The Second I in Identity

There’s a dent between the “I” I was before and the “I” I am now. Life batters us. Damages us. We try (and sometimes we succeed, yet sometimes we fail) to rebuild ourselves, but no matter how close to perfect our handiwork becomes, we’re never quite the same as we were before. We change. Piece by piece, part by part, cell by cell, until we are all unrecognizable. But bits remains. Bits will always remain–in our appearances, perhaps, or our temperaments possibly–but in time we become someone different. Someone new.

It’s this tide going in and going out that’s the journey of our lives. Through sorrow and joy, through love and disappointment, each instant shapes us for the next. We are a function of powers beyond us, yet we cannot be differentiated–nor can we be integrated. What leads us is all that we have. There is no other relation.

Metaphor aside, where do I stand? In this moment, I am more than a man sitting before a screen, typing furiously upon a keyboard abused by his hands. Nor are you–my audience, a reader, a friend perhaps, or even a stranger–just a person behind a computer or on the other side of a tablet or e-reader. You are whole, as I am whole, and the missing pieces are not quite missing, but not yet discovered, not yet chiseled from this form we call our bodies.

I’ve come a long way, yet sometimes I fear I haven’t come at all.

The I is in Israel

I spent six weeks in Israel the summer of 2009. It was one of the most amazing and definitive experiences of my life and served as the perfect bridge from homeschool and Hebrew school to college. One of our writing assignments near the end was to write about what it means to be Jewish. A lot of people despised it, many of us knew it was coming, and I just sat in the computer lab until it was finished.

No matter, as a prelude to the assignment, we were asked to walk around an area of Tel Aviv where we were visiting for the day and see what people living in Israel considered Jewish. We went up and down the streets in small groups. We walked to a cafe. We walked past soldiers. We sat down with some modern Orthodox Jews. It was exciting, yet nerve-wracking approaching strangers in a strange land (alright, it wasn’t that strange, but I’m naturally quiet, so it was surely an exercise in extroversion!). And then, with our classes, we sat down. And then they dumped it on us.

The essay doesn’t stand as my best example of writing (in rereading it, I feel it lacks an air of sophistication about its coherence and structure), but it reflected my evolving views on Judaism and being Jewish at the time, and for that, it did what was intended of it. I hadn’t ever had the intention of sharing it at the time, at least with none other than our teacher, and since length wasn’t it issue, it ended up becoming a fair bit longer than the bit I posted yesterday. So, without further ado, I present to you the essay I called “Recon.”

(Short for “reconfirmation,” of course.)

The First I in Identity

Ten years ago today I became a Bar Mitzvah. Four years ago today I was confirmed. And not only is this weekend my birthday, it is also Shavuot–the birthday of the Torah, the celebration of God giving his word to us, his chosen people, the Jews. It’s said that all Jews were present at Sinai when the Law was given. If that’s the case, it was this day almost four years ago that divinity struck the mundane and carved commandments into stone.

It’s a time for reflection, and if it isn’t, I want it to be. It’s a tradition on Shavuot to study late into the night. At midnight, the sky is said to open for a sixtieth of a breath, barely a split second, and the way into heaven can be seen. These past two or three years I’ve looked, but I’ve been too slow to see it.

Lately I’ve been thinking about me and Judaism. How I realized, some nights ago, that I haven’t been saying the Shema before I go to bed, and that when I do, it hasn’t been as poignant as in the past. How, without religious school, my last constant act of observance has been broken. We don’t go to services so much anymore. We don’t light Shabbat candles. Just last week I played video games all day Saturday without even realizing it was Shabbat. I keep kosher, but by now it’s habitual. And habitual isn’t quite ritual.

So lately I’ve been thinking.

A Family Theme

This morning was the second “Shababa” at the religious school where I teach. It’s a new experiment this year, having “Shabbat school” one weekend every month or so instead of having school on Sunday. So far I’ve enjoyed them; they’re different, but unique and a pleasant experience for the teachers and students alike.

Today I had the honor of giving the d’var Torah, which in Hebrew means “words on the Torah.” It’s comparable to a sermon, except it’s not preaching, it’s teaching. See, Jews don’t proselytize–we perseverate. And with all our perseverative studying, it’s only natural to share it with others (studying the Torah is itself a commandment).

