Tag Archives: Israel

January 22, 2024 · 7:30 am

I am the wound

by Haviva Ner-david (Galilee, Israel)

I am the wound. I am wounded. Forever. 

I am the crying child, the one who wants to scream and scream and scream. Why is the world this way? Why so much destruction and hate? Why so much killing? 

I am the children, looking at the destruction adults created. Aren’t they supposed to protect us?

I am the teddy bear, sitting alone. Abandoned. My child gone. Where is she?

We are the guards. The shields. We want to protect our children. But we are useless against the enormity of the danger.

I am the wounded player. We are all players in the game the politicians are playing with us. Wounded, hurt, screaming in pain on the ground. 

I am the shattered window. I was once clear. The world looked clearer through me. Now I am broken, shattered into pieces. Although maybe only part of me. Are there still pieces not shattered? 

I am the wounded knee. Will I ever feel whole again? Will I ever be healed? What will it take? Will I ever stop hurting?

We are the healers. We’ve come with a bandage, to protect the wound. But we cannot fix it. There will always be scars. 

I am the fist, hitting the wall. Frustration. Anger. Let it all out. 

I am the pirate, the enemy. Or am I the victim? I, too, am wounded, missing my hand. But I will move on, move forward. Wounded but not defeated. Life is still worth living.

Where does it hurt? All over. When I apply pressure, it hurts. 

Where is the hope? I am looking for the hope. Searching everywhere.

Don’t worry. I am here. You found me. It will be okay.

A note from Haviva Ner-David on writing these words: 

For my Soulwork course for Ritualwell, we explored four different “soul modalities,” one each session. On the first night, we did Soul Image Collage. Each person in the class made a collage.

A profound occurrence happened when I was creating mine. I chose my images (part of the process), pasted them onto the page to create the collage, and then I looked at the collage. 

It looked so painful, hopeless, despairing — which was not surprising considering that I am living in the midst of a brutal war. But there was only pain; I could have sworn I had chosen a hopeful image or two. 

I looked on the floor, the couch, my desk, but I found nothing. 

Just when I was about to give up, I stood and noticed a clipping that had fallen between the couch and the desk. I picked it up, turned it over, and it said (in Hebrew): “Don’t worry. It will be okay.” 

Yes, I had clipped those words from a kids’ magazine when I had done my image selecting. Wow!

I pasted the missing clipping onto the collage and wrote the words that appear above. (The prompt was, “I am the one who…”)

Here is Haviva’s collage:

—

Haviva Ner-David is a writer and rabbi. She is the founding rabbinic director of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul on Kibbutz Hannaton, in the Galilee, where she lives. She is a spiritual companion with a specialty in dreamwork and other Gestalt modalities (such as soul image collage, inner child work, and nature soul work) who companions a variety of clients of different ages and faith traditions, including (but not only) many rabbis and rabbinical students. She is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs, two novels, and one children’s book (with another soon to be published) — the only children’s book about mikveh. Haviva is also an activist, focused mainly on building a shared society of partnership between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. She was born with a degenerative form of muscular dystrophy (FSHD), which has been one of her biggest life challenges and teachers, and together with her life partner, Jacob, parents seven children (one adopted and six biological). You can visit her website for more information about her work and books: https://rabbihaviva.com/

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October 30, 2023 · 7:30 am

The Last Lullaby

by Lesléa Newman (Massachusetts)

                                    (October 7, 2023)

Never again the sound of their laughter,

Never again the sound of their cry.

Never again the sight of their smiles,

Never again the sight of their eyes.

Their tiny starfish hands—gone.

The small stones of their toes—gone.

Never again their shrieks of terror,

Never again their shrieks of joy.

Never again to play peek-a-boo,

Never again to say, I see you.

Their milk-white baby teeth—gone.

Their desert-smooth dimpled cheeks—gone.

We didn’t know it would be their last supper,

The last sip of soup, the last slice of bread.

We didn’t know it would be their last bath time,

The last soaping up, the last rinsing off.

