Goodbye to Otzma

In just a few days it will have been a month since Otzma ended. Since we stood together on the Tayelet overlooking a stunning view of Jerusalem and said goodbye to Israel and one another. For me the past month has been full of too many goodbyes and a new start to my life. Unlike most other Otzmanikim, my goodbye to Israel was only temporary. I was home in the US for less than two weeks and then I returned to the apartment in Jerusalem I was on the search for during the majority of Part III. I have another year in Israel, appropriately titled the Year in Israel Program, it is my first year of Rabbinical School at Hebrew Union College. I had two weeks in between one intense experience ending and quite literally the rest of my life beginning.

It's been difficult trying to process the end of Otzma and my amazing year and still getting acclimated to a new lifestyle in the same country. It's strange being in Israel not in the context of Otzma. I miss my friends terribly and the closeness of a group who has endured everything together for an entire 10 months. Otzma was by far the most significant amount of time I've spent in Israel and so my association with Israel is now centered around Otzma and all of my Otzma friends.

I've been struggling since I returned to give Israel to create new associations in my mind. As odd as it has been there is a comfort in the familiarity of the the city and the country. My daily activities are all new, as are the people I am surrounded by, but Jerusalem remains the same. As I'm transitioning I know the country still works the same, or doesn't really work, depending on how you look at it. This weekend I'm going to Yokne'am to visit my adoptive family and enjoy the comfort and familiarity of being there.

As I do become more comfortable being in Israel but in a different setting I expect to still have the constant reminders of Otzma, whether it is visiting a family or friend I connected to last year, or hearing a speaker (I already have!) we heard on an Otzma seminar. I know my Otzma year has set me up for a better life in Israel than I would have had here otherwise. I know this extra year only gives me more of a chance to put down roots here that I can always return to.

In some ways after this year Israel feels so comfortably like home and in other ways it couldn't be more foreign. But what I realized during my brief visit home is that I missed even those crazy foreign aspects while I was away. On Otzma I fell in love with Israel when I wasn't even trying and I built friendships that will last a lifetime. It's almost impossible to say goodbye but luckily for me those two things are still here whether or not right in front of me at the moment.

So rather than a goodbye to Israel, I'm saying goodbye only to Otzma and I'm looking forward to a year filled with Otzma reminders.

Thanks for reading!

Best,

Andi

Summing It Up?

How, exactly, do you sum up the past 3 months living in Jerusalem? For that matter, how do you sum up the past 10 months living in Israel? How do you condense everything into an “elevator speech”, something that you can fire off without thinking when someone asks about your year abroad? How do you keep from chuckling when you are asked for the 400th time, “Did you have a good time?”

Did I have a good time? Well, OF COURSE I had a good time. I just had a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the chance to live and work in a country about as different and familiar to my own as you can get. I lived in a small city with 40 people I had never met who would become some of my closest friends, as we all found ourselves facing a culture shock that many of us had never imagined before. I lived in a town smaller than my college, speaking a language so different that it isn’t even read in the same direction as mine, and somehow managing not only to survive, but even to thrive. I lived in what may be the single most unique city in the world, one that has sparked countless wars as well as inspired countless dreams. I’ve met countless people from incredible walks of life, been to places I had only imagined, and had daily experiences that I can’t even start to describe. So… yeah. I had a good time.

The past few months, I’ve been living at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus, while working for the Partnership Division of the Jewish Agency. It has been a great experience, especially due to the people I was working with. I’m not going to lie and say I did any sort of groundbreaking work – it was pretty basic office work, with a large part of my time dedicated to working on registration for an international conference last month. Like I said, the people in the office was what made the experience so great for me – I learned a great deal about the Partnership 2000 program, the Jewish Agency, and really even Israel as a whole. Seeing the dynamic of the office and finding my place in it made heading in to the office each day (with a real world schedule!) well worth it.

But now? That’s all in the past. OTZMA 24 has now been over for about 2 weeks, as hard as that is to believe. After a few final hikes, campouts, and swims in the Kinneret, we all said our goodbyes and parted ways, back to our respective homes. Some of us will eventually return to Israel as olim hadashim (new immigrants), some of us will stick around for a while to begin their rabbinical studies (cough cough Andi cough), and many of us will find our places back in the United States. But all of us will, in some way, find our lives affected by our year together in Israel. And really, I’m not sure I can explain it any better than that.

And as for that other question – no, I don’t know yet where I’m going to go from here!