In any case, though short and sweet and written with a younger audience in mind, I thought I may as well share the drash here for anyone who may wish to read it.

H is for Ḥaverim

These past four days I was attending the ISJL Education Conference, the ISJL being shorthand for the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, the organization that provides Hebrew school curriculum and other services to over sixty congregations in thirteen southern states. It was a gathering of at least a hundred, if not two hundred, Jews from more cities than I’d ever heard of and it was wonderful.

We had a fellow from the ISJL who visits every few months. It’s just part of the program, you could say. One thing she told me often is that I must, that I absolutely without a doubt had to meet the ISJL staff rabbi, one Rabbi Marshal Klaven. He was unlike any other rabbi I’d ever meet, she said, and I’d like him.

I did like him. And he really was unlike any other rabbi I’d ever met.

Shattered

It was this day two years ago that my life changed forever. After living a double-life for longer than anyone should be forced to do so, I came to a terrifying realisation that I wasn’t just gay and Jewish, I was a gay Jew. The feeling that coursed through me brings to mind the stories of the shattered vessel of Kabbalistic fame, wherein God’s breadth was too great to be contained that it shattered what had tried so carefully to hold it in. I became that shattered vessel that day: I had so dearly longed to hold God within me, but his breadth was too great, and I shattered.

Trite as it may sound, I recall the moment very vividly, as if I were living it right now as I write these words: I’m standing in the middle of the sanctuary on the afternoon of Yom Kippur 5769. I’m fervently jumping between reading the Hebrew, which after weeks of study I’m finally starting to be able to understand, and the English when the service moves too fast for me to keep up. The Torah reading begins; I keep reading. And then I stop, my mind stuck on one passage, like a gear that has jarred the entire mechanism. For a moment I’m unable to think, unable to recall all the times I’ve read these words before, all those times as I child I read them on Yom Kippur and felt confused by them although I had not yet known why, and it’s like I’m reading them for the very first time:

“A man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”

Completing the Square

I started this blog ten years ago. True, the calendar reads only six months today, but I began with a New Year’s special in which I looked back at the last ten years of my life. The ups, the downs. All of it. In all honesty, I had intended to post it on a forum I frequent (rather infrequently now, I’m afraid), but with a longstanding desire to start a blog of my own, it seemed the perfect time–and the perfect topic–to do so with.

So I did.

This is my forty-second post. It’s not nearly as high as the 200,000,000 entries posted collectively amongst all WordPress blogs, but it’s still a nice start. It’s also exactly six posts higher than thirty-six, and if it’s not obvious already, that’s six squared–and for a mathematician like me, that’s a good sign! There’s also exactly six categories (one default, and five I actually use), three pages, and seventy-nine tags–the first three of which were gay, Jew, and writer.

Those three words sum me up rather well–and thereby most of my blog, too. In fact, when I was designing my header, I’d considered incorporating a Star of David and a male/male sign into it, but when I did so, it looked too busy and I decided it was best left as it was. That’s not to say either’s hard to find here–just look at the tags! Eleven relate directly to my being Jewish, and an additional three directly to my being gay (there’d be more to that list, too, but tags like “love” and “marriage” are just too vague).

I’ve also got three ongoing series that relate to each of them. Just this past week I started a series on equal rights and visibility with my post “A is Action”; six weeks ago I began looking at weekly verses from the Pirkei Avot and writing my thoughts about them with the post “Three Precepts”; and a staggering three months ago I started my first serial with the eponymous post “Super?”

To date I’ve had 1208 views of my blog–approximately 201 views a month, six views per day. My busiest day so far was April 29, with thirty-one views. It might not seem like a lot, but for me, any views at all is enough to keep me coming back.

And come back I intend to do! I’ve still got almost an entire five chapters of the Pirkei Avot to cover, not to mention three more parts of Super, twenty-five more letters, and ninety-nine more things to be thankful about!

I’m still a newbie. I might’ve been using the internet for as long as I can recall having it, but I’m still only six month into my blog. I’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, a lot of things to learn, and a lot of interesting things to say. I hope you’ll agree with me when I say I hope you’ll be there every step of the way. Just as we can ask whether or not a tree falling in the woods still makes a sound if there’s no one around to hear it, we can ask whether or not a blog makes any difference if there’s no one around to read it.

And maybe I can’t change the world, but I’d at least like to make a difference.