The last lifting of arms to slip into pajamas,

The last carefully chosen story to read.

Never again their warm weight on our laps,

Never again their quick hop into bed.

The last tucking in, the last goodnight kiss,

The last lullaby, the last shutting the light.

Gone….the last….never again.

We didn’t know. We didn’t know.

Lesléa Newman has created 85 books for readers of all ages including the dual memoir-in-verse, I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father and the children’s books, Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story, The Babka Sisters and Ketzel the Cat Who Composed. Her literary prizes include two National Jewish Book Awards and the Sydney Taylor Body-of-Work Award. Her newest book, Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard, a fully illustrated book-length poem celebrating the life and legacy of Matthew Shepard, has just been published. For more information about Lesléa, visit her website:  www.lesleanewman.com .

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October 2, 2023 · 7:30 am

Rebel

by Lori Levy (Sherman Oaks, CA)

If everyone else is doing it, that’s a good reason not to do it—

     Dr. Richard (Reuven) Sobel, my father, RIP

In my granddaughter’s jujitsu class

there’s a boy named Rebel—

a name to live up to, I think.

I am not a rebel

but the rebel in me roars

when it comes to holidays, traditions, rituals.

I want to do them my way

which means no fasting on Yom Kippur.

Fasting gives me a headache. I need coffee

when I wake up, food to start the day.

Only then, belly full, can I contemplate my sins.

If it’s up to me, we don’t have to bother with the symbols

required for a Passover plate: shank bone, bitter herbs, haroset.

Can’t we skip the long prayers and just eat matzo?

One year we are in Spain on Rosh Hashanah,

all of us there for my nephew’s wedding.

We celebrate the holiday with apples and honey

on a blanket at the beach. Perfect, I think.

My rebel smiles and disappears.

Sometimes, filled with guilt, I accuse my rebel:

you’re just lazy—too lazy to cook and host

a big holiday meal, though you don’t seem to mind

when others do the cooking. What kind of Jew are you?

No, not lazy! I shout. (Am I my rebel?)

I do want my loved ones at the table with me,

not for prayers, not for the Bible I never read,

just a meal, togetherness.

I wasn’t raised on holidays—except Hanukkah,

for a few gifts, so we wouldn’t feel left out

when all the other kids in our small Vermont town

were getting toys and clothes under their Christmas trees. 

No Purim for us, or Succot. No synagogue in our town

or Jews in my class. No Bar Mitzvah for my brother— 

but when he turned 13, my atheist father and 

non-religious mother took us on a trip to Israel.

Several years later, there we were, living in Israel.

I could talk about history, the Holocaust—or just say

I fell in love with the country. Or maybe

with Israeli men. I married one.

We celebrated the holidays with his family,

but now, years later, I’m back where I began,

not wanting the rituals that were never, back then,

a part of my life. I’m happy to be a Jew, but

this is my Judaism: my Israeli husband,

Israel, my kids born there. It’s not about Moses or

the Torah. Maybe it’s nothing more than

hummus and pita, Israeli pickles and olives.

We eat them in Los Angeles now.

Lori Levy’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod International Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Poet Lore, Mom Egg Review, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Israel.  Her work has also been published in medical humanities journals and in Jewish journals such as The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Shirim, and The Jewish Journal. Her chapbook, Feet in L.A., But My Womb Lives in Jerusalem, My Breath in Vermont, is forthcoming from Ben Yehuda Press in the fall/winter.  She lives with her extended family in Los Angeles, but “home” has also been Vermont and Israel and, for several months, Panama.

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September 18, 2023 · 7:30 am

One People, Many Faces

By Steve Pollack (Woxall, PA)

My son’s bar mitzvah year called us to the northernmost Israeli seacoast town of Nahariya in the summer of 1991, the year that 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted as part of “Operation Solomon.” We wanted to lend our hands to the historic and miraculous effort.

