‘But You Don’t Look Israeli’
“Where are you from?” he asks.
A dash of hesitation passes through my mind until I look back and, with a mix of pride and fear, respond, “I’m from Israel.”
Pause, this time from their end.
“But you don’t look Israeli.”
When I first moved to Israel and started learning Hebrew, I became aware of a peculiarity of Israeli culture. When asking an Israeli (in Israel), “Where are you from,” they will respond with where they live at that current moment, rather than where they were born. If you ask a native born Golani living in Tel Aviv where they’re from, they will respond Tel Aviv. Only once you ask them, “Where were you born?” or “Where did you grow up?” will they give you the full answer. A semantic testament to the “live for the moment” attitude of Israeli citizens.
For the past three years, I have been traveling the world. From spending a year farming in South America, backpacking through Europe, to studying across the Middle East and landing back in Israel again, my relationship with the Holy Land has evolved in such a way that now Israel is my “home base.”
For anyone who has traveled before, you know the first question is always, “Where are you from?” I was born and raised in New York until the age of 19, and until recently, when someone would ask me that question, I would answer “I’m from New York.” The words “I’m American” never quite sat right with me, as many New Yorkers would agree that being from the Big Apple gives you a feeling of otherness from the rest of the country.
However, in June 2023, after spending four years in and out of Israel, I finally made a decision that would change not only my legal status, but transform the essence of who I am and how I move through the world. On June 28th, 2023, nearly one and a half years ago, I made the decision to make aliyah.
Nowadays when I tell my story, I’m asked why I made the choice I did. Are my parents Israeli, did I move for a boy, for love, why would someone born in the US, the land that presumably has it all, has every opportunity, move to Israel?
Yesterday I read a beautiful post written by an Israeli friend that inspired me to write this post. As she travels through India, she describes the experience since October 7th of being a native born Israeli woman traveling abroad, using an Israeli passport, and the emotions that come when answering the question, “Where are you from?” For her, being Israeli is not a choice, it comes with responsibility. However, it also is a key for connectivity, and as she so eloquently put it, she knows that within her answer “I’m Israeli,” she is not speaking only on her behalf. She is, as she beautifully puts it, “a representation of generations after generations who have always fought for freedom, for sovereignty, for choice.”
Two months ago, I boarded a plane headed for Kenya alone, nothing but my backpack strapped on my body, and headed out for a solo trip through Kenya and Tanzania. Some would call it brave, some call it crazy, some call it inspiring, and many tell my mom they don’t know how she sleeps at night. I flew from New York to Greece to Saudi Arabia and finally landed in Nairobi. As I made my way across four continents to reach my final destination, despite the excitement and curiosity burning within, my heart felt as if I left it behind in Israel.
Over the past two months, I have summited mountains, jumped off cliffs, swam in rushing waterfalls, sought warmth beside the fire, lived in villages, and stumbled through broken Swahili/ English conversations. I have seen the world in ways I never dreamed, and ways I will forever be grateful for. And yet, despite all this, there have been more days of loneliness than I ever imagined I could feel. There have been more days of that outer body experience – where your body is physically in a certain place, but your heart and soul are far away. I feel my heart beating 7,000 kilometers away, in the holy land.
On day one of my journey here, I realized that since October 7th, something fundamental changed within me. With the sun rising on my first day in Nairobi at 5am, the taxi driver pressed the gas as we left the airport and asked me, “where are you from?”. This time, without thinking, I gazed out at the glowing colors of the African dawn and replied, “I’m from Israel.”
I used to think that becoming “Israeli” was a choice. You can make aliyah, and not become “Israeli”. You can get the passport and not become “Israeli”. You can learn Hebrew and still not be “Israeli”. You can be “Israeli” and not be Jewish. You can be born in Israel and leave your “israeliness” behind. Despite all this, despite our confusion, our fears, our dread of what’s happened and what’s to come, our existential fear for the Jewish people, there is something indescribable that I feel when I say the words “I’m Israeli”. There is something indestructible, something permanent, like I have signed into an ancient covenant and taken an oath of honor, one that comes with responsibility, freedom, pride, challenge, but most importantly, it comes with a passcode for the door into the eternal.
In Hebrew, the words for forever and victory share the same root – “netzach” (נצח). In my past two months traveling, I have celebrated Rosh Hashana with a Kenyan Jewish tribe, fasted on Yom Kipur in a Yemenite Tanzanian Jewish community, stood alone on the hillside of Kilaminjaro on the anniversary of October 7th looking up at the angels, held onto my phone with tears in my eyes and once again said goodbye to my boyfriend as he closes his phone and enters with his army team into Lebanon, and had more moments than I can count of homesickness to the land I have promised myself to forever.
So when somebody asks me, “where are you from?”, I no longer hesitate. I no longer doubt if I have the right to answer Israel if my parents are not Israeli and I only made Aliyah at age 23. I no longer question where I’m from or how the place I’m from resonates with me as I used to with New York as my answer. Every time I say “I’m Israeli”, I am a spokesperson, an ambassador, a carrier of the light, a daughter, granddaughter, ancestor, and mother to be. I am more than a Jewish woman. I am a “child of Israel”, as it is written in the Torah. But so are you. So are all of us.
Whether we are born in Israel, immigrated to Israel, or consider ourselves “Jewish” and live in the diaspora, let us remember and unite upon the fact that we are all children of israel. For more than three thousand years, we have prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, through the fires of the Inquisition to the camps of World War II. From Africa to America to the Middle East, it doesn’t matter the color of our skin, our last name, our level of religiosity, the amount of money we spent on our bar mitzvah, nor the amount of days of the week we study Torah. It doesn’t matter if we “look Israeli” or not.
They say the human being is modeled after planet earth – the earth is 70% water, the human 61%. And just like a human has a heart at its center, so does the planet.
The earth’s heart rests in Israel, and it is what keeps our planet alive. Sometimes it’s heartbroken, sometimes it beats too fast, sometimes it burns, but no matter what, it always stays beating.
This is what I remind myself when I’m far away. My heart keeps beating as long as we keep believing, keep our prayers alive and keep our hope rising. So the next time someone asks you “where are you from?” I hope perhaps you will remember these words and reconsider your answer. I hope you will feel inspired to add an “and”. I was born here, live there, and am a child of Israel. It may not make sense to others, it may defy their visual expectations, but I hope it resonates in the depths of your heart. I hope it gives you a sense of belonging in an increasingly isolated world.
We are the children of Israel, and we are in it for netzach (forever, until the victory).