Gay Doesn’t Always Mean Happy

Class: ENG 111 Expository Writing

Assignment: Write a concept essay on a controversial issue.

Grade: 98/100 (A)

Date: November 2009

Halakhah and Homosexuality

Jacob is an Orthodox Jew. He thinks Benjamin is attractive, but because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, he resists his impulses and tries to find his girlfriend Sarah more appealing. Meanwhile, Sam, a Conservative Jew from a nearby congregation, is studying to become a rabbi with the encouragement of his family and his boyfriend Dan. How is it that these two Jewish men lead such similar, yet drastically different lives? What causes Jacob to hide his homosexual feelings but allows Sam to live openly gay?

Jewish law, known as halakhah, is a uniting force among all Jews; however, what stands to be halakhically acceptable can vary greatly between different branches of Judaism. To understand how these two men living so closely to one another can be affected by Jewish law in such different ways today, we must turn back time to the dawn of Judaism and see how its system of law has developed and evolved ever since.

Judaism traces its roots to the time of the first patriarch, Abraham, who is estimated to have lived in the year 1800 BCE; however, the earliest historical record of Abraham’s descendants, then known as the Israelites, does not appear before 1200 BCE. Judaism’s main religious text is the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses in the Old Testament. Additionally, there is an oral Torah compiled in the fifth century that is known as the Talmud and includes multiple levels of commentary on the Torah and its laws. There is no single Jewish document more concerned with Jewish law than the Shulchan Arukh, “the set table,” a code of law written by Joseph Caro in the sixteenth century.

It is from these texts that Jewish law is derived. Known in Hebrew as halakhah, which comes from the verb “to walk,” Jewish law is literally “the path which one walks.” Jewish law governs every part of a Jew’s life, from the food they eat to their business affairs to the people they’re allowed to marry (and the people they’re not allowed to marry, as in Jacob’s and Sam’s cases), and even what roles a husband and wife should play in that marriage. Jewish law is broken into two categories: Halakhah d’oraita comprises the 613 commandments written in the Torah, while halakhah d’rabbanan refers to the laws enacted by Jewish sages and rabbis, beginning with the Talmud and continuing into modern times.

There are three categories of rabbinic law: Gezeirot are laws enacted to build a fence around the Torah; that is, to prevent one from accidentally violating one of the Torah’s 613 commandments. Takkanot are laws unrelated to Biblical laws that have been put into place for the welfare of the community. One such example of a ninth century takkanah is the law forbidding polygyny (taking multiple wives), which was allowed in the Torah but forbidden by the Catholic church in medieval Europe, under whose legislation Jews were ultimate subjected. The last category of halakhah is known as minhag and includes all the customs that have been ingrained into Jewish life even if not written as an official part of halakhah.

When it comes to homosexuality, Jewish law is both d’oraita and d’rabbanan: In Leviticus 18:22, the Bible explicitly says “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.” This led medieval rabbis to enact a gezeirah proclaiming it illegal for two gay men to be even physically close, lest it lead them to breaking the Torah’s commandment.

Although halakhah aims to govern every aspect of a Jew’s personal and communal life, in today’s world where there exists no wholly Jewish government (even Israel’s government is riddled with influences of the secular), halakhah has historically been forced to be subordinate to the law of the state in which it is being determined, as has already been seen by the halakhic outlawing of polygyny in the ninth century. This often puts Jews under multiple legal systems, such as Jacob and Sam, residents of New York City, who are subject not only to halakhah, but also to New York state laws and federal laws of the United States of America.

This modern juxtaposition of religious and secular legal systems requires us to compare and contrast the legal positions of both. As has already been stated, traditional halakhah asserts that homosexual acts, including but not limited to sex between two males and same-sex marriages, are explicitly forbidden. New York law, however, differs on both accounts: New York sodomy laws were repealed in 1980 and removed completely in 2000. Furthermore, although same-sex marriages are not yet legal in New York, same-sex marriages performed elsewhere are recognized by state marriage laws. Observant Jews, however, typically follow the halakhic ruling when stricter than that of the governing legislation.

Jewish law differs not just from state law, but also within Judaism, which is why we see Jacob’s and Sam’s responses to being gay as drastically different as they are. Orthodox Jews like Jacob preserve halakhah and Jewish tradition in their most authentic—and thereby most restrictive—forms. In Orthodox communities, Jewish dietary laws are strictly followed, men and women are still separated while praying, and a gay man’s only option is celibacy or so-called reparative therapy. His goal typically remains the same: to have a wife and children.