The Israeli government provided the new immigrants with temporary housing, Hebrew language classes, and job training. Local B’nai B’rith leaders collected clothing and other personal needs. One day we were assigned to distribute various powders & liquids—soaps for bathing, washing clothes or cleaning dishes—and to demonstrate their use for people accustomed to washing in a river, not certain the purpose of each plumbing fixture in a hotel bathroom. That assignment is what sent me to an upper floor where I met a man whose priestly position in the tribe I learned only later. 

I did not ask his name nor speak mine. I did not speak Amharic, the official language in Ethiopia. Yet I stood before him, an elder among recent immigrants ravaged by famine and civil-war, awed by his dignity and personal warmth. His coarse cotton robe, white ragged beard, and distinctive scepter of smooth wood and horsehair held upright looked to my Western eyes as unfamiliar as my shorts and baseball cap must have appeared to him.

The elderly man motioned for me to sit by him on the bed and opened a well-worn leather-bound volume. He turned the thick book to a page inside the back cover and together we recited the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet—Alef, Bet, Gimel… This was no test or school lesson, no bland reading. The experience felt like a joyful song, an ancient chant of profound connection.

Our group of B’nai-B’rith volunteers visited the new immigrants most afternoons. We strolled the mosaic promenade parallel to the Mediterranean Sea holding hands with the youngest children while their parents prepared evening meals served in a common dining hall. Lean teenagers walked with us, their English vocabulary more extensive than my Hebrew. They taught us their Amharic names, articulations unpronounceable by my lips. 

While at local playgrounds or on Nahariya sidewalks, we were greeted with broad smiles from Israelis going about their everyday routines. A tribe of African kids parading with North Americans was a sight that became a local headline. We were hosted like celebrities at the Mayor’s city hall office and gifted commemorative pins; the city’s name, from nahar, Hebrew for river, its iconic water tower and idyllic position by the sea symbols on the crest.

During an evening talk with our group, an Israeli-educated anthropologist who had fled from Ethiopia only a handful of years before highlighted his community’s history and customs on the Horn of Africa. I learned that the elderly man who I had met was much respected. His scepter was a sign of sacred wisdom, not kingly wealth. 

I learned, too, that to be married in their tradition, young couples presented him with family documents going back seven generations, proof they were not too closely related. It was quite a contrast to the way my wife and I had applied for a marriage license in Philadelphia. We had gone to city hall, passed blood tests, and then a rabbi in tailored business suit witnessed our names and wrote the wedding date on our ceremonial ketubah. 

Sitting among new friends during that informal evening, and often during the many years since, I thought about the many leafless branches on my family tree—before immigrant grandparents I was privileged to know. Of those who never boarded a boat, I know nothing. How many millions of lives could have been saved if US quotas had not been imposed, if safe harbor had been open ten years before 1948, when the modern state of Israel was born in my lifetime? 

Social scientists have researched several theories about the Ethiopian Jewish community, and notable rabbis authenticated their origins to the tribe of Dan, one of the ten lost tribes. I wondered also about millennia before, which of Jacob’s twelve sons, which mother carried my seed—concubine or wife? I must be satisfied with Biblical narratives, stories of struggle and strength, grateful for names and traditions passed forward, one generation to the next. 

During our month-long adventure that year, we also took in sights and tastes as tourists from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, from chalk cliffs of Rosh Ha’nikra to sandstone mountains of Eilat, from Galilee to Dead Sea, from Nahariya to Jerusalem. But it was those minutes that I shared with a black African man who had traveled across a desert and flown through clouds to a Promised Land thatheightened my pride in being Jewish and broadened my sense of Am Yisrael. 

Although Jews are dispersed in different lands, across seas and circumstance, all of us are bonded through an alphabet, the poetic language of urgent prayers, and the covenant of an enduring faith.

We are one people of many faces.

