I arrived at the Fenster home around 9 p.m. on Tuesday. The day had already been a hectic one, after a midnight s’lichot (“apology” service) in Jerusalem had kept me up all of Monday night and sleeping all of Tuesday morning. Packing frantically in the early afternoon, already late for the mandatory gym time scheduled for the athletic track, I almost started crying. What in the world does one bring to a four-day holiday with an Orthodox Jewish family?
I was totally cramped and had just banged my head on the low ceiling. My knees were sore from crawling and my hands were filthy. We finally emerged from the tunnels feeling an odd sense of accomplishment. A group of Year Course participants, myself included, had just finished worming our way through these intricate manmade tunnels. We were all tired and in the midst of assessing our various minor injuries, but we were thinking about the people who actually needed to travel through those tunnels all those years ago.
Arriving in Israel on Sept. 1 was a lot like visiting a distant family member for the first time. I could just imagine the hustle and bustle of a third cousin twice removed as he endeavors to make me feel welcome. And so it was with my introduction to Year Course. Everyone I met was friendly, and all Year Course administrators and counselors tried to make me comfortable.
Today marks the third week that I’ve been away from my home in Los Angeles. I think it’s safe to say these weeks have been the most exciting and hectic weeks of my life. In three weeks I have been in two countries, one of which I’m calling home for the next nine months. Israel, the home of the Jewish people, is now where I call home in every sense of the word.
My new family and I made our way down the cracked sidewalks of Bat Yam, heading toward our new home. Our madricha (female counselor) was telling us about our apartment. “It’s on the fourth floor,” she said. My longtime friend and now roommate, Jonathan, blurted out, “That’s going to be so annoying to get to on Shabbat when we can’t take the elevator.” She paused and then said: “It’s going to be so annoying every day.
When I first arrived in Akko on Sunday, March 9, to begin my Israel Experience portion of Year Course, I only had a vague idea of what I was getting myself into. I knew I was doing Dakar, the navy program. I knew I was staying at a boarding school for kids who wanted to be navy cadets, or at least learn about the navy. I knew it involved sailing and the water. I knew there were rules. But that was pretty much it!
I have now spent almost seven months living, studying, traveling and volunteering in Israel. This technologically advanced European-style country in the middle of the Middle East, a region still stuck in time in a lot of ways, seemed so foreign to me not long ago. And now it feels so comfortable, even with all its quirks.
Ever since first coming to Israel, I knew it was the land of the Jews. After being here for five months, I’ve learned even more. I’ve learned we have a biblical history here. I’ve learned how we’ve come back to the land with Zionist fervor since the late 19th century. I’ve learned how we accepted partition plan after partition plan, how we finally got a state and how lucky we are it exists today.
