Why We're Still Here

by Conservative Yeshiva student and JTS Cantorial student Joanna Selznick Dulkin

Everyone wants to know why we're still here in Jerusalem, why we didn't leave when it got "bad." Simple answer, really: because our life is here right now, and we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I maintain that the most scary event of the year was getting on the plane in NY: leaving my city, its downtown tip in ruins and ashes, its people, heartbroken, depressed, and angry; leaving my community of close friends, my family, the routine of school and apartment; leaving the rhythms of Manhattan and the 'comforts' of America - in short, everything I knew -- to come to Israel for the first time in my life and start virtually all over again, and then only for eight months.

Once we got here, it was fine. It was better than fine. We are part of a phenomenal community in Jerusalem, for learning and davening and thinking and sharing and being. At the Conservative Yeshiva, I study 15 hours of Talmud every week, plus classes in Midrash, Chumash, Philosophy, and Hebrew Grammar. Here, we are active members of a brand-new, completely egalitarian, traditional, and spiritual minyan that meets in Katamon. We have an apartment that is bigger than any one we could afford in NYC, and we have a piano and 3 porches. We have committed teachers who give us support as well as feed our thirst for knowledge, teachers who have made the infinitely more complicated and difficult choice to live here, who were perhaps born in America but call themselves Israeli now: whose children have served in the army, gone through the Israeli school system, and speak with fluent Israeli accents.

We are in the incredible position of "living in interesting times" - a curse to some, to us a gigantic blessing. I will not attempt to downplay the horrors of the conflict that is ravaging the middle east: but we live near, not in, a war zone. We are in the moment, quite literally: being here gives us the exhilarating job of observing first-hand what is really going on; and yes, we are in the moment in all the scary ways too. I have now heard with my own ears at least 5 earth-shattering explosions in this town, and the ensuing parade of sirens screaming toward the scene. I have friends who were around the block from this bakery, on their way to that café, at Machane Yehuda, near the Midrechov, when the unthinkable happened.

It is indeed easy to despair these days, and impossible to escape the reality here. But there is so much at stake, both to our chagrin and to our radical amazement. The chagrin: living your life takes on a whole new meaning when you have death all around you. But the amazing fact is, death really isn't there all the time, all around. There is so much life here, the same way there is life around you wherever you may live. People go to work and school and do laundry and go shopping and pay their bills and pay the rent and pay the mortgage and love their families and eat dinner and play music and go for a run and listen to speeches and compose poetry and go to the doctor and have conversation and make breakfast and go out to clubs and call friends and email family and take road trips and feel pride in themselves and their community: that's life.

But you know and I know that life doesn't make news. It's when you watch too much TV that you start to believe death is all around you. Make no mistake that death casts a long and horrific shadow, and that lost lives bring devastation and anguish. Make no mistake that there is a fine line these days, living here on the thread between life and death. But that doesn't mean we live feel like we live in a war zone, doesn't mean that most people wake up and decide NOT to do one or a few of the above life activities. Perhaps instead we go about said activities with increased deliberateness, or more anxiety. Perhaps our shoulders are tight, our necks stiff, our eyes puffy from lack of sleep. But perhaps a hug or word of encouragement from someone who is also feeling deeply and in the same situation can temporarily relax and refresh everything.

So there's all that, and the great food and the quirks of this nutty society, where "Osnat" and "Nimrod" are popular first names, where you get ahead by pushing and shoving your way to the front of the line, where 8-year olds have sophisticated political perspectives, where your washing machine is twice as old as you are, where challah, candles, and wine are available at the corner store, where the public space is a Jewish space, where everything is at stake and nothing is taken for granted, where the need for unity is a painful and important lesson to live day in and day out. For all this (even the washing machine) I am thankful to be here, and, despite the bleak situation, I will have an inordinately hard time leaving in just a few short weeks.

Of course I'll be glad to come home soon, I definitely need some time to decompress, that's for sure. Of course I have asked myself constantly during this year, "Why am I here?" That's only normal, as I have found out. To ask that question both in its local/political sense and in its existential one have been the source of deep self-discovery.

So why are we here, stressed and tired and all? I will say it simply again: we have a life here, and to leave it abruptly and without closure would be even more detrimental. Living in Israel, we acutely feel the future of the Jewish people resting on our shoulders, and the topic of conversation at any and all hours of the day is a heated one of Jewish survival. Living here gives us perspective we sadly cannot achieve living anyplace else, and for this we are grateful.