Steve Pollack hit half-balls with broomsticks, rode the Frankford El, sailed across the equator on the USS Enterprise. He’s been an usher, delivery boy, engineer and administrator. Creative writing found him later. “Bashert”, appeared in Jewish Literary Journal. His poems in print and on-line, most recently Poetica Magazine and Schuylkill Valley Journal. His poetry chapbook, “L’dor Vador–From Generation to Generation”, was published in 2020 by Finishing Line Press. He serves on the One Book One Jewish Community team sponsored by Gratz College, and sings bass with Nashirah: the Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia.

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June 28, 2021 · 9:05 am

All I Can Do

by Kayla Schneider-Smith (Rishon LeZion, Israel)

all i can do is be sad today,
and hear about the rockets flying from
one fence to the other
regardless of what mother and her baby
are strolling on the other side,
which man is rolling a cigarette
in the front seat of his truck,
wondering what he’ll bring home his
wife for the weekend

all i can do is not choose a side today, 
for sides have already been chosen,
and secured, and posted on doorposts
and upon gates, clung to for life,
the indentation of angry hands meant
to hold instruments, to hold one another,
grasping pocketknives grasping guns
grasping flag poles waving colors in the wind,
blues and whites and greens and blacks and reds
that claim sovereignty claim territory claim God
claim blood

all i can do is keep walking today,
walking to work walking to class
walking to busses
trying to memorize the shape of shelters
the shape of my heart how long it’ll
take me to run when i should duck for cover
when it’ll be too late

all human loss is our loss,
all mess on our fingers is ours,
the brokenness of other bodies is
our bodies’ brokenness,
brothers and sisters refusing to let go
tearing out each other’s spines
pouring all this frustrating summer heat into the gutter,
to dirty the world instead of making it better,
to hurt instead of heal

Kayla Schneider-Smith is a poet, musician, and social activist from Monmouth County, New Jersey. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she wrote this poem while completing the Yahel Social Change Fellowship in Rishon LeZion, Israel, where she taught English, piano and guitar to children, adults and senior citizens in a small neighborhood called Ramat Eliyahu. Kayla is currently attending the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program at The University of San Francisco. She aspires to be an English professor, Rabbi, or Interfaith Minister one day.

If you’d like to read her work in prose, visit: https://www.yahelisrael.com/single-post/2018/11/27/To-Be-Or-Not-to-Be-Progressive-Judaism-in-Israel

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July 27, 2020 · 6:50 am

An Afternoon Cup of Tea

by Brad Jacobson (Columbia, MO)

Down more than one hundred steps

by an old graveyard and a green mountain

resembling camel humps.

A white towel hangs on a hook.

Water drips into a small pool of water

sunken in a cave. A tsaddik is buried here.

Legend says those that immerse

become pure.

Bobbing in chilly water:

Ad-dah-mah, mah-yeem, shah-mah-yeem.

Earth, water, sky.

I dress without drying off.

In my journal, I write:

My father and I are here together.

Afterwards we walk on the ancient streets of Tzfat

talking and laughing.

My mother joins us for tea.

Brad Jacobson is a volunteer every summer in Israel in the SAREL program. He teaches TESOL at the Asian Affair Center at the University of Missouri, where he has an MEd in Literacy. In the summers he enjoys exploring places with his camera like the Old City of Jerusalem, Tzfat, and the Red Sea where he scuba dives. He has been published in Tikkun, Voices Israel, Poetica, Cyclamens and Swords, and the University of Missouri International News.

“An Afternoon Cup of Tea” is from Brad’s new book, “Lionfish: The Poetic Collection Of A Traveler’s Experiences In Israel,” and reprinted here with the kind permission of the author and publisher.

