Lizrael Update

There are no jukim in America.

Usually when I touch down in JFK, flying over Queens at dawn, I get teary-eyed and patriotic for my hometown. I’ve been pretty emotional about New York since I left; even before I left.

Maybe it’s because I landed here today coming off the Presidents Conference, or maybe it’s been a year and four months since I’ve last visited, or maybe it’s all the changes I’ve undergone since last time I was in New York… But as soon as I saw the straight rows of yellow lights lining Far Rockaway from over the wing of the plane, I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling it. I missed the chaos of Jerusalem streets. I thought about the forest I live in, the bare roads I take to get to work. The green, the brown, the blue, the white.

Usually when I get into my parents’ car our of JFK, driving through Queens and Brooklyn, I get culture-shocked in awe of the bigness, the vastness that I have so quickly forgotten in three and a half years.

Maybe it’s because I have really built a quality life for myself, or maybe it’s because I’m doing more there in Israel than I ever imagined I’d be doing in the New York daily grind, or maybe it’s because in Israel, every single moment seems to count for something… But as soon as we passed the giant shopping centers, when I saw the first advertisements off the highway, and after viewing jeep after 4×4 after four wheel drive… I don’t know. I’m not feeling it. I just start to feel really bad for people living here.

Have I turned my motherland into a place for fun shopping? A place to be in awe, but in a not so comfortable way? And wouldn’t that make sense, that she did it to herself? Staring at these over sized products, overgrown people, at these American phenomena…

I’m interested to see how this develops over the next week and a half that I’m visiting New York. Is this a no-turning-back point for me in my aliyah or perhaps in my self-imposed American exile? Is this something we all acquire with age? Or with stepping back?

If nothing else, I am really enjoying walking barefoot over carpet and inhaling the fresh smell of hardwood floors.

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Comments

2 responses to “There are no jukim in America.”

  1. Shelley Avatar
    Shelley

    wow. a year and four months! I somehow end up in the states every few months but even after my first trip to israel when I was just 16 I came back to america only to be hit with reverse culture shock and the same sense of bewilderment. this feeling only becomes more acute with each visit and even though I try to turn it off or at the very least not be so vocal about it I’m told I majorly bum people out. I mean, the last thing I want to do is hurt anybodies feelings but the fact that I’m feeling a little sad for the people living the american life must come across even when it’s not verbalized. I guess they get a little irked out because I’ve shed light on something that on a subconscious level must have been bothering them all along. who knows.

    but! take advantage of that carpeting and luscious hardwood floors…. ohh, hardwood floors… and those magical starbucks mugs that stay closed so tightly I can throw ’em in my bag with no worries about leakage. G-d bless america! land of the free home of the whopper.

    Reply
  2. eliesheva Avatar
    eliesheva

    Ha! And touche.

    Reply

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