You Can’t Go Home Again-Or Can You?
Reflections on my recent trip to Israel
Thomas Wolfe wrote a book called, “You Can’t Go Home Again”. I have always agreed with that thought. I have lived in 13 different homes, from my grandmother’s to my parents’, to dorm rooms and an apartment, 2 synagogue parsonages, a cottage, and 3 homes that I owned. Some I was too young to remember or rediscover and others so distant to me that when I visited from outside, I felt like such a stranger I did not even knock on the door or ask to see the insides.
Memories from some came rushing to me but it wasn’t the same. Most of the family that visited regularly or had attended the seders and family celebrations in those homes had passed away. The neighbors were gone, and more importantly the kids I grew up with, my gang, were not kids and had long ago left, as had our connections. What should have been an emotional reunion inevitably left me with a profound emptiness and sense of loss. You can’t go home again, and yet in one small way I did go “home” these last two weeks when I visited Israel.
I love returning to Israel and visiting family, friends, and the memories of great times. Let me share a few random thoughts.
When I arrived at Ben Gurion airport and was walking down a long ramp to passport control, there were many people on my right above me walking another ramp on their way to the departure gates. I had an inescapable sense that I was appearing in Jacob’s dream. As he was about to leave the borders of Israel after receiving the birthright blessing from his father and knowing his brother would try to kill him, he stopped to sleep and had a dream. He saw a ladder with angels ascending and descending the ladder. The Rabbis explain that the ascending angels were his guardian angels in the land of Israel, while the descending angels were the changing of the guard. They were the angels that would protect him as he left the Holy Land and travelled to Mesopotamia.
I was arriving and others were leaving. an image perhaps readily available as it appears in my granddaughter’s bat mitzvah portion in a few weeks, and that we had studied together. I was coming back home and symbolically living my forefather’s dream.
But coming home was short lived.
I came to take my granddaughter on her promised fun trip in Israel. She lives in Beersheba and didn’t want the heavy historical tour, or the experiential tour, or the non-religious person’s religious tour. She wanted fun, and fun was what we would have. On the first day of travelling, we ended up in Afula in the Galilee for what I promised her would be the best falafel experience in Israel.
First, we would find the nut store where fresh nuts and sunflower seeds were roasted at their peak of deliciousness. For over 2 decades every trip I led to Israel included a trip to the roaster store. When a good friend would go to Israel and no matter where he was, he took a detour to Afula to buy his Rabbi his favorite nuts. It got to the point that the lady who owned and ran the store would see him and say, “ Oh you are here to get nuts for your Rabbi”.
I was so excited to introduce my third generation to the store, except where was the store. I knew it was down the street from the felafel shop but all we saw were empty stores. I interrupted three elderly men drinking coffee and schmoozing at a table in front of the empty stores. In Hebrew I asked, “Didn’t there use to be a nut store here?” They affirmed that indeed there was but a few years ago it closed. I later found out that the store dated back to the late 1800’s and the department of health wanted a compete renovation or rebuild for sanitary reasons. The lady decided that now was a good time to retire.
You can’t go home again.
In the 1970’s representatives from Israel would always come to America to fundraise and to encourage American Aliyah to Israel. They would argue that the population was too small to sustain itself against an Arab world that wanted to destroy it. Americans were highly educated and would bring a western civility to a Mideast country, as well as an entrepreneurial approach to what was then a socialist country. Everywhere I went outside of the urban hubs, especially the drive from Beersheba to the Golan we passed by town after town that I had never heard of, but that happened to have one thing in common. Multiple high-rise apartments being built in what appeared to be nowhere. Why? There is a crisis in housing. The population is growing both in immigration and natural population growth and housing in the cities is unaffordable. A country that was pleading for people to come, is now exploding at the seams. Nothing stays the same.
You can’t go home again.
I was walking on Jaffe Street in the direction of the old city. I had two days to myself in Jerusalem and I wanted to walk to the wall to pray and soak up the atmosphere. Israelis were never known for politeness. In crowded lines there was always pushing and shoving, and yelling was known as talking.
In Hebrew when someone celebrates a special occasion like an engagement or a wedding or Bar Mitzvah we wish them, “Mazel Tov”, good luck, or good fortune. The one exception is when you find out that someone is expecting. You wish them,” beshaa tova”, in a good time, because the event has not yet happened. Many American Jews are unaware of this statement and would in their ignorance say Mazel Tov. I was aware of the statement because my grandparents would use it in Yiddish. The same words but with a Yiddish accent, and it was important to say it, lest a premature mazel tov catch the attention of the evil eye and put the fetus in danger. (Yes, Jews can be superstitious, and who wants to be responsible for a careless comment that leads to a miscarriage).
I am on Jaffe Street and a man is walking towards me, and a pregnant woman is walking just a head of me. Their body language shows no sign whatsoever that they know each other. Each walks at a steady pace in their own world and as they pass without either slowing down even a bit, he says,”beshaa tova” and she responds, “todah” thank you, and the two strangers continue on their way. This little touching melodrama of politeness touched me greatly and was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Sometimes it’s the good things that remind you.
You can’t go home again. Unless you can!
On the last day of our trip, I took my granddaughter to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu to see a campus called Habayita on the kibbutz. It was built by my friend to house lone soldiers from all over the world who come to join the army but have no family to go to when on leave. The project included lovely 2 person dorms that are their home when on leave .
Post-secondary students who want to come to Israel to learn Hebrew by studying for 6 months in an ulpan are also housed there. We met many of them as they were roaming around their campus. Most were Americans who had come over for either program and this was their home.
I had the honor and pleasure of naming the campus. I called it Habayita. It is Biblical Hebrew for “coming to your home”.
Some of the residents had been to Israel before, for others this was their first time, but for all of them and for me by extension, we were indeed, coming home again.