Return to the Land of Your Soul

I first came home at 15.

I was on a teen tour, crushing on boys and trying to fit in with other kids. Much of that summer was spent trying to get drunk and score hash from Bedouin in the desert while getting tan and hiking under a wide, relentless sky.

And then came Jerusalem; the enormous, legendary stones. My heart stretched open, and my eyes released tears that were not mine alone. They belonged to generations who had wandered since the first exile, waiting to come home.

I let them fall; my warm forehead pressed against the cold stone I had known since before I was born. The Western Wall, the last stones of our ancient temple etched into my consciousness. Wherever we are, we turn towards it when opening our lips in prayer.

I was in the vortex, hopes and desires from all over the earth swirling around me. Scraps of paper, heavy with yearning, were tucked into the crevices of the rock, overflowing into a small wading pool at my feet. There was an ache, a longing, a calling. This was where my soul was magnetized to return. I was home.

At the end of six weeks, I flew back to my childhood streets and said, quietly but clearly: “I will live there someday.”

As all good dreams do, mine began its journey. It wove in and out of my daily life: sometimes in the foreground, sometimes abandoned in a side alley next to someone’s discarded basketball shoes, their laces dirty and twisted.

Eventually life took over. And by life, I mean the day-to-day existence you drift through before you realize you have a choice in the matter. I found the Grateful Dead and finished high school.

I went to college 11 hours south of everyone I had ever known, starting again in a town of winding rivers, egrets, herons, and live oaks draped in Spanish moss like shawls on old women. At night, I rode my bike past the duck pond, the sky alive with a chorus of squawks.

I kissed boys. I camped. I canoed while alligator eyes tracked me just above the waterline. I swam in cold springs.

And even as I loved that place, my heart was someplace else.

The dream drifted. Maybe it stayed in that alley. Maybe it rolled downhill, coming to rest beside a pail of garbage and a crumbling brick garage. But it was always whispering with a voice raspy from too many unfiltered cigarettes, two-day stubble, and a thick European accent like my dead grandfather’s.

When it came time to make my next life move, the only step I could imagine was toward an airport, leaving the country. My home was not here; it was somewhere else. I had long ago forgotten the promise I made to my 15-year-old self.

At 23, I was weary from two years of travel. My hiking boots were nearly worn through after wandering Europe: up mountains in search of fresh water, along trails that lined coastal towns, in and out of cities and museums. I traded nascent philosophies with strangers over bottles, sometimes boxes, of wine, and late-night confessions under unfamiliar constellations. The smells were pungent, the sounds strange. I napped in buses, on ferries, and booked night trains to cut expenses.

Some days I walked for miles to save a few lira, franc, shilling — back when each currency still carried the weight of its history, and you felt the shape of a people in the coins that jangled in your pocket.

On those journeys I often wondered, “What was the shape of my people?” I thought about it as fellow travelers wandered off to meet long-lost European family. I had none.

The realization came as I listened to the train chug along on a journey from the Czech Republic to somewhere I no longer remember. I stared at the moon outside the window, watching the dark, bleary countryside roll by. It was then I thought “my long-lost relatives are not alive because they too rode these tracks.” They did not have the luxury I did to ride for adventure; they were crated to their deaths.

The old dream came back to life, reminding me why I was wandering, that I was part of a people in exile. I bought a one-way ticket back to the place of my soul, the place of my people, the place whose name I prayed every night before sleep.

And here I am, a proud daughter of Zion, returned to our promised land, a living testament to the dreams of my ancestors.