Learned a lot today

So today I started off by laying Tefillin on Ben Yehuda St. before meeting Lev, Max, and Orly. It was good to see Orly (good to see Max and Lev too, but I saw them last night already), and she brought me 2 slices of cake and the first thing she said was that I was going to make Aliyah, which kind of dealt with the end of my day. We walked around the Shook (market) and she introduced me to her relatives that own a fruit stand there. Afterwards I had orientation which was just a bunch of people telling me not to be an idiot in Israel, which is difficult because I'm an idiot everywhere I go, and here I become an American Idiot, an idiot of the worst degree.

After Orientation, there was a campus tour, and I'm going to try to take pictures of the view tomorrow before Shabbat because I didn't have my camera with me. It was absolutely beautiful. From Mt. Scopus (Har Tzofim in Hebrew) you can see the entire Old City on the Southern side, and on the East, on a clear day like today, I could see Jordan and the Dead Sea. Afterwards they took us to the Malkah Mall and it took me about an hour and a half to figure out how to buy sheets. I really wanted the Leopard print ones, because they were absolutely ridiculous, but they were flannel which would be too hot in the summer, so she gave me this ugly turquoise color. The hour and a half was because I don't know Hebrew well, and all the pictures were of double and queen size beds and I didn't know that they just put the same fucking picture on everything.

Anyways, on the bus ride on the way to the mall, I met a girl who is from Crown Heights and we were talking about Chabad and Hillel and our very different Jewish experiences. It turns out, she's Yanky's cousin and lives across the street from Dovid. We started talking about Shalichot and how the Rebbe said that you can't just live in your neighborhood with kosher bread and milk and be content, but to be a light unto nations, however, how do you do that while living in Israel and settling the land? When you're young everything is black and white, good and bad, right and wrong...but when you're older you realize everything's just in shades of grey.

After the mall experience, I took the bus from the mall back to my apartment and was crying the whole way home. This wasn't because I was upset, but because I was just looking out the window and it really hit me how much I love this place, and how much love there is here. I find myself reverting to movie quotes when they put my indescribable feelings into words. Kevin Spacey in American Beauty said:

"it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst."

That's the way I felt today driving from the south of Jerusalem all the way to the north. I passed through all the neighborhoods, and at every one I saw something absolutely beautiful. Young people helping elderly cross the street, the bus driver stopped special to give someone a ride, I saw two 15 year old kids dressed religiously, a boy and a girl, and the girl was play wrestling with him for a bit and then they bumped into a wall and she jumped up and kissed him (it was very cute), in Mea'sharim I saw the most solid-knit community ever...and so on. I thought that's the only way people can survive here, is together. They must absolutely love the land and love each other - it's a fucking desert for Pete's sake...little resources, but everyone loves the land and is willing to live one day to the next in order to be here. There's so much beauty, so much that people will fight and die for it, maybe it's too much...

Another movie, Adaptation, has this absolutely incredible exchange between two brothers:

Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
Donald Kaufman: I remember that.
Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago.

I thought of this as well. As much as Israel shits on me, as much as I tromp through rust and lime deposits, get screwed by store owners and taxi drivers (ever realize it's the people that say they aren't here to screw you with a smile on their face are DEFINITELY THE PEOPLE TRYING TO SCREW YOU?), as much as I acquire these HRI's (Hummus related injuries), I love Israel, whether or not it loves me. It's a love that is unconditional. I said to Yonatan last night that he has cursed me with Zionism and it's a curse that ends in Aliyah, turning your back to everything you know, a sacrifice just to share a piece of this beautiful land. I don't know, maybe I'll live here, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll make Aliyah, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll find myself a Sabra, maybe I won't. But I know that I'll always love Israel.