It’s been a few days since I first got here to the land of Stars and Stripes, and in many ways it’s felt like stepping onto an alien world, albeit one where everything foreign feels slightly familiar at the same time. I take the wheel of my rental car and remember what’s it’s like to drive the open road, but I cannot help but marvel at the grandness of the highways and the speed at which I travel. I see signs and buildings that stir memories in my mind, but the sheer amount of space around me and the size of everything makes me feel like I am closer to exploring the moon than being back in the country I called home for twenty-eight years. It’s the strangest feeling, reconnection with derealization, walking on old steps you’ve tread before while seeing that maybe your feet just don’t fit in the grooves you’ve worn into them.
Being “home” in so many ways has only reaffirmed where I truly feel home. I already miss my apartment, my neighborhood, and all the sights and sounds of living in Israel. As relieving as it is to speak in English with everyone around me, I catch myself putting on Israeli music, comforted by the language I barely have a grasp of. My mind is no longer the same, it has been opened up to an entirely different world, and this old one seems so strange and foreign to me that I feel like the alien in the land of my birth. Imagine an astronaut, on a mission to make a new home on Mars, given a two week pass to come back home, only to realize that he pines for the red dust more than the rich soil of the Earth.
Perhaps the old saying is true, that absence make the heart grow fonder. I first knew that I was in love with the woman I would one day marry when we were apart, realizing in a moment that everything was better with her in it, and that I never wanted to spend another night away from her again. I realize now that I am no longer truly an American, or at least more than what it says on paper. When the heart and soul yearn and look east towards Zion and hope for the return, maybe I am truly an Israeli. I breathe in the air here and it does not fill my lungs, the water does not quench my thirst, and the soil feels lifeless underneath my feet. I long to be back home, to feel the connection between myself and the place I am meant to be in, to feel and see G-d’s presence in everything around me.
I’ve gone from the holy land, and I can feel the emptiness. Exile is real and I can feel it in my bones here, and it goes past the inconveniences of being in a place where there isn’t kosher food everywhere or that I can take for granted that the people around me share a common fate. The distinction runs to my very soul, and for the first time in my life I really feel it. I know that I was completely right to pack up my belongings and make the journey to Israel, to build something in the land. Everything outside of it seems so strange, even though most of it is the only things I’ve known for the vast majority of my life.
I am enjoying seeing my family, they are one thing that keeps me bound to the earth here and let’s me see through haze of this land. Blood is thicker than any amount of ocean between us, and they are what make this trip worth it. I love them with my whole heart, but I can finally admit to myself that I no longer love this place. This place is not home, and it never could be again. I have seen the promised land, and I can never go back to living without its light.
Sending love to my brothers and sisters across the sea, and to my friends and family here in the land of the free. I hope this trip continues to go well, because this sojourn has been fraught with crises of identity, and I want to be back to the space where everything in my life just fits into place.