By Rabbi Ben Kamin
GAN YAVNEH, Israel, Jan. 20–I had to “come home” to feel at home again in my own life. Change and renewal are nothing without sorrow—just as no song can be written without lyrics. The Holy Land is a place where tired gestures are converted into genuine responses.
It’s a heady, healing, and emotionally redeeming passage—this current journey of mine in Israel and, briefly, in Berlin. Cemetery stones, faded photographs behind glass, my once-dusty birth-village that is now a yuppie suburban enclave, winter rain pounding on the Jewish remnant, sunflower seeds in tiny clear sacks, my parents’ fingerprints on my nephews’ faces, and my daughters’ renewed belief in their father. Granddaughters in the womb filling the sack of life with meaning and legacy. My brother’s family grief at last tempered by laughter and mischief.
I have been looking for a place to alight and it turns out to be in the bosom of my family.
As our parents sleep in the soil here amidst other elders, we middle-aged fathers struggle to build bridges for the generations to safely traverse. We are tentatively succeeding; I have crossed the one back to my own daughters after the painful interlude of a straining marriage that divided me from them.
Sari, my older, is currently ensconced in Berlin on a work assignment. Two days after arriving here in Israel and quickly readjusting myself to its Semitic impatience and Hebrew hipness, I hopped over to Germany. Like the celebrated wall that has crumbled and been enshrined with ebullient artwork, our relationship has been transformed and poignantly repaired. Sari and I meditated on the eternal yearning for freedom and we reveled in Berlin’s international élan, designer cuisine, and its silent rebellion against a tyrannical past.
Sari is an oval-faced, inclusive, intuitive young woman with forgiving eyes and an open heart. She worries about her Dad but—to her credit—is fully prepared to call the question with him when it comes to life choices. She fills my heart with contentment every time she reminds me that she recalls the lessons I imposed upon her and her sister long ago about the dignity of working folks and the scriptural wisdom of M.L. King.
Debra, with pinwheel eyes, a razor-sharp wit, and the brooding soul of a writer, lives here in Tel Aviv and has an eclectic collection of global friends, colleagues, and admirers. She has established herself, at just 32, as a reliable and prolific byline for The New York Times and many other publications. I remember her as the 9th grader who stunned her parents by winning the Science Fair at Shaker Heights High School. She is so much like me (less the scientific breakthrough) that we have brawled emotionally a lot. Yet our souls are linked in Broadway, baseball, and a rather critical view of the Bible.
All the rivers run to the sea. I am in Israel now, the home of miracles and, thankfully my soul.
*
Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer based in Oceanside, California. He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)