Home is...

I'm back in the holiest of lands after a 10 day Midwest tour in the great states which I'm happy to report are still united. I fell seamlessly back into life in America and only noted a few major differences.
-People are generally nicer in Tennessee than in Israel.
-Similar to churches, Starbucks can be found on every street corner.
-Stores give you receipts and allow you to make exchanges and, gasp, even complete returns - a foreign idea in Israel.
-Anti-abortion signs escorted me along my drive from Tennessee to Indiana where it is unquestionable that "A family that prays together, stays together."

At the end of the day, I found myself comfortably catnapping in my parents new home in Knoxville, snuggly sleeping at Chez Adland (family friends in Indy), thrilled with my dorm room dozing in littlest Gubitz's IU dorm room and a splendid slumber in an elegant bridal suite in Cincinnati. Then again, I can sleep anywhere... But still nothing beats the 10 hour rematch with Jerusalem of Mold's own 40 year old mattress that I happily call "my bed." Well, really - its just half of my bed...but I digress.

It was interesting to re visit my life in the US - to see who is on my cell phone speed dial, to be back in Bloomington after three years, and to celebrate at a dear friend's wedding to another dear friend. Although less than one year has passed since I moved to Jerusalem, the ultimate re-entry to life in the US will prove to be a challenge. On this journey "home," I knew I'd be returning "Home" - back to Israel. That truth will not necessarily be reality when I depart from the holiest of lands for good at the end of May.

Over jet lag and back at school, I have quickly reentered my life in the holiest of lands - only to jet off once more on Thursday morning - this time to the Ukraine and Russia.

My guess is that as the states are still United and the holiest of lands is still holy, the Former Soviet Union will likely be neither Soviet nor a Union but formerly both of those.

At the end of the day, I know the following to be true.
Home is where you light your bed on fire.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

earth, wind, FIRE, water

Image
"Things sound like they are really heating up in Israel. Glad no one was hurt in the great inferno of 2007." -- a loyal fan. All my life I've been terrified of disaster. Earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, fires, storms and floods - if it made national news, I feared it would happen to me. It should be known that I also feared more rational things such as what was inside my closet or under my bed. There was a time as a child that I was even afraid of the shower. (My sorority sisters will tell you that this also occurred during sophomore year of college.) Watching psycho too many times will do that to you or the fact that in our sorority house showers - it was common to have cold water thrown into your shower. (OK, so it is possible I was the one who carried out such shenanigans...) While being terrified of natural disasters may not be a healthiest way to live, it did cause me to lead a cautious life - a safe life. I refrained from using matches because I feared
Read more

Bonjour, Czech Please. Todah.

These days, I can't speak any language I may have once known. My English vocabulary is rapidly diminishing as my Hebrew vocabulary slowly grows. I remember the days of the week and a few songs in Spanish from elementary school and maybe a few Czech words on occasion. The only language that seems to come out with any coherence, is oddly enough, high school French. Although as I sit here writing, looking for a funny French phrase to tell you - I can only think in Hebrew. C'est la vie. When I lived in Prague in 2004, I faced daily challenges with the language and culture of the city. In the Slavic language family, Czech was unlike any language I had ever studied before - the grammar so unique, that my own name had to be conjugated in certain tenses. Instead of Jen, I was Jene. My friends David and Nina became Davide and Nino. We slowly shivered our way through the Czech winter, building new identities with the additional letter at the end of our names. Another significan
Read more

Not your average homework assignment...

The land of Israel is beautiful, breathtaking, and bountiful – and the first sight beyond the glass doors . Presumably, as we make our exodus like so many that were unable to before us – from death to deliverance – we are to feel relieved as we rejoice in our redemption. In our collective identity and universal memory that we share in this entity we call – Am Yisrael – we are always looking behind us to make sure we’ve left footsteps in which others can follow. We are always looking ahead to see what paths have been laid for us. Sometimes, it seems we forget to make sure the footsteps we’ve left for others to follow are actually worth pursuing. It seems easy for us to declare daily “Remember the Holocaust” and then to deny asylum to others seeking refuge from genocide. We refuse to acknowledge the cries from others seeking autonomy and we condemn their attacks on our people, easily forgetting that only sixty years ago, we also blew ourselves up on the road to independence. We creat
Read more