The Promised Land
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| Aliyah Shirts outside Dinah's in LA - |
Looking down at the Swiss Alps while flying over, seeing the
jagged peaks and crags that jutted from pristine valleys dotted with alpine
chalets and winding roads perfect for cycling, I thought briefly upon my
adventures over the last 12 years as a new immigrant to the Middle East. I had
visited Switzerland many years ago with a backpack and a Eurorail Train Pass,
so I imagined my hike navigating the distance around the Matterhorn as I flew
overhead, on my way back to Paradise. I was heading to Boulder, Colorado, a
place I lived in with my budding family for 15 years before making Aliyah to
Israel. We pulled up stakes as soon as my wife said to herself that, “I could
live out my life and be buried here… in Boulder.” It was a sign from above, or
maybe just the warning siren that life is only what you make of it. We may
never know. But, what we do know is that life in the Promised Land has been undeviating
in its own rambling kind of way, rough and tough, and that it’s been more
rewarding than can ever be adequately expressed. We had left paradise for the
Promised Land, and had put all of our expectations on hold while we jetlagged
across foreign ideologies and straight through day-to-day life. Even though we
knew we would always be a member of the ‘desert generation,’ we also knew that
life moving forward needed to be something more than the so-called perfection
that we had been experiencing. We didn’t know what it was at the time, but in
time we knew that the more experience we gained, the more life we produced.
Life was all about taking the turns with grace and speed, with love and with
abandonment. We were going up, growing up, making Aliyah. It meant more than
just ideology, and it meant more than seeking a better life. It meant shedding
our skins and blossoming into something new, like a molting moth, a snake
shaking off its old skin, or giving birth to a new generation that could waltz
with ease into a land promised from above. It felt as if we were finally becoming
immortal, finally coming home.
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| Moving Halfway around the World Day |
Once we got home, we began to fear drowning in the amniotic
fluid that we had revered only days before. How would we survive financially?
How would we survive…? My woodworking business was a sure flop. We couldn’t
speak the local language. I wasn’t even Jewish according to the official
religious State establishment. We had landed on the surface of Luna, Yahre'akh,
the moon, and we had to pick: to have faith and let the past go, or … to fight
for what we had built before, living in paradise, living with challenges
developing from a foreign realm, maybe even without any real potential. Faith
won. It’s a kind of placebo effect phenomenon, faith is. It builds potential,
as much as it nullifies perceived reality. I’m not talking about blind faith,
but rather … an informed faith. When I decided to make Aliyah with my family, I
was sold on the concept from a place deep inside, a place that I rarely, but
inevitably, have the opportunity to visit with. I spent late nights
contemplating the nature of the Universe while painting in my studio. I would
read my kids to bed, then kiss my beautiful, gorgeous, awe-inspiring wife to
sleep, and disappear into the basement or garage with a primal hope to commune.
Faith was something that had to be built with sweat and with tears, and with
love. Faith was making art and then standing behind the process. Faith was, and
is, all about building a better ‘real’ world. And, the world was about to
change, forevermore…
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| Last Visit to Boulder with my Eldest in 08 |
My eldest son ran, from the taxicab at the curb, directly at
me with glee in his eyes. His smile eclipsed all the pointless worries I
brought with me from the old country, across the Americas and the Atlantic,
over the Mediterranean, and all the way to the Promised Land. I smiled ear-to-ear
with him as we embraced, my son telling me that we were going to move half-way ‘round
the world … and that we were ‘now’ home. I landed in Israel carrying with me my
own perceived stresses, my own hot air balloon stuffed full of my own
exasperations. And, the smiles I received while sitting in a taxicab with my
family, who had come to collect me at the airport, flipped a switch in my mind
that drilled into my consciousness. We had all entered a realm uncharted,
together, and we were all riding an insane kind of faith-engine. Reality became
irrelevant, and the truth of the world eclipsed the self and all of its
stresses like the moon covering the sun. With glee and wonder emanating in
streams and sparklers from a taxicab up to Jerusalem, we giggled together as we
went up, chortling in secret and out-loud … harmonizing in unison. We all knew that
we were going home, however foreign and obtuse it might become. We were on a
mighty adventure, and we were coming home.
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| Me and my Youngest hiking Bear Peak |
I sit now in Boulder, writing this, and I’ve had a chance to
visit with my old designs from a life gone by. Living was shocking upon reentry
here, like crossing into a foreign land. I’ve felt similar feelings visiting
Dubrovnik, Kuching, Acumal, or Tana, Langa, and even Daliyat haCarmel back in
my ancestral homeland, in Israel. It was always surreal and real at the same
time. I met my younger son at the airport upon arrival here in Colorado, who
graciously offered to help upkeep and paint our old home with me. He was at the
tail end of eight months of personal investment traveling thoroughly throughout
the Americas; and, he came to visit with me in the place he was born, at the
home of his birth. Funnily, while we visited with family here, we shared
stories of his birth and laughed together. From the very beginning he did
things his own way, regardless of his deep connection to his roots, and his
family. Actually, he brought us all with him, just like my eldest did when he
saw the truth of our world and smiled ear-to-ear while shouting out to me, his
father, from the backseat of a taxicab careening up hwy 1 to Jerusalem. My
family arrived in the Old City, and we settled for a time into a view down onto
the Temple Mount. It was a vision from the heavens above, a view onto how my
soul could tap into both an ancient ideal, and to a modern vision. I was later
married to my beautiful beloved for the second time upon that rooftop, gazing down upon my
own ancient history … and gazing into a vortex of a spiritual space-elevator for
‘all’ of time. I was home, swimming through the cosmos, both as a passenger and
as the driver, and I was finally (though, not forevermore), One.
Love you all,
D.
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| My Youngest arriving Back in Israel |
