Reflections Two Months In

Sometimes when it's dark in my room I lean over to put something on my bookshelf. That's in my parent's house. In Seattle. (Redmond, if we're being picky.)

For that one brief moment I think I'm in the room I grew up in. Surrounded in darkness (or in more likelihood when my laptop screen is surrounded by darkness) my brain plays a trick on me and I expect to be surrounded by walls and furniture that is over 6,000 miles away.

When I snap out of it a little bit, I remember I'm in a very different room, in a very different building, in a very different city, in a very different country. My head feels fuzzy and I can't comprehend that I'm not in a big house with carpeted hallways, off a road without streetlights and surrounded by woods. Instead am in a city of cement that often feels like a college town and has far too many people blasting terrible music from their cars at all hours of the night.

For this brief moment I can't comprehend that this is my life. It feels like I am looking in on someone else wondering how this girl made such a huge decision without being paralyzed by fear.

Moving to Israel seemed (and is) a natural decision to me. From my the first moment I ever landed here I felt a connection I had never felt so the decision didn't quite feel momentous. I was present for all of the steps and thought processes along the way, after all. Those steps made the move seem smaller.

But when I become capable of taking a step back in these moments of weird surrealism, all of a sudden I realize what a huge, insane, unexpected life move it was for me.

When I had my interview with the Jewish Agency, the man I spoke with laughed at one point and said what an atypical case I was. He told me how most of the people he interviews before they make aliyah are from Five Points or somewhere else in New York. They stayed in Sunday school their whole lives, went to Hebrew U or Yeshiva, had gone back and forth between Israel and the U.S. multiple times and then decided to make the move to Israel official, frequently for religious reasons.

Then there was me. A tall blonde girl brought up in a Sephardic family, with multiple Hawaiian tattoos who spent more time playing volleyball growing up than at Jew camp or in Sunday school. I've never really fit into any molds anywhere but this mold of who typically makes aliyah was probably the one I fit into the least.

But from the people I have met here so far, there are more and more of me's making aliyah. Kids who didn't grow up religious, from parents of interfaith marriages, in areas with lower Jewish populations where we always felt not Jewish enough in the Jewish community but too Jewish around our friends who weren't from the tribe.

In Israel we can be unquestionably Jewish whether we keep Shabbat or not. Whether we go to temple or not. Whether we fast on Yom Kippur or not. Whether we 'look Jewish' or not. We don't fit into the Jewish molds at home but in Israel we can comfortably make our own.

While my height and blonde hair means you can always spot me in a room here and more often than not people immediately speak English with me as my American-ness is obvious from far away, I feel more comfortable in my own skin here than I ever have and that is what I realize not only in these moments when I miss my room at home, but daily when I catch myself smiling for no reason other than how happy I feel.

These random moments of insight can also be terrifying when I think of what this move has meant for my future. Then I also remember that I don't think I've ever pictured my future with all of its possible successes and possible failures without feeling at least mildly panicked.

But the difference between having that fear here and having that fear at home is that here, I don't feel that panic simmering within me every single day. Something tells me that despite everything there is still to overcome, that it will all work out. Because this is where my heart is at home, where my soul is at home, and where I'm supposed to be.