Lehitraot

Life is full of surprises. I know that I've mentioned this idea many times, but I'll say it again: I don't try to plan my life. Sure, I have directions I want to head in, but to me, the details don't matter. Details are sometimes out of our hands.

For instance, I had hoped to write this blog for a long time. I love writing and not only has this blog helped me learn more about myself, but it's also let me share what I learned. I have definitely changed over this past year, and I'm glad I have had the opportunity to relate my changes to an audience. I know that a lot of my experiences are the same as the experiences of other teens and that sharing them helps.

Meanwhile, my life has continued to happen. I never thought my year of Sherut Leumi would be so amazing or so full. I can no more create time than I can create money. No matter what I want, I'm stuck with just twenty-four hours in a day. It's not enough.

I am sad to be leaving this blog, but I'm happy to be moving on in my life. Thank you to all you readers who have followed my journey. Most of all, thank you Mom. You keep teaching me about writing and about life.

I'll see you all in the Third Temple, when it's built! Take care.

-Becca

As simple as holding a door open

Although my life feels as though it has gone by quickly, I never would have gotten to where I am without help. Most of the changes I have made were guided by mentors. I feel as though I usually had someone holding a door open for me as I passed through. My entrances were not always graceful, and sometimes I tried to keep one foot in a previous room, but the pushes I received from my life teachers and their explanations of what could be found behind new doors often helped my passage.

All of us are presented with doors daily. Sometimes we've created them and sometimes others made them. Either way, the rooms beyond those doors represent the next part of our personal growth. Just because some doors don’t have our names on them doesn't mean we can't try to open them. At times, it takes a brick to keep a door open. Other times heavy baggage helps.  Most times, if a door closes, two open. Always, it’s useful to try them. In the process of trying them, we might not only find them open, but we might also learn how to choose among them.

Life's easiest paths are not always the best ones. The first openings we find are not always the only ones. Sure, it's scary to go through an unfamiliar portal, but it's better to test the unknown than to get stuck in a room. Life is for living.

Spaces\Holiday Reflections

I thought I was starting to understand the finer workings of Israel. Milk comes in bags. Crosswalks are to be ignored. "Please" is not part of common vocabulary. If a woman needs help with her stroller, five people will immediately come to her aid, while offering unsolicited advice about the care of her baby. Also, it is perfectly acceptable to have a heart-to-heart talk with a stranger, but petting stray cats is taboo. Cats, in fact, are considered scary here.

The local rules also include the buses. Most of the time the bus will stop at designated stops. Most of the time, they will continue to designated places. Most of the time, the buses will arrive within half of an hour of their scheduled time. Most of the time they will have their final destination printed above the driver's window. 

About a week ago, everything changed. I was waiting for a bus to the old city. The "20", which was the bus I needed, pulled up to the wrong bus stop. I was close, though, so I was able to make it. Then, being a paranoid ex-American, I double checked to make sure the bus did indeed go to Jaffa Gate. I looked up into the information booth above the driver's window. It didn't say "Sha'ar Yafo."  There was no destination written there at all. Instead, the electric print proudly pronounced: "Shanah Tova."

I was flabbergasted. It wasn't so much that I was upset the bus company was confusing immigrants like me, but rather that public transportation was posting a greeting for the Jewish New Year. Israel is an amazing place. Things like Rosh Hashanah greetings on public buses, though, help me to appreciate this nation's particular awesomeness.

Smile and nod

It's great to be blonde. I have a built-in excuse for any stupid thing that I do. My new favorite "stupid" pastime is petting the stray cats in the Rova, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Those cats are tame and friendly, and they offer a good break from my national service. When people see me petting cats they look at me and smile and nod, thinking I'm  a "blond." The truth is that my stupidity has no connection to my hair, as seen by the fact that many brunettes are stupid, too. When I catch someone of a different hair color acting dimwitted, all I can do is smile and nod.

For instance, a few weeks ago, when I was petting a purring and nuzzling cat, while seated on a bench in the Rova, a pair of tourists sat down next to me. About a minute after the tourists sat down, someone I knew came over. I turned to talk to her. The cat, offended that I had stopped petting it (I'm blond; I can do only one thing at a time) jumped off of my lap and started to smell the tourists and their pizza. By the time I turned back to the cat, it was eating the tourists' pizza and they were cleaning it with a baby wipe.

"She's covered in dust," the tourist explained to me.

I smiled and nodded.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (2)

Let’s Not Forget the Kadusha (of Jerusalem)

One of my favorite summer pastimes is tourist-watching. My friends and I sit in the pedestrian mall, Ben Yehuda, and watch the tourists. I don't know what the tourists think of Israeli teens filling that space, but I enjoy it a lot. For the cost of a slurpie, I manage to get a tan, some entertainment, and perspective.

I love to see how the tourists go gaga over anything written in Hebrew, and how they seem certain that any building made out of Jerusalem stone must be part of the old city. It's great to see them generously donating to the needy on the street. I listen to their conversations about the Kotel and about The City of David. I watch them in awe of Jerusalem. I feel jealous.

I've lost that awe. I no longer look at Jerusalem as the holiest city in the world, but as my home. There is nothing wrong with feeling that Jerusalem is home, but there is something very wrong in forgetting that home is Jerusalem.