You can read more of Brad’s poems in his new book. Visit the link to see more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946124648/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860&linkCode=sl1&tag=beeps-20&linkId=b8e4722d77fdd5f0148ae60390d40ec2&language=en_US&fbclid=IwAR3ZBUQsla0CdU7voiaWm5FRPXzEEIglc0tuceGIUFwSsys5u14kBYEscLU

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September 23, 2019 · 9:30 am

Holy Ground

by Kayla Schneider-Smith (Rishon LeZion, Israel)

Bubby holds up a fist and makes a
zero with her fingers

This is how “Jewish”
Reform Jews are to me,

she shuffles me through crowded markets where
boiling men wear summer coats and study
their feet as we pass them

step to the side, step to the side,
Bubby goads, but all I hear is

make yourself smaller,
make yourself zero

Bubby buys me a white shirt
and a white skirt for Yom Kippur
the way she thumbs through the racks and lights up when
she finds something right
makes me feel like she loves me

so that each time the hot familiar anger rises
I remember how she bought me a Yom Kippur outfit and
walked me through the city with her rolling shopping bag and
poured me iced coffee slushies and
paid for taxi rides home and told me

I’m waiting for you to wake up

Wake up to what, Bubby?
to your God who
invalidates my God?
to my God who challenges yours?

Kayla Schneider-Smith is a poet, musician, and social activist from Monmouth County, New Jersey. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she recently completed the Yahel Social Change Fellowship in Rishon LeZion, Israel, where she taught English, piano and guitar to children, adults and senior citizens in a small neighborhood called Ramat Eliyahu. Kayla is currently pursuing her Masters of Fine Arts in Writing at The University of San Francisco and working as the Mindful Arts Program Coordinator at the San Francisco Education Fund. She aspires to be an English professor, Rabbi, or Interfaith Minister one day.

If you’d like to read some of her work in prose, visit: https://www.yahelisrael.com/single-post/2018/11/27/To-Be-Or-Not-to-Be-Progressive-Judaism-in-Israel

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October 15, 2018 · 8:51 am

Rockets

by Kae Bucher (Fresno, CA)

(a tehillim for Israel)

Along highway 180
(amidst swerving vehicles, angry-fisted drivers and crushed steel
from the accident on the side of the road), I pray

Please let whoever was in that car be okay
and help me get home
without getting hurt or hurting anyone.

Hot air from an open window pummels my eyes
and I squint, stretching my left foot
away from the sweaty plastic floor mat

A sandal slips under the brake pedal and I suck in sharp alarm,
adrenaline and ice. Out of the corner of my eye,
heat waves ripple over palm trees.

On the other side of the yellow line, paint flashes and grills rip
through my mirage of safety. A foot closer, and they become Hamas rockets
that won’t stop firing

36 projectiles at homes, cars
glass shards, shrapnel
28 injuries

two pregnant women hospitalized early

May the little one emerge at sha’ah tovah,
a goodly hour, an hour of ripeness and readiness for entering this world
in health and joy.

Out the window, the traffic dwindles
I recover my footing,
pass a palm tree and a carseat in a mini van
before melting back behind my steering wheel.

Under a Kerem Shalom sun,
another Red Alert siren sounds.

Families jump out of cars—
mothers and babies run for shelter,
grandfathers hide in stairwells,
and uncles throw themselves on the mercy of the asphalt,
covering their heads.

When the wailing stops,
those who survive
come out of hiding
resume their lives

I turn on the air conditioner,
look for the exit to take me home.

Since graduating from Fresno Pacific University, Kae Bucher has taught Creative Writing and Special Education. Her poetry appears in The Rappahannock Review and Awakened Voices Magazine and is also slated for publication in The Seventh Wave. Her first short story, “The Lost Names of Kaesong,” will appear in the upcoming edition of California’s Emerging Writers. You can read more of her poetry at www.bucketsonabarefootbeach.com.

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April 9, 2018 · 6:27 am

Ibex, Sheep, and SWAT Gear

by Saraya Ziv (Jerusalem, Israel)

The son of my lawyer, Dina, is getting married tonight and she has just about obligated me by contract to show my face for the ceremony. The wedding is across the street from Jerusalem’s large central market where a pigua, a terrorist attack, hit this morning. In my evening bag I carry pepper spray which I do not know how to use and which looks as menacing as a canister of breath freshener. I have two sharp pencils. I have the dull pin of an old brooch. I have no chance if a pigua hits tonight.