In the most liberal branches of Judaism—the Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal movements—homosexuality has almost become a non-issue it is so widely accepted. According to the movement overviews compiled by Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, all three movements have ordained gay and lesbian rabbis since the nineties and have universally supported same-sex civil marriages for just as long.

Conservative Jews like Sam have been caught in the middle of such extremes. In 1992, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS), who decide halakhah in the Conservative movement, passed the Consensus Statement on Homosexuality, which welcomed gays into the movement while adhering to the precedent that gays could not become rabbis or be married under Jewish law. It also stated that the decision of whether or not gays could serve on synagogue committees or lead religious services was to be determined by individual rabbis. In 2006, the CJLS revisited the issue and passed three conflicting responses, two favoring the traditional standpoint while the third supporting a greater welcome for gays in the Conservative movement, once more leaving the decision of which path to follow up to individual communities. With these new laws in place, the doors to the rabbinate were finally opened for gay and lesbian Conservative Jews and many rabbinical colleges changed their policies to reflect this.

But what would life be like if Jacob and Sam weren’t Jewish, but belonged some other faith? If they belonged to a liberal Protestant denomination, they might both live as comfortably as Sam does, but if part of a conservative Protestant denomination or Catholicism, they’d still be living like Jacob is. If Muslim, they could even be punished by death.

In conclusion, we can easily see that halakhah has been around since the birth of Judaism nearly four thousand years ago and has continued to evolve ever since. Jacob may continue to struggle with being gay while Sam rejoices in his acceptance into a renowned Jewish seminary, but despite the differences in how they interpret traditional halakhah, Jewish law still connects them to each other and to Jews everywhere around the world.

Addendum: Since writing this essay, I’ve learned that many gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, although still subscribing to the laws of the Torah, are open about being gay and no longer pursue heterosexual relationships that would ultimately cause pain for both marriage partners. Nonetheless, the openness of these individuals varies greatly from person to person, and although some are comfortable having homosexual relationships, others are not. With something as personal as sexuality, no one standard can be set upon all people and be expected to apply to each of them equally. Hopefully, however, this trend signals a movement toward a more accepting Jewish community, for all Jews, whether Orthodox or otherwise.

(For those interested in reading more, a works cited list is available.)

Israel vs. the US

Class: SOC 210 Intro. to Sociology

Topic: Society and Culture

Grade: 125/125

Date: September, 2009

Cultural Differences in the United States and Israel

This past summer I spent six week studying abroad in Israel. Although I had not foreseen this assignment then, three weeks of Sociology classes have given me the ability to look back upon my conversations in Israel and evaluate them not merely in the context of students and counselors but also in the context of people from different cultures meeting for the first time. Early in my trip it was hard to distinguish different cultures on the campus where I stayed, surrounded mostly by other Americans in my predominantly Jewish group, but as the program went on and I interacted with more Israelis and observed their customs, I came to discover many viewpoints commonly held by Israelis that are not as commonly held by Americans.

One of the first differences I came across was the fact that the Jewish subculture in Israel is not subcultural at all, but on the contrary quite mainstream. Judaic shops lined the streets in every city I visited, Hasidic Jews in heavy suits and dresses were no uncommon sight even in temperatures above ninety degrees Fahrenheit, and most restaurants had signs proclaiming that they served only kosher food. At the same time, however, the breadth of Judaism in Israel also surprised me. Here in North Carolina, I belong to a Conservative synagogue where most people practice Judaism in similar ways, observing the same Jewish holidays and rituals and generally dressing up to attend services. In Israel, however, many people viewed Judaism much more casually, and one woman I spoke with even went so far as to say she only kept Jewish by living in Israel. Additionally, I was quite surprised when I attended Orthodox services in Jerusalem wearing jeans and a collared t-shirt—and wasn’t the only one dressed so casually! Of the few times I experienced culture shock in Israel, that was among the most memorable.

