A Preparation of Impromptu Remarks

In two months it will be a year since I last set foot in Israel. I impetuously took a semester off college so I could live in the north, participating in a five month ulpan program. It turned out to be more of a giant party than anything. A party with loose guidelines: work, study Hebrew for a few hours, live like there’s no tomorrow, crash, repeat. As long as you made it to work and class on time (and didn’t trash any rooms in a drunken, drugged rage) you were golden. Put a group of free-spirited, college-aged students from all over the world together (in close living quarters) and you have one eclectic mess. I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. I definitely saw a different side of Israel. The side that tourists aren’t exposed to, and religious groups stay away from. The “in-transit” side, I like to call it. Aimless young adults find meaning and purpose in The Land. They choose to make aliyah and join the army. Many learn for the first time what “Zionism” is, and become part of the glue that holds Israel together.

I made connections with a few families outside of Haifa, and this allowed me to escape the bubble of kibbutz life now and then. Although I must say, I envy those who experienced their childhood on a kibbutz. The creative juices seem to flow much deeper in the kibbutznik youth. I watched as children ran around, climbed on top of bomb shelters (that double as playgrounds), and played hide and seek with their friends long past dark. In a Land that is under constant threat and perpetual conflict, I experienced more freedom and camaraderie than I’d ever experienced in my life.

During the last month of my stay, I went on a short trip with a couple of people. We traveled to a moshav in the Golan Heights where one of my friends was from. I felt like I was in a dream. The weather was beautiful, just starting to get a little cooler, and the hills were so empty and quiet. We went to a closed portion of the Kinneret and spent the day there, only briefly interrupted once by a jeep full of soldiers looking for their base.

We had taken off early in the morning after a delicious breakfast of crepes. Our first ride (to the Kinneret) didn’t talk much, but Eddie Veder’s “Hard Sun” came on as we wound down the hills to the Lake. I found this ironic as I had played that song over and over after watching “Into the Wild.” Something about it always tugged at my heartstrings. And now I was hitchhiking for the first time, listening to that very song as I stared out the window at the splendor that is Israel. Couldn’t get any better. At the close of the day we managed to snag a ride down the mountain and back into the city. Not many people were on the roads, so we took what we got: a young guy with so much mud on his tires they wouldn’t even spin. After about fifteen minutes of attempting to scrape the mud off, he left us sitting at a bus stop while he sputtered home to get more help. Problem solved, he returned, and we made our way south again and listened to “America” by Simon & Garfunkel on the CD he had burned.

A week later I left the kibbutz and returned to the Tel-Aviv area with a family friend. I spent my last few days in Israel walking around, drinking lots of “cafeh,” and soaking up as much of the atmosphere as I could. I departed from Ben-Gurion airport before the sun rose. I flew to Amsterdam, ran to my connecting flight, and endured the final stretch back to cloudy, snowy Detroit. It was over and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had just recently been accepted to a school in Chicago, and it started up in a month. That’s where I find myself today. Now all I do is reminisce and think about all the things I wish I had done differently. I know I’ll go back eventually. I’m not really sure what the point of this blog post is. It’s been forever since I’ve written anything, and I am an epic failure at organizing my thoughts in any coherent manner as of late. I’m at that awkward phase of life again. The “in-transit” phase. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going. But I have to do something. So I do.

More to come. I think?