One route to this wedding is through the town of Beitar. The bus winds past a stretch of trees which reminds me of a parkway on Long Island. When we travel through concrete tunnels erected to postpone bullets blowing off my skull, I remember I’m not headed towards my brother’s Oyster Bay colonial. At a checkpoint, a civilian has another in a bear hug; they’re both giggling. Our driver opens his window and says something that sobers them. On a thin meridian, shoulder to shoulder, soldiers stand guard.

We pass between razor wire fences into Beitar. A life size diorama of ibex, sheep, and deer graze at a giant welcome sign. One large billboard encourages – enjoy Shabbat, from the minute it comes to the minute it leaves. Another warns – you’re bad talking others?  I don’t want to hear it! The only one to jump when two figures in SWAT gear and masks board our bus at the front door and exit at the back is me.

I reverse the trip in the dark. My bus is stuck behind a truck that says FedEx International. I imagine the truck plowing the Atlantic, crossing Europe, and landing in front of us, all on a single tank of gas. The driver is tuned in to a radio station he selected in New Jersey. His radio reports that the Garden State Parkway is backed up for miles, the new Miss America can drive a tractor, and nothing about pigua in the soft Judaean Hills.

On the hill to my village we halt at a roadblock. Two soldiers, one a woman with a French braid and a sub-machine gun, examine the trunk of a car. A loud crack terrifies me. It’s the limb of a tree, victim of a recent conflagration.

Saraya Ziv attended SUNY Buffalo, worked as a Business Analyst on Wall Street, and left the United States one April morning in 2015 on a one way ticket to Tel Aviv. She was born and lived in New York City all her life, but now lives a short drive to Jerusalem. You can find more of her work at her website, Mask for Winter (http://www.maskforwinter.com/) where this piece first appeared.

Note: This story appeared under a different title, “Beitar,” on the Mask for Winter in 2017, and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. 

 

 

 

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January 6, 2014 · 10:25 am

Jerusalem, 1976

by Michelle Edwards (Iowa City, IA) 

I apologized a lot the summer after I graduated from college. Easily the worst waitress in the seafood restaurant where I was working, perhaps even in their entire chain, I apologized for the wrong orders I delivered, the forgotten bowls of butter, and the length of time it took to bring, what seemed to me, an endless and unnecessary quantity of extra plates and silverware. The tips I earned waitressing, many times, generous tips given out of pity, allowed me to make the bundle of money I needed.

I had big plans. I was moving to Israel and starting a year of studies at Bazalel, the art academy in Jerusalem. It was 1976 and I was twenty-one years old. Near the end of my first year in Jerusalem, through contacts made at Bazalel, I landed a plum job printing etchings and lithographs for other artists in a studio affiliated with the Jerusalem Museum.

Living in Jerusalem I was always aware of my accent, my grammatical mistakes, and the countless ways I was identifiably American. Being foreign kept me on my guard. There’s a comfort in the familiar, what we know so well, the streets of our hometown or sounds of our mother tongue. I had left all that behind, without regrets. But it would have been an impossible treat, just once, to unexpectedly bump into a long lost pal from camp, or school, and, in English, joke around and share memories. That comfort was what I did miss. Regretted not having.

My father had died a few years before, and in my hometown of Troy, New York, my mother was busy raising my then teenage brother. My older sister was newly married and lived a few towns over. They were not great candidates for visiting me.

Back then, in the days before cell phones, a long-distance call was something you thought about carefully, planned for, did infrequently, and then, only in the late evening hours, when the rates went down substantially. Overseas mail was slow, and a trip to Israel, an expensive journey. Any traveler going there—neighbors, family friends, friends of neighbors, a grammar school classmate’s parents once, acquaintances even—would call me with a message from home, or maybe drop by my modest digs for coffee and cake. Sometimes with a letter or a small present from my mother. Being so far way, even our remote connections drew us together.