Another difference between American and Israeli cultures is their respective views on the environment. Americans generally disregard the environment and its needs, often using disposable household goods without considering the consequences. Israelis, on the other hand, tend to be much more environmentally conscious. My counselor Yigal was especially active in promoting recycling on our campus, helping us to sort all of our recyclable goods into appropriate bins and then emptying them frequently. Once one of my classmates told him that she had never recycled batteries before, and his surprise was clearly evident when his eyes widened and he was taken aback for a moment. Yigal explained to us that he was not the only Israeli concerned with the environment, that due to Israel’s small size and limited land resources, the threat of trash piling up and taking over usable land space is on every Israeli’s mind.

Judaism and environmentalism are both examples of material and non-material elements of culture, from the physical (tallit and tefillin; recycling bins) to the immaterial (religious values and respect for the environment), but they are certainly not the only examples of differences between American and Israeli cultures: Israel’s predominant language is Hebrew, which differs from English not only in non-material ways (the words we speak) but also in material ways (Hebrew has its own alphabet and is even written from right to left, the opposite of English).

Israeli food also differs greatly from American food and is a prime example of Israel’s material culture: Instead of macaroni and cheese and pizza, Israel has falafel (crushed chick peas seasoned and fried) and shawarma (meat, usually lamb, cooked on a rotisserie and shaved off to be served), both of which are eaten in pitas like many Middle Eastern dishes, and instead of cakes and pies, Israel has baklava (a layered pastry filled with nuts and syrup or honey) and knaffe (vermicelli-like pastry over sweetened cream cheese covered in syrup) for desserts.

Because Israeli culture is so ingrained with Jewish culture, it was often difficult for me to distinguish between the two. This leant me a more culturally relativistic viewpoint than I might have had in other parts of the world as I was able to look at certain aspects of Israeli culture (such as most shops closing on Shabbat, or the public celebration of Jewish holidays) without being unaware of why such practices are observed (you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath, for example). There were still times, however, when I did feel especially ethnocentric, such as when teenagers were freely able to buy cigarettes or when, while going through airport security on our way home, we neither had to remove our shoes or have liquids over three ounces confiscated. My being so accustomed to the opposite of such practices in America, I couldn’t help but be taken aback when I saw the norms of my culture completely ignored in theirs. Of course, there were also elements of our culture that some Israelis found odd: Yigal, for example, could not understand the pairing of chocolate and peanut butter that is so popular in the United States.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between Israeli and American cultures is also a perfect example of how social context shapes our personal decisions. For example, it was my decision to begin college after finishing High School; however, if I were living in Israel, I would not have had the option of going to college after High School but would have joined the army instead, as is mandatory for most citizens in Israel. Yigal, like my three other Israeli counselors, had gone through his army service before our trip and had only just been accepted to college near the time our program ended. What would surprise most Americans even more is that Yigal is already twenty-four, six years older than the expected age of eighteen to start college in the US.

In conclusion, it is now clear to see how two cultures, even when united by common factors, such as religion, can differ extensively in both the material and non-material ways that define them as cultures not just locally, but also globally.

The Other Olympics

This was one of the first essays I had to write for my my first semester in college. Therefore, I find it’s only fitting that it’s the first essay I post here. The topics of my essays vary widely, from personal to political to special interest and beyond, but I’m sure there’ll be something that’ll interest almost anyone in most of my essays. This first one happens to center around sports and patriotism/nationalism, but to make things simpler for casual readers leisurely perusing the blog, I’ll organise all essays written for school according to class, assignment, and grade, as well as date and topic (ordered by tags).

Class: ENG 111 Expository Writing

Assignment: Write a narrative essay about a remembered event.

Grade: 95/100 (A)

Date: September, 2009

The Other Olympics

The stands are packed with waiting fans, men and women forced to the edges of their seats poised with cameras and waving flags in their hands. People from seventy countries have converged for the start of a sporting event that occurs only once every four years. The athletes will come to the field, the President and Prime Minister will speak, the torch will be lit, and the games will begin.

Not in Turin, Italy. Not in Beijing, China. But in Ramat Gan, Israel.

 

Our buses left campus after dinner. A group of more than eighty teenagers from around the US attending a six-week High School program in Israel, we occupied ourselves by playing truth or dare and listening to music, all the while the fact that we were headed to a once-in-a-lifetime experience seeming to elude us, floating just overhead while we talked and laughed.

When we arrived, none of us had quite expected to be there. We’d come to Israel to study its history and to experience its culture, to learn about Judaism and our own history, but none of us had foreseen this. None of us had known we’d be attending the opening ceremonies of the eighteenth Maccabiah, the Maccabbi Games, the Jewish equivalent of the Olympics.