Summertime nosh

I just got back from a ten-day seminar that was meant to prepare me for sherut leumi.  The location was great, the other girls there were great, and the counselors were great.  The food was great too, except for someone like me.

I don't eat milk or meat.  I'm a parve-atarian. The salads were great, but there's only so much salad a person can eat.  So I decided to supplement by swiping hummus from the kitchen and eating it with crackers. I didn't really "swipe" the hummus; I simply relieved the lunch table of it, after everyone else had eaten their full. It was a mitzvah, ba'al tashchit, for me to take it so that it wouldn't be tossed with all of the other leftovers.

Once I had secured the hummus, I needed crackers to go with it. Those, too, were easily to acquire. Friends and I, all of whom are geeks, visited a market down the block.

We stood in the middle of the market, mostly oblivious to the other customers, and compared cracker net weights and prices. My non-geek friends, who had trailed behind us, joined us in our discussion and told us that they didn't care how much we spent, as long as we got onion flavor, which was their favorite.

Tisha B'Av 5769

It's hard to know what you have until you lose it, but it's also hard to feel loss for something you never had. That's how I used to feel every Tisha B'av.

Every year, we mourn the loss of the Temple. I never merited seeing the Temple, so it's been hard for me to mourn. This year, however, was different. I didn't mourn the Temple so much as work to build it.

I spent Tish B'av in the Old City, in the Jewish Quarter. I stayed in an apartment with some of my national service friends. All of us will be volunteering at an organization which promotes the significance of the rebuilding the Temple.

For the reading of Eicha, we stood at the outskirts of the Jewish Quarter, surrounded by policemen. That is, we heard the megilla at the Kotna Gate, right next to the entrance to Har HaBayit. We davened by the light of our cellphones and were interrupted by shouting between IDF soldiers and Arabs. Our prayer experience was amazing.

The death of a dear friend

Last night, a dear friend called. She didn't sound very good. I wondered if there was something new with her children (she certainly had heard about some of my family's ups and downs), with her or her husband's employment status (she had been privy to part of our saga), with her house hunt, or with some other important item.

Her voice quaking, she told me to sit down. Then she pronounced "Baruch Dayan Emet," and informed me that a mutual friend had passed away.

This friend was in our age group. Our children are his children's peers. His wife is one of my loved others. Our homes have been open to each other on Shabbatot, holidays and ordinary afternoons.

We had just collectively celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut (see "Friends - Gold and Silver"). He had grilled, as the host of the "silver" gathering. He had made sure there were comfortable chairs and enough food and drink for all comers. He had made necessary introductions. He had led us in an evening of dvarei Torah.

This man was neither a stranger nor a casual acquaintance. He used to sit next to Boy-Getting-Taller during services. He and my husband, Computer Cowboy, used to walk home together regularly after shul on Shabbatot.

He used to help my husband, for smachot, secure and haul tables and chairs from the local gemach. Only a good friend bothers getting sweaty, after a full day of work, for something as unglamorous as moving folded furniture.

This dear man was a learned fellow, a rabbi, in fact, though he didn't advertise his knowledge. Fortunate were the folk who shared a meal with him and heard his dvarei Torah. "By day," though, he worked in a humble vocation. He worked so that his family's klita process could be successful. He loved his family. He loved Eretz Yisrael.

The levayah will take place shortly. The pain will linger. I cannot imagine the feelings in his wife's heart or in the neshemot of his daughters. My family, and the other families who love his, will do our best to support these friends.

B'yadei Shamayim

Its 2:30 a.m. right now, six and a half hours before I have to be at the Central Bus Station to board a bus for a sherut leumi (national service) seminar. I wasn't planning on writing a blog when sleep was of the essence, but life rarely goes how I plan it. That's why I stopped - planning, that is.

I was never one for huge plans. I never sat down and wrote about what I wanted to do in the future, and where I saw myself in ten years. I did have rough idea of how life was going to unfold. I was going to finish elementary school and get rainbow braces and platform shoes. I was going to get my driver's license at sixteen, and then a car for my birthday. I was going to have two sons who shared a room and slept on a bunk bed. I would kiss them goodnight, first the son on the higher bunk, and then I would bend down and kiss the boy on the lower bunk.

Needless to say, asides from the braces, life hasn't gone according to plan. And I'm perfectly fine with that. The twists and turns of life have offered me the chance to learn that everything is for the good, even if it's hard to see at first.

A Little Perspective

At various times of my life, I have been blameworthy for stereotyping according to material artifacts. Said more plainly, I've been guilty of assuming that folks, who are more stringent about certain things, than me, are necessarily morally superior and that folks who are less careful, than me, are necessarily morally inferior. I've come to discover that such beliefs are based on fluff and nonsense!

Simple, whereas there might be a correlation between the length of one's skirt, the nature of one's head covering, and the number of buttons fastened on one's shirt to one's relationship to G-d and to man, there also might not be. Integral goodness is the potential province of all persons. What's more, most of us have lived through experiences in which the behavior of folks, whose lives seem radically different from our own, and whose actions we had assumed we understood, surprised us.

Read the rest of this post   |  Comments (12)