The Dream I Never Knew I Had

The view from Har Nof, my new home

These days I’m finding myself disconnected from the world I used to inhabit. Some by choice, some by chance. I am surrounded by Jerusalem stone and millions of stairs everywhere. I walk up 250 stairs to school every day. The Jerusalem forest begins just next to my apartment building, and in the distance I can see stretches of mountains and the other cities of Jerusalem. I have no internet access in my apartment. There are maybe three or four restaurants in the small city I live in. They’re all kosher and none of them serve Indian food or Chinese food or sushi. I have to take a bus to get that. There probably isn’t any shrimp or lobster or pork within a fifty mile radius.

On weekday mornings (Sunday through Thursday), on my way to school I walk through the streets of Har Nof and pass by men and boys in black suits and hats, I walk past a few yeshivas, schools of Jewish study for men, where on the porches men are bowing their torsos up and down, in tallis and tefillin (ritual prayer shawls and leather straps around the arms and head) praying with deep intention, never glancing to look at their friends or at me. The women in the streets wear long skirts and dresses, the mark of a married woman is a hair covering of either a scarf or a wig. The young girls wear long sleeve buttoned oxford shirts and long blue or black skirts as their school uniform. Men and women don’t walk together or speak to one another much unless they’re children under 13 or married.

On Shabbat there is not a car in the streets because every person in the city is observing the day of rest, eating elaborate meals, singing, praying, and spending time with their families and friends. I walk out of my apartment on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon and there are hundreds of people in the streets. The children are playing hopscotch or jumping rope in their best Shabbos clothing, couples walk slowly side by side. It’s a very different ideal than the one full of diversity of culture and ethnicity that America so heartily extols. It is homogeneous in many ways. One would never know by being there that Muslims or Christians or Hindus exist. But, having never been in a place where there has been more than a handful of people who were Jewish, this is something that I have never experienced and as weird as it may seem, it’s amazing.

A Rabbi I have learned from described it like this: if you think back to the three best moments in your life, they will all be moments of unity. Unity with yourself, with friends or family, or with God or the universe. I walk through the streets on Shabbat and I feel unity in all of these ways. I hear people singing the same songs I do, I walk by yeshivas where the men are learning the same Torah portions and laws as I am in school, I share a heritage and a history with all of these people. And to be turning off my phone and my computer to be in the world instead of trying to run it, being able to pay attention to what truly matters to me…to be able to do that with thousands of other people is huge.

It is a place I never would have put myself into intentionally. It was only through a family friend that I came here. After Birthright I had three weeks where I thought I was going to be homeless. I didn’t have any plans or family or programs to go into. So I called a friend of my parents and she put me in touch with ‘Mrs. Liff’. ‘Mrs. Liff’ turned out to be Rebbitzen Liff, the wife of a rabbi who is the head of a yeshiva in Jerusalem. And without hesitation she said, “Come stay with me.” But before coming she prefaced her city by saying, ‘You may want to dress modestly. Just so that you feel more comfortable.’ I was nervous. And on my first day here I walked into a world that was alien to me, one which made me feel self-conscious and confused. I would get dressed in the morning in long sleeves and a long skirt, take a bus out of the area and immediately purge myself of my outer layer and return to my “usual” self in a tank top or pants. At the Liff’s, just to go to the bathroom or take a shower I had to put on a long sleeved shirt and skirt. To be honest, it pissed me off. Why did I have to put on all of this clothing to make this man comfortable? Couldn’t I just go pee?!?! There were a lot of things that frustrated me. The lack of the diversity, the cloistered nature of the place.

But it also started to grow on me. It grew on me when I met women in the elevator of my building who before even learning my name asked if I had somewhere to stay for Shabbat, if I needed anything, or told me that if they could be helpful in any way to just knock. My house was their house. It grew on me when, after Shabbat, an elderly couple asked me if I needed a ride to the other side of the city and then would only speak to me in Hebrew because, as they said, “You’re in Israel. Talk our language.” It grew on me when I went to prayer services on a Saturday morning and a boy was having his bar mitzvah and his little sisters walked through the room handing out candy that we threw in celebration once he finished reading his Torah portion. But still, I didn’t want to live here, I told myself. It’s too religious. Too homogeneous. Too...not me.

