Exodus 2

The following was written on Thursday, October 16^th, 2008.

Last night sleeping in one’s own bed: 4 hours.  Driving to JFK with parents and belongings: 4 hours.  Getting delayed at the airport: 2 hours.  Flying to Israel: 10 hours.  The first week in Israel: timeless.

It’s honestly hard to know where to start, mostly because I feel like it’s still starting…  Days are no longer really a sufficient way to express the way that time passes.  The familiarity of the flight attendants’ accents—not to mention the utterly bilingual experience of flying to Israel, when it’s not totally clear whether you’re flying to or from home (“Ma rotze lishtot?  What would you like to drink?  English or Hebrew?  Mayim?  Ok.”)—, the way that the scene on the plane doesn’t quite translate into the reality once you leave the airport, but is reminiscent enough to make everyone clap upon touch-down. 

My parents and I were the first “Kivunim family” to get to the El-Al check-in.  It was immediately apparent who my fellow students were as they began to arrive.  Among the droves of Orthodox families and middle-aged Israeli travelers, this congregation of smiling 18-year-olds soon became a critical mass, pulsing with the energy of two months at home with our parents, and nearly a year of mental preparation combined with an element of disbelief in our current situation—a feeling that would remain indefinitely. 

It’s difficult to describe the feeling of watching a reality that has only been a dream for so long slowly materialize before your eyes.  In an hour 51 people, who had merely been names on Facebook for months, became the Kivunim community.  The flight got delayed for some connecting passengers from Miami, which opened up a fantastic opportunity for further bonding in the Kivunim party at Gate B31, before we would ascend into the pressure-induced stupor of intercontinental air travel. 

Arriving in Israel, we set off from Tel Aviv to Ein Gedi, an oasis of wildlife in the Negev Desert, on the shore of the Dead Sea.  We began with a special Sukkot t’fila (prayer service), and continued celebrating the holiday with dinner in our sukka.  Of course icebreakers and other get-to-know-the-group activities commenced, and we settled into our beds at the Ein Gedi Youth Hostel for our first night in Israel with the Dead Sea and the mountains of Jordan looming under the near-full moon.

The second day was full of hour-long sessions about the content and mission of Kivunim.  Peter Geffen, our esteemed and insightful Director and Founder, led us on a tour through the mission statement.  From “world-consciousness” to “Zionism for the 21^st century,” it became real to us that Kivunim is not going to pull any punches in challenging our identity development, nor will it apologize for not allowing us the luxury of settling for simplification.  Shalmi Barmore, the resident expert of our World Jewish Civilizations course, introduced us to his story.  He elaborated on the challenge of having to reconcile the narrative of his childhood and his parents’ generation—that Israel was a “clean break” with the humiliation and victimization of Jewish history—with the discoveries of his adult life—that Israel is in fact a very natural next step in the same story of the Jews, deeply rooted in and derived from the story of the thousands-year history of the Diaspora. 

The real value of these sessions in my eyes is how they clarified that we have an absolute powerhouse of people in this program.  I can’t say that I’ve ever been in a group of young people like this.  First of all, it’s just awesome to join a new community.  No matter what brings you together, it’s always refreshing.  However, I’ll have to admit that, given how central to my life the ideas, issues and values are that drew all these people together, Kivunim as a group of people feels that much more meaningful--and they are SMART!  Everyone has insight to share and stories to tell.  Beyond the power of the content and educational vision of this program, it is in large part the people we meet and share it with that give it its true value.

Allow me to shift gears a bit as I move into describing the next part of the week.  Here’s the deal: if the month before Kivunim started was all about finding a way to make use and meaning of un-programmed time, without a concrete schedule and responsibilities, then the first five days of Kivunim have been all about living life and programming it in utter disregard of traditional schedules and universally accepted institutions such as time and space.  Besides the obvious model that international travel and jetlag offer for this liberating lifestyle, Kivunim has