Overdue Reflections

I have procrastinated posting for nearly a year. I still call Israel home. I am a counselor on Nativ, the Conservative Movement's gap-year program for eighteen-year-old Americans, a handful of Canadians and a Dane. I still haven't officially gotten a visa, though I have made a few real, live attempts to get stamped at misrad ha'panim. I have racked up a beefy frequent flyer miles account on Continental. I eat a lot of beef now. Making up for lost time I suppose. Yesterday was Yom Ha-Atzmaut. All over Israel, the air tasted like barbecue. Metal grids of grills turned to altars of greasy, grateful offerings. For home. For here.

As broken as this home is at times, I feel it, always, in my gut. Its tangled sinews of grief and joy. On Yom Ha-Shoah and Yom Ha-Zikaron, a siren blares twice, across the country, like a shofar. Cutting through layers of everything. A rupture in time and space, a message from another world, a plea for mercy and continuity and change. On Yom Ha-Shoah, I attended a tekes (ceremony) at an elementary school with some of my Nativers who volunteer there. Calling Israeli elementary schools frenetic would be an understatement. Teachers and students voice opinions, unabashed, bells bite at ears between classes. Everything is noise and motion. But when the siren sounded, all the eight and nine and ten year olds froze. When the siren sounds, the entire country breaks and breathes. I can think of no memorial more moving.

On Yom Ha-Zikaron, all of Nativ went to Har Herzl, the military cemetary, for the National tekes. People poured into the section with the newest stones to place stones and light candles and lay gerber daisies wrapped in cellophane. I found my way to the grave of Michael Levin, a fellow USYer from Bucks County, PA, a Ramahnik in the Poconos, a Nativ alum, a para-trooper, dedicated to Israel with every everything of his being. His mother, Harriet was there, surrounded by soldiers and citizens and tourists, all changed and charged by Michael's commitment. My friend, Yoni, stood by in his beret, having recently enlisted in the para-troopers because of Mike. On Channel 10, they aired a documentary about Mike called "A Hero in Heaven." It all seems so surreal. He was at Visiting Day. And now on this visiting day, there's the memory of him - a source of blessing.

I want to understand the alchemy of turning memories into blessings. Israelis talk about the country that was served on a silver platter. I pray for one that grows from the ground, all grassroots and wildflowers. . .