.
So Natan my father, and Belgian waffles, and that Indian group still not being allowed to check in, comes full circle back to my own security interview.
You've learned all this Hebrew in a month and a half? she asks. Hardly. I've lived here before, and before that I studied at Berkeley. She is amazed that Hebrew is taught outside of the borders of this state.
So then when are you making Aliyah?
I'm not, I respond.
You like Los Angeles?
Of course.
I want to move there!
Of course.
And finally, I'm allowed to pass through, certified that I won't be a security threat on this flight, any more than on the other three round-trip stints I've made between Israel and the Promised Land in the last twelve months.
I'm sent off to parade through customs, past further security checks, past Chabad Hannukah checks, to my gate.
I sit down and begin to ponder how on Earth I'm going to jump out of this, the craziest of Jewish experiments in the world, and end up on a tropical Island on the exact opposite side of the Earth in a day and a half.
Was it all a dream? Did I make it all up?
What do I make of this place? What does it all mean?
But it's too soon to find answers. Not while I'm still inside the project, still navigating my way through the experience.
It doesn't make sense. I live in a nice apartment overlooking South Jerusalem. I can see Jordan from my window. And Mount Zion. I live at the intersection of three thousand years of Jewish history, two thousand years of world history. I spend my day in the middle of one of the world's bloodiest and most entrenched political conflicts, and spend my day worrying about how to get the best instant coffee available. I watch American TV, read Israeli newspapers, eat French-inspired foods on a street corner named after a Palestinian territory and a sixteenth century rabbi.
The conflation of so many interests and ideas, movements and motivations can leave one exhausted. And so, I run away.
Away to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to a place that has hardly seen a Jew, where people roast pigs for sport and dance tribal dances in celebration of their gods. Where people are relaxed, and wealth is flaunted, and carnal pleasures rule the day.
I run away from my life to find my life. And I know the second I get there, I'll miss it all incredibly.
No more Rashi and Rishonim, Natan and Netenyahu, tsnius and tsion.
But it all comes with me. It's here, in my pocket, ready to be introduced to the natives.
What's real? What's normal? What does it all mean?
Maybe there is no answer. It just is. It's my life, an conflation of cultures and identities and stories and ambitions. And this year it's especially international.
And that's just how it is.
So be it.
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