Finding the Words (And My Way)

Yesterday, I took my final exam for my Ulpan (Hebrew Intensive Course) in Haifa, and as I was writing the essay at the end, I suddenly found that I had the words. Well at least more words. Before getting to the Ulpan I could have conjugated verbs until the day I died, knew a smattering of verbs and nouns and adjectives, but couldn’t spit out much in the way of sentences that went beyond ‘I love my family’, and ‘this is a good book.’ Although at the end of Uplan I hadn’t gone through a magical transformation into a fully functional, all-Hebrew-knowing Israeli look-and-sound-alike, when I wrote that essay there were words coming out of my pen almost as easily as if they were in English. The usually pain-staking work of carving out ten to fifteen sentences from my limited vocabulary was not so full of anguish this time.

I had been worried throughout my month in Uplan that this stuff was just not sinking in, that it was hopeless to try to learn a language where every word sounds like every other word and there are three letters that sounds like an H that are basically indecipherable to me but made my Israeli teacher squirm when I put too much or too little H in it. But somehow it seems that, without even fully realizing it, that I have built a foundation for myself, that from here maybe it will be easier to learn because I have learned the basics and understand how to speak about the present, past, and future. When a waitress speaks to me in a restaurant or a woman asks to sit with me on a bus or to take my feet of the seat (which has happened more than once actually), I may not understand every word, but I’m beginning to get the picture and even a few key words can help me navigate what was before a completely foreign and unintelligible sentence or question.

And as I ascended into the Jerusalem hills yesterday, looking out the bus window, equipped with my new, better, larger, though still quite inadequate vocabulary, I felt…jubilant. I felt like I was coming back home. My heart swelled, and I couldn’t help but smile as I saw the illuminated path that lay before me. I have been a nomad for the past two months, travelling across this beautiful, confusing, foreign country. I have slept in Bedouin tents with a cool evening breeze and university dorms in the most humid part of Israel without the luxury of fans or air conditioning. I’ve hiked Masada, ridden a camel, lost my wallet and gained enormous amounts of perspective. But driving into Jerusalem on this green coach bus brought me some of the greatest joy I’ve felt in Israel to date. I have come home and I am ready to begin the true journey inside of myself that I have been longing for ever since setting my sights on coming to Israel one year ago, or maybe even before. I am so ready. In these two short months I have gone through immeasurable changes and considered ways of life that I used to mock or laugh at or even deplore before and I have become stronger and wiser, but also have come to realize how far I have to go. And I can’t wait to begin.

I have a friend who came to Israel and started Yeshiva (school for Torah study) right away, and I also have realized how grateful I am that I got to do everything else before and didn’t just dive into study. I now know about the bars in Tel Aviv and the beaches in Eilat and the restaurants in Haifa, and I also know that I want so much more than that. I’ve had two months to experience it and to feel that emptiness that sits within me as I sip a cranberry and vodka in a bar with its walls vibrating, scantily clad women and predatory men searching for nothing special to the beat of the unbearably loud music that barely allows you to hear and the dim lights that barely allow you to see. And I saw the irony there. And the emptiness. And have also felt its pull. But when I drove into Jerusalem, a brighter, more holy pull rushed through me, almost commanding me to be smarter and stronger and better so that I could then reap the pleasures and joys and triumphs of truth and knowledge and belief.

Jerusalem just has this way of opening me up and slicing through my doubts and fears, and I think it is because it’s a place where people have gone for thousands of years to do exactly what I’m doing. I’m just one in a line of millions of souls searching for something greater and more whole. And it’s as if when I come into Jerusalem I can feel those millions of souls resonating at my frequency, singing and searching with me. There is a lot of hate here, there are bad people and good people, religious and secular, Arabs and Jews, but there is something else here that transcends all of that which I cannot describe except to say that the air is filled with…potential. And I can’t help but breathe it in.