Soul Connections: Peeling Away the Layers

There’s something about Israel that strips away the layers.

Back in North America, and in many other places too, life can feel heavy with expectations. What you wear. What brands you buy. Where you live. What your profession is. How polished you appear. There’s this constant pressure of presentation, of image, of fitting into standards society quietly places on people. Even conversations can sometimes feel guarded, like everyone is measuring themselves and each other.

But in Israel, something shifts.

Here, it feels like people meet each other neshama to neshama.

Of course presentation exists everywhere, but it doesn’t feel like the defining factor of a person. Conversations move quickly past the surface. You can sit with someone and within minutes be discussing life, faith, struggle, purpose, dreams, heartbreak, growth. There’s less performance and more essence. Less packaging and more humanity.

And maybe one of the most freeing parts is not feeling like you have to walk on eggshells when expressing yourself. There’s a relief in being able to express yourself without every word being scrutinized for hidden meaning. There’s an acceptance of people as they are, where they are.

You begin to realize how exhausting it is to carry all the layers society tells you that you need.

And then slowly, living in Israel, those layers begin to fall away.

Your true essence comes forward.

You stop trying so hard to be perceived a certain way, and instead you begin allowing yourself to simply be. And the beautiful part is that people often respond to the real you, not the constructed version of you.

A friend once said something to me that I’ve carried ever since. She told me that there is a concept in Jewish thought that Hashem draws certain souls closer at certain moments in their lives. I always picture it like a king walking through a garden, gently choosing certain flowers to be planted closer to the entrance of the palace.

Not because those flowers are “better” than the others, but because they are meant to be closer.

There’s a pasuk in Shir HaShirim that says, “משכני אחריך נרוצה” — “Draw me after You, and we will run.” And another teaching in Chazal says, “בדרך שאדם רוצה לילך מוליכין אותו” — “On the path a person wishes to go, they are led.”

The more I live in Israel, the more I feel the depth of those words.

Sometimes it feels as though Hashem gently calls certain neshamas home at certain moments in their lives. Almost as if He says: “I need you here now. Your soul belongs closer to this place. You have something to build here, something to uncover here.”

And when I look at my life since arriving here, I can’t help but feel that.

I remember thinking before aliyah that maybe I would live somewhere by the ocean. Maybe Netanya. Maybe Ashdod. But Yerushalayim kept pulling at me. Something deep inside me felt that this was where I would connect, where my days would find purpose and connection, where my soul would feel awake.

And somehow, Hashem was planting that same thought into the hearts of so many other people too.

People from different countries, different backgrounds, different stories — all being guided here at the exact same time. And then somehow our paths cross. Somehow we meet. Somehow these strangers become part of each other’s lives.

And sometimes the souls you find here are not entirely new. Sometimes they are people woven into your earliest memories — classmates from elementary school whose paths somehow reconnect with yours years later in Israel. There’s something surreal and beautiful about meeting again in an entirely different stage of life and realizing Hashem was still quietly writing the story all along.

When I stop and think about it, it overwhelms me.

It feels like Hashem created this entire beautiful world for me simply by leading me her. A world of connection, growth, friendship, meaning, conversation, and belonging that I never could have orchestrated on my own.

And I stand in awe of that.

Truly speechless.

Because who am I, really? Little old me.

And yet somehow, Hashem chose to bring me here. To plant me in this land among millions of others. To give me the opportunity to grow here, connect here, struggle here, and become more fully myself here.

There is something profoundly humbling about that.

Because how incredible is it that Hashem guides a person across the world, places them exactly where they need to be, and then gently surrounds them with the exact souls they were meant to find?

Maybe that’s part of the gift of Israel. Not only that you find a homeland, but that somewhere along the way, you also find yourself.