I went to Ulpan in Haifa and came back, as I wrote before, in search of a school. I had my sights set on one school, the intellectual equivalent of Pardes, but with all women on its own campus. It was still very intellectually minded, but also had the all women’s element. The Rebbitzen, who I had gone back to live with during my search, gently nudged me, saying “Just go take a class at She’arim.” She’arim is the school she taught at and as much as I loved the Rebbitzen and how amazing she had been and how nice all the girls I had met who went there were, I knew it wasn’t right for me. Too religious. I wasn’t there philosophically and didn’t know if I wanted to be. But, a bit grudgingly, I went to a class there before heading to the school I had intended on. I walked in and I was surprised by how warm the place was. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted by more than a half dozen people I didn’t know, women swarmed everywhere, talking amongst themselves and rushing off to classes. I went into two classes and had two very competent and vibrant teachers give lessons on interpersonal relationships and the Book of Jonah. I learned a lot in just a few hours and I left considerably flustered that a place I was so sure I would hate had been so….pleasant. But I knew I’d love my original plan. After an excruciating trip on two buses with four different people giving me directions, I arrived. It was a beautiful campus, but when I walked into the office to find out about classes, the women I had spoken to on the phone didn’t have much but administrative stuff to say and when I met the head of the program, a man, after I told him my story about my change of heart from studying with men and women to only women, and being so excited to study and learn, his only question for me was if both of my parents were Jewish. Kind of an anti-climactic question which signaled that he either didn’t care about my experience and helping me in any way, or he just didn’t know what to do because he didn’t understand women. (Okay, maybe a bit harsh, but it was really weird.) A bit skeptical, but still very hopeful about the program, I went to some classes. And somehow it just didn’t click. One was so intellectual, that it was dry, and the other one was good, but something just didn’t feel right. I can’t explain it, but the fact that I enjoyed the school I thought I’d hate and really didn’t like the school I was expecting to love threw me. And then later that night, when I went to one of my favorite lectures in the Old City of Jerusalem, I used the knowledge I gained that day at She’arim to understand the teachings on a completely different level than I would have before. And it just clicked. There was a difference between the two schools and I could feel it. At She’arim, of the girls I had spoken to, they were all there to learn, but they were first and foremost there to grow. At the place I had originally wanted, they were still too stuck in the intellectual. I want to learn and need to learn, but more than needing to learn, I need to grow. This year isn’t just about being able to give a class at the end or take a test, it’s about living a better life. And just from spending a day at She’arim, even if they were more religious and I was a bit skeptical, I would be with other women like me who were there to become better. And if I don’t want to keep the philosophy I don’t have to. But I also realized that I wouldn’t know if it worked for me unless I tried it. If you’re gonna jump, you can’t hold back. So I jumped into the most unlikely of situations in the most unlikely of schools. I study eight hours a day with fifty other girls. I learn texts in Hebrew and go through them word by word, translating and analyzing, but I also have classes on the interpersonal, on learning to be grateful, on forgiveness, classes that make me a better person. The idea would have made me cringe before. I would have thought it was silly and that I needed to learn the texts and ask all the hard questions and fight for women’s rights all the way, but by being here I’ve learned to see that sometimes those are not the battles that need to be fought. I can learn texts for the rest of my life and I intend to, I will fight to give women voice for all of my days, but first I need to study the text of my own life and self, find my own voice. In a million years I never would have imagined I would have come to She’arim, in a region of Jerusalem I never would have wanted to live in, wearing clothes I never thought I’d wear in 90 degree weather, but once I stopped seeing the red lights that flashed in my head that said “fanatics” and “repressed,” I was able to see the women who actually inhabited the school. It is run by a woman. Almost all of the teachers are women. Many of them have Masters Degrees in subjects like English Literature and Biology. The girls I am studying with are not only normal, but they are fantastic. They are intelligent and funny and passionate and they are individuals. If you told me I’d be here two months ago, I would have laughed, but somehow, shockingly, I am here. And even more shocking, I love it.

And so, although I am disconnected from one world which I knew, with less internet access and wearing much more clothing (in terms of coverage of my body, not quantity), I am very connected to another world which I never knew existed. It is a world that I tread on lightly because I am still unsure of all of its customs as well as my agreement with them, but it is a world full of love and passion and joy and spirit that I am beginning to claim as my own. There is endless knowledge to be gleaned, many traditions to learn and question, and so much growth to continue. So I will continue, hopefully with more consistent contact, but know that all of the days I don’t write are not because I am lazy, but because I am busy studying and learning all day and more exhausted than you can imagine from all of the mental and physical stairs I am climbing…towards the top of the tree.