Happy Birthday Israel!

You are with me always

Today is Israel’s 73rd birthday and year after year I am excited on this day. Though I have lived in the United States since I was eight years old, and am an American citizen now, it is Israel that lives in my heart.

It is in Israel that I was born, where my early childhood memories live, where most of my siblings were born, where my parents married, divorced, and remarried, where I spent quality time with my grandparents, where I rode my bicycle on empty highways once a year on Yom Kippur and sang every single song in the Passover Haggadah with extended family, where I went on school field trips to pick oranges at the orchard, where I learned zionist songs about Israel’s birthday, Israel’s birth — which I sing to this day — and which give me goosebumps I can’t quite explain.

I feel most at home, and most me, in Israel.

I left Israel at the end of second grade with my mother and step-dad on relocation to New York, leaving behind my father and the rest of my family. Like many Israelis, we came to the United States for two to three years and never left. This May will be 38 years.

My parents were so sure that we would return to Israel that they didn’t even apply for a green card until many years later. Though I arrived in Israel as a young child, I didn’t become naturalized as an American citizen until I was twenty-six years old. That’s a long time to wait to vote!

As my father, step-mom, siblings, and all of my extended family still lived in Israel, I spent entire summers in Tel Aviv every year, and sometimes winter breaks too.

My best memories are with my family in Israel.

I remember traveling, going to the beach for the day after making 20 pita sandwiches with hummus and hard-boiled eggs, bumming around with my siblings and my cousins, spending time with my grandparents (may they rest in peace), spending Shabbat (the Sabbath) with my family — there is nothing like the quiet of Shabbat in Israel and the feeling of family togetherness.

These memories are forever with me, and they have shaped me. I miss them and I yearn for them for me and my children alike.

While I remember everything so fondly, I also remember the teller at the bank talking to her boyfriend while eating rugelach as the line grew longer or the pain of going to government offices for any reason; no one in Israel has ever heard of customer service! I remember sirens that make tornado sirens sound faint, and my father going away for reserve service in the IDF. Israel isn’t perfect, but as I have gotten older, I have grown to love her with all of her imperfections — and mine.

We are both beautiful and a little rough around the edges, true sabras as they say; tenacious and tough-skinned on the outside but sweet and soft on the inside.

Though I have had many opportunities to return to Israel as a college student and as an adult, somehow, the timing wasn’t right for me personally and I was never open to the idea when it logistically made sense. By the time I finally recognized and listened to that pull within me, leading me back to my roots and my homeland for reasons I was not quite able to articulate, I was married to an American who didn’t share my desires, and am now divorced with two little kids grounding me in the States.

As I grow older, I feel more compelled to return to Israel. As I sit at the old port of Tel Aviv on Friday nights in the summer with my family, watching the sunset over the Mediterranean, singing songs of peace, and celebrating life with my family — my heart smiles. As I watch my kids run at the beach, as I once did, or run around with their cousins all speaking Hebrew, eating watermelon at the park from complete strangers (very typical in Israel), I know I am home.

Yes, I know that my annual summer travels to Tel Aviv don’t even begin to mimic real life in Israel, which isn’t so easy, but I know in my soul that I belong there.

Israel has stayed with me in ways that I can not explain. No one taught me to be a zionist, like many of my Jewish-American friends. I didn’t go to Hebrew school, study abroad in Israel, or do a gap year. I didn’t even have a Bat Mitzvah! (Girls don’t read from the Torah in Israel).

Israel has stayed with me in my heart, in my soul; it has shaped me and it remains a part of me. I can only hope that it will plant itself within my children’s hearts as well. (And maybe a gap year won’t hurt either!)

Happy 73rd Israel! I may live in the States, but you are in my heart.

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