What the Feck Am I Doing Here?

Caesarea: it only said not to climb on the ruins in Hebrew

I returned from Israel Sunday night. Ten days staffing a Birthright trip left me exhilarated and exhausted, confident and questioning, spiritually soaring and sunburnt. Israel is so much more vivid than America. The land is fierce. Israelis have an intensity that Americans lack, even in their leisure. As one woman told me on the beach, she’s terrified the whole time she’s outside, and constantly traces the route she’d take if a siren sounded, but it was summer, and she was going to be damned if she’d let Hamas take it from her and her children. Swimming was an act of defiance.

  

All throughout Israel, the participants and the people we met engaged in truly evaluating, considering, assessing life. Both the Americans and the Israelis who joined our group were astounded by my gamut of religious observances (No phone for 24 hours? No swimming for 9 days? Now no eating? Now lots of eating? How do you keep track of it all?), and asked searching questions that kept me on my toes. With everyone we met, we discussed the matzav (the situation). The mother of a baby who latched onto me told me she’s the daughter of a Jewish woman and Israeli Arab, and simply wants the conflict to end. Our Israeli soldiers asked that we defend Israel with our words the way they do against weapons. Our Arab Israeli bus driver told me he didn’t know how it could end. We visited the fresh graves at Har Herzl and the old memorials at Yad Vashem and then bussed straight to the midrachov to celebrate life. The contradictions and complexities drove us into heightened modes of feeling and thinking.

Sde Boker! Such a powerful oasis in the desert

So now I’m back in America, sitting in my second day of TFA Charlotte preparation for the school year. Yesterday we met our teacher coaches for the year, and I have been blessed by the gods with a man who ACTUALLY TAUGHT social studies. He is wonderful. Our team-building exercises had the minimum of TFA-y culthood that they could, and I basked in freedom to speak my mind.

Then came today. I’ve been sitting in a banquet hall for the past four hours listening to TFA staff speak about their vision. When a video of Kid President was shown, my jetlagged body took a nap. I woke up and the staffer was talking about hedgehogs. I looked at my friends and mouthed, “wtf?” Our table erupted into laughter and I felt the full absurdity of the situation. The question I always ask upon leaving Israel fell upon me heavily.

Giving a brachah to the bnei mitzvah on the trip

Where the feck am I? Why am I in Charlotte instead of Israel? Easy: for my students. But why am I staying in a room where I was forced to perform a “birthday party for diversity” and where that lady is still discoursing on hedgehogs (it’s a metaphor for… um…?) instead of thinking about educational equity? Yesterday we talked about values and people flubbed around various ideas while I felt increasingly detached— 48 hours before that I’d been in a place where people are certain of their values, where their values connect them to a community of shared values, where the values have evolved from thousands of years of refining and tradition. The manipulative word “vulnerability” has been pummeled through me in an effort to replace true connection with the value of transparency with strangers.

I walked through the airport Sunday bursting with excitement for this year. I felt a sense of power, of joy, of possibility. I have now spent four hours with the regional TFA staff and all around me, people’s voices have taken on the tinge of desperation, of anger and whining that comes when TFA staff are present. Mine tends to assume the tones of a smartass, and I have asked my closest friends to throw something at me if I look like I’m about to open my mouth. It’s not a question of rebellion, but of purpose. Students will enter my classroom in two weeks, and I need to keep only two things in my mind: the vivid fierce urgency of joyful life acquired in Israel, and the warm hold my students have upon my heart.

Happiness is family reunion at Waffle Bar