How a Semester Abroad in Israel is Really a Semester at Home

I am, and always have been, very sensitive to change. When preparing to study abroad, I tried to brace myself for the culture shock of living in another country for an extended period of time. On paper, the obstacles to living abroad were daunting. I was worried about new friends, new roommates, a new school, a different language, a different culture, different food, and the list goes on. However, I could never quite bring myself to use the word foreign. I was going to a different country, but not a foreign country. I would speak a different language, but not a foreign language. I would experience a different culture, but not a foreign culture. Both figuratively and literally, I was visiting a distant cousin I had met only twice before.

My first Shabbat in Jerusalem, I walked to the Kotel with a few new friends. As I stepped slowly up to the Kotel, I was overcome by the feeling that I wasn’t alone. Of course there were dozens of women physically around me, but my mind stepped back in time. I thought of my grandparents, and wondered about their ancestry. I had never really wondered before. I thought of the IDF soldiers in 1967 and the unification of Jerusalem and the Old City. I wondered what they saw when they first reached the Kotel, and what they felt. I thought about Jews living in the Diaspora before 1948 and what they would have given to stand exactly where I stood. I felt connected to an endless chain of those who came before me, and those who will come after me.

This sense of connection and belonging carried me through my semester in Jerusalem. I visited the Independence Museum in Tel Aviv and listened to a recording of Ben Gurion’s Declaration of Independence that established the Jewish state. I met Natan Sharansky, who was connected with my great-grandmother 30 years ago thorough the Soviet Jewry movement. I attended the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, and stood as the siren rang out to contrast the world’s silence 70 years ago. I visited Har Herzl on Memorial Day, as thousands of families and friends of the fallen gathered to honor their loved ones. I curiously experienced the shift from mourning to celebration as Memorial Day transitioned into Independence Day. Through the pain and the celebration, I participated, and I fit; I wasn’t an outsider or a visitor, because I am a part of the Jewish story. The Jewish history is my history; the people of Israel are my people.