The Golden Lining

I get asked often why I moved to Israel. It baffles Israelis especially, why someone from a beautiful and vibrant place like Miami would want to uproot their whole life to live in this rundown strip of land in the Middle East. “Miami!?” they all say. “Why why whyyy. Lama at beh Israel??

My answer is never simple. Sometimes I say I needed a change or an adventure, and I chose Israel because I wanted something completely outside of my comfort zone. Other times, I say that the way of life here is more aligned with my own personal beliefs compared to the culture of the United States. On occasion, I say that I wanted to live abroad, and Israel is one of the few countries in the world where I knew I’d have a support system.

All of these answers are true, and all played a role in the ultimate decision to uproot my life. But the other truth is that I doubted this decision for a long time. And I still do sometimes.

When I first arrived in Israel, I thought I’d made a huge mistake. Even before I left the United States, I felt a sharp and heavy pit stemming from my throat to my stomach. I was scared shitless. Fast forward to the evening of September 1st 2021, when the taxi driver dropped me and my 4 huge bags off at the location where I was supposed to be quarantining for a week in a foreign country, completely alone.

I thought to myself: fuck Jen, what did you do?

Once I successfully lugged my bags into the room and rearranged everything to fit (it was a shoebox), I quickly changed into my bathing suit, and snuck out to find the sea (yes, I broke my quarantine. Sue me). I was reeling after 24 hours of travel, and needed to be in nature. The tayelet (boardwalk) was directly across the street from my quarantine location, so I left my phone in the room. It was sunset and the Mediterranean was glistening, beckoning me to dive in. The water was cold, so I slowly eased my way in as the sun kissed the water. Floating on my back, months of tension poured out of me like a tipped glass. I began to sob.

You made it.

You’re here.

A smile formed on my lips. Sweet relief.

Of course after that, things slowly got better. I moved into an apartment with 6 (mostly) amazing people that I could relate to, and we all woke up every day just to figure it out. And believe me, there was a lot to figure out.

But when you’re far away from family and friends and outside of your comfort zone, it forces you to harden. I think in a lot of ways the pushy culture of Israel has been positive for me. It has pushed me to be strong and fiercely protective of what matters to me.

Nothing meaningful and fulfilling will ever come easy. That’s the point. It’s supposed to be hard, it’s supposed to test you to your limits so you can grow and improve and get better. And this is one of the things I love about Israel.

Israel feels like the perfect combination of living in modern society while still embodying the communal feel of the past. Something I love is that children are taught from a young age to help others. Many strangers are called “achi,” which means brother. I think about growing up in the U.S. and how we’re taught that strangers are bad because most of the time, they are. Here it is a different message. While being simultaneously exposed and also sheltered from the evils of the world by the small-town feel that Israel expertly maintains, they are also uplifted to be leaders. They are given immense responsibility from the age of 18, and I can’t think of a better strategy for turning children into adults.

I know it sounds crazy. And I wouldn’t give up my college years for the army, not ever. But there’s something to the culture here - it breeds different kinds of people.

If you never fucked up, you’d never learn from your mistakes. And for me, it’s taken a lot of learning what not to do in order to learn what to do. It took some time to get to this place of clarity, but I know now that I made the right choice by taking a leap of faith.

Living in Israel is hard. Forget the language barrier (no, I am not yet fluent in Hebrew, but I will be in time). But it’s also incredibly rewarding in a way I have never experienced before. I made this life for myself completely on my own, and it’s so wonderfully validating to know that I can do this again. That I can thrive in all different kinds of environments.

Being here has made me appreciate my life more than I ever thought possible. I know that I amongst the luckiest humans in the world. I have not one, but two homes, two communities, two families. How many people can say that?

The silver lining is great and all, but for me, a golden lining just hits different.

So here it is, the golden lining:

Living in Israel is far from perfect, and far from easy.

But for the first time in my life, I’ve created something that is wholly and completely mine. I’m actually achieving the goals I’ve always wanted to accomplish: living more sustainably, reading and writing daily, growing professionally, learning skills I actually enjoy, building hobbies, staying true to my authentic self, setting boundaries, and simply enjoying it all. Sometimes I do the things I needed so naturally here that I don’t even realize it until after the fact. This move has allowed me to trust myself and my own timing in a way I was never able to do when I was living in the States. And I don’t know if I ever would have reached this place if I didn’t dive into something completely outside of my comfort zone.

When I was younger I thought that real love and happiness was supposed to be exhilarating, endlessly stimulating and all-encompassing. But the satisfaction I feel in my life here is much more peaceful than that. It’s a knowing I’ve never experienced before. And it tells me that I am truly exactly where I’m supposed to be.