We wound our way through the parking lot towards the gate, all of us wearing matching t-shirts to not lose ourselves in the crowd. Gate seventeen greeted us with a grin, opening its mouth wide as we passed through security one-by-one, our counselors handing us our tickets as we waited to go in. Just inside the gates, smiling ushers passed out programs and miniature Israeli flags to wave in the stands. We climbed the stairs towards our seats and at the top, I staggered forward in surprise, awed by the crater I’d come upon, rows upon rows of chairs carved into its sides and filled with hundreds, if not thousands of people in the stadium. A mile away, a massive stage had been erected, surrounded by colossal video screens broadcasting the entire show. I shook myself from my stupor and found my seat, next to Carrie and Logan, two of my classmates on the trip. While the dusk deepened and we waited for the show to begin, we talked about anything that came to mind and waited less and less patiently for nightfall to come.

At last a hush fell over the stadium and our conversation was cut short. A cheer broke the air as white lights rolled out of the darkness and a parade of bicycles pedaled around the field below, their wheels alight and dazzling as their performance started the show. A dozen camera flashes sparked in the stands like the fluttering stars in the sky above. When the bicycles had wheeled their way off the field, the announcers found their place on the stage and began speaking, first in Hebrew, then in English, then in languages I didn’t even recognize, as they welcomed everyone to the eighteenth Maccabiah. Moments later, the screens behind them came alive as they called the first country’s name and their athletes began to enter the stadium. Everyone clapped, more stars came alive and died in the darkness as people took pictures of their approach, and the first country was joined by a second, and a third, and by the time the fourth one came, Carrie was asking how much longer till it would end. I laughed and told her it goes by faster on TV. Logan agreed and said at least while watching TV we could do other things.

Canada, Columbia, France—Macedonia, Lithuania, Estonia—we cheered for all the countries as their athletes entered, sometimes surprised that there were enough Jews in these unheard of lands that they could be represented here. Argentina, Uruguay, Greece—Jewish athletes from all over the world, and they kept coming and coming.

Once more the stadium fell silent and the announcers called out, “The United States of America.” We leapt up from our seats, jumping and cheering and snapping pictures like crazed paparazzi. We pounded our fists in the air and hollered, “USA! USA!” Even after the thousand athletes had found their place on the field, even after the next country and the next after that had been introduced, we continued to cheer. We cheered until our throats were sore, and as we collapsed back into our seats, I felt a sudden change in myself. I thought back to my home in North Carolina and realized that I had never felt more a part of the US than I did right then. I’d always been a part of a smaller faction, my family, my synagogue, my town, my state, but not until then had I seen myself as a part of my country, loving my country as a whole.

Carrie complained again how long it was taking, and I yawned in my seat next to her, thinking the same thing. Then we saw a white and blue-striped flag enter from the far left of the field and a rush of static ran through the stadium. Before the announcers even had a chance to speak, everyone jumped up and cheered, clapping for our homeland as Israel’s flag marched across the field. Not just the eighty of us from America, or the small group from Spain sitting behind us, or the Australians a few rows down, but all of us, the entire stadium cheering not just for the homeland of native Israelis, but the promised land for all of us, Jews from seventy countries come home to share solidarity through sportsmanship. My connection to Israel grew deeper as the cheering went on, my love of the land grew stronger as the flags waved in the air and thousands of people shared a single moment of connection, a single moment that transcended language and culture and history, and brought us together as a unified people.

Carrie asked, “Is it over yet?” and even before I could answer, the first torch-runner was introduced and began dashing around the field. The torch changed hands twice, a third time to a man in a wheelchair, and then once more to a man at the base of the stairs. He dashed upwards and we turned to watch, lifting our heads as he touched the flame to the altar and the offering burst upward toward heaven, the eighteenth Maccabiah underway, the games begun.

On the bus ride back to our campus in Hod HaSharon, we were quiet and withdrawn. The darkness didn’t lend itself to gameplay, and our voices were still hoarse from all our cheering, our bodies exhausted just the same. Inside, though, I was discovering myself again, going over the scenes once more, reliving that feeling I’d never felt before, that connection not just to a community, but to a kingdom, a new connection to both my homeland and my home.