I write about all of this here to give an idea of how much it meant to me when my college friend, Laura, wrote asking if she might visit me in Jerusalem. Back in Albany, in our student days, Laura was my knitting buddy. Once, she had taught me a speedy afghan pattern, using three strands of knitting worsted on super jumbo needles. I still use a variation of this pattern for baby blankets. Knitting had been a love of mine since childhood. Now, with all that it took to live and work in Jerusalem, I was often too busy to knit.

Laura was living abroad, too, on the Greek island of Larnaca. Almost in my neck of the woods. More letters were exchanged and plans were made. I managed to get a few days off from work so we could travel together. Laura was interested in archeology, that was the reason she was in Greece, and we intended to go to Meggido and other sites. My job, printing etchings, dealing with other artist’s demands, was hard physical, and sometimes, emotional work. Having Laura come would give me a chance to vacation, to be carefree for a while. We might even knit, companionably again, outside at a café while sipping our cappuccinos and nibbling on a pastry.

Laura was due to arrive later in the day. I left work early; stopping at my apartment first to shower away the ink and solvent, the sweat and grime that come with being a printer. Clean and refreshed, I headed to Jerusalem’s central bus station.

Israeli buses were unreliable at best in those days. So I had allotted extra time for the eventualities that were sure to occur. Meeting a guest at the airport, being the first to welcome them to the country, was an important part of receiving visitors in Israel. I had wanted to do this right, to be there to say, “Shalom,” to my friend Laura.

The first bad sign was the lengthy line. The second one was really the third, fourth, and fifth ones as well; all buses to the airport came to the gate packed. Loaded. Full. They dribbled off a few passengers and boarded only a couple from the very front of the line. I was afraid to guess how long I would have to wait for my turn. I had miscalculated. The big cushion of time I had allowed for this kind of occurrence no longer seemed generous enough.

Anxiety was creeping into what was supposed to be a special afternoon. A bunch of folks around me began discussing sharing a sherut, a taxi, to the airport. I usually associated taxis with tourists, not working gals like me, but this was an emergency. I was desperate. With a bit of luck, I might make still be able to greet Laura as she left customs and joined the flow into the main greeting area. Squeezed in the middle of the back seat, the ride was suffocating and slow. Did I mention the heat?

When we got to the airport, I discovered Laura’s plane had landed early. Before its scheduled time. Who would have guessed that? I could hardly believe it was even possible.

I looked around for Laura. The airport wasn’t a big place. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. I headed to the information desk and had her paged. Three times. With instructions to meet me there. I waited and waited.

Nothing had gone right that day. This was a part of living in Israel I was still getting used to; much of what I took for granted when I lived in America, like buses and telephones, couldn’t be counted on there. Because of this, getting to places—work, the market, or the movies—and making plans of any kind, was complicated. The stress of the missed buses, the uncomfortable ride, and the afternoon heat had me frazzled, unhinged. And now no Laura.

Israel was and is a country that daily received and reunited the dispersed and separated, family and friends. The airport greeting area was an emotional arena. And that’s without including the pilgrims to the Holy Land. This was the day I was going to be a part of that show. The day I wore the badge of truly living there.

So where was Laura? Was she still in customs? It could be a lengthy process, and had occasionally, been so in my experience. Sometimes security arbitrarily selected a passenger for an extra thorough exam.  I checked by there again. Everyone on her flight had cleared through and appeared to be gone. Her name was on the passenger list, but that didn’t convince me she had actually been on the plane. Could be another system that didn’t work. After an hour or more, of paging and searching, I had to finally acknowledge that Laura wasn’t in the airport.

I jotted my phone number down on a piece of paper and left it with the information desk clerk, even though I knew she would never ever call me. The paper would be lost, and even if she did try, the phone in my apartment might not work that day. Defeated and disappointed, I did not even consider taking a bus home. Or a sherut. This time, I took a private taxi. It was an uncharacteristically, wildly extravagant gesture, and if I could have, I would have paid the driver extra to carry me up the stairs to my apartment.

