For Better or Worse
By Karen Eichinger
As I was walking down the street in Jerusalem today, I thought again of an image a new immigrant shared with me the last time I was in Israel. She told me that when she had lived in the States, she felt like she walked around with metal platelets on the bottom of her shoes. When she was in Israel, she felt like with every step, roots grew from her feet.
It was two years ago when I met this woman, and I had just started a year of study at The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Since then, I have lived another year in the States and, two months ago, returned to Israel, to live. Many people were surprised to learn of my decision to return. I was living very comfortably in Atlanta, all of my family and friends were in the States, and the intifada continued to rage. "It is so hard in Israel," people would say. "Maybe you should at least wait until an easier time?" As I was walking down the sidewalk and thinking of my feet carrying me to the normal everyday tasks my friends in New Jersey and Boston also do, I was overcome by the recurring realization of just how easy my life in Israel is. Here I am rooted. Here, life has meaning not only from doing but from being. I have become an active player in the unfolding drama of Jewish history on a daily basis. Even mundane acts of life contribute to the Jewish State and thus to the Jewish People on a very basic level.
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"I choose to be a Jew, that is to participate in the collective experience of my ancestors and fellow Jews down the ages. Albeit a selective participation: I do not approve of everything they approved of, nor am I prepared to continue obediently living the kind of life that they lived. As a Jew, I do not want to live among strangers who see in me some kind of symbol or stereotype, but in a State of Jews." Deborah Dayan
(halutz-pioneer) 1914
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Throughout Jewish history the Jews have had tremendous problems and struggles. This is no different today. But it is only now that, after 2,000 years, we have the vehicle through which to fully control our future as a people and realize our highest ideals. For some, these ideals are religious, for others, they are cultural, for still others, they are national in nature. Only in Israel do we have the opportunity to work together to create our destiny - in this tiny piece of land in this crazy place in the world.
Even just two generations ago, many of our ancestors would have given anything to merely see the land which so represented the deepest hopes and yearnings of the Jewish people. Today, when you make aliyah you get a free plane ticket and are carried comfortably to Israel in a plane bearing a Jewish star on its wing.
In good times and bad - this is Israel. This is the only place on the globe where a Jew can feel roots under his or her feet, regardless of how many storms rage around him. There is not an "easier" place for us. In the past 2,000 years, there could not have been a better generation in which to be born.
For the past few nights, there have been recurring sounds of gunfire in the distance. These are reminders of the very difficult time Israel is enduring right now. But, you know, even with sounds of war around me, I have never slept so deeply.