On the ride back to Jerusalem, I had decided I’d return to work the next day. We were in the middle of printing an edition; it was the responsible, mature thing to do.  I’d tell everyone at the shop what had happened and gather up all the sympathy I could from my coworkers. There probably wouldn’t be much sympathy to gather, though. This was a country where the guys my age were just finishing their army service. Overreacting to life’s little disappointments was very American, a euphemism for being spoiled. Israelis were dealing with the big issues, like war and survival, not missed buses.

So what had happened to Laura, I wondered.  Did she get sick at the last minute? Break a leg? Was she called back to the States for an emergency? I hoped it was something more romantic, like she met the love of her life, hours or minutes before she was to come, and couldn’t bear to be parted from him. Exploring all these possibilities didn’t prepare me for what happened when I opened my apartment door.

There, sitting at my kitchen table, was Laura, smiling and sipping tea with my roommates, who had already taught her a few Hebrew words.

“Shalom,” she said.

Surprised, and relieved to find her at last, we quickly exchanged our stories of missing encounters. While I was stuffed in a sherut, Laura had zipped through customs; the usually busy airport had been momentarily empty.  Not finding me anywhere at the terminal or lobby, she was not distressed. No apology needed. She assumed something came up and I was unable able to make our meeting. An independent and seasoned traveler, she grabbed her luggage, hailed a taxi, and gave the driver my address.

I was amazed. It had never occurred to me that all the systems might function and deliver. The plane, customs, taxis.  If I had thought to save up a pocketful of asimonim, the Israeli phone tokens that could only be purchased from the post office, and were very often sold out, and if there had been a pay phone that actually worked, I could have called my apartment and asked my roommates if they had heard from Laura. But I hadn’t thought I would need to call.  And it didn’t matter now.

My guest had arrived. I needed to be a host. It was time for dinner. Maybe we went into town with my roommates and grabbed a falafel, or walked up to the makolet, the little grocery store in my neighborhood, and picked up some yogurts and fruit. I’m pretty sure we stayed away from the buses. The delight of having Laura with me, had helped shake loose the fury and strain of the day. Still I felt limp, washed out, and beat. Not long after eating, we settled into my room. Resting on my bed, I watched Laura unpack her bag.

“I knew that I couldn’t come and visit you without something to work on,” she said.

Laura had brought yarn, a crochet hook, and a shawl she learned to make from the women in the house where she lived. Sold to tourists, the shawls were lacey, with a delicate flower pattern that bloomed across the widest part.

I was a knitter with a very basic knowledge of crochet, mostly self-taught. The shawl was something new for me to try. Something beautiful to make. Every part of me was waking up, alert, anxious to turn my mind, my hands, and the wilted parts of my being, over to learning how to master this pattern.

Hours went by. The two of us sat and stitched, talked and laughed, probably preventing my roommates from having a good night’s rest. Laura guided me through the tricky sea of new stitches. Much, much later, right before dawn, it burst forth. The flower part of the shawl opened up. To this day, I can remember the amazed and exhausted buzz I felt. This is what I had been stitching for. It had all come together. In my hands was a gift of comfort and joy.

They say there are two Jerusalems. The spiritual one of mystics and true believers, where the holiest walk. And the other, the everyday one, where dinner is cooked, jobs are worked, and perhaps, where shawls are made.

That morning, long ago and far away, I learned a pattern was something I could believe in. My fumbles and mistakes could be frogged, taken out, and fixed. If necessary, I could double back and start again, because making the shawl was about trust. Putting my faith in wool and hook and trusting that after a hundred, or a thousand, or a million stitches, a flower will blossom.

Michelle Edwards is the author and illustrator of many books for children, one book for adults, and nearly one hundred essays and cards for knitters. Her titles include: CHICKEN MAN (winner of the National Jewish Book Award) and A KNITTER’S HOME COMPANION (an illustrated collection of stories, patterns and recipes). Michelle grew up in Troy, New York and now lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where she shares, with her husband, a house full of books, yarn, and the artifacts of their three daughter’s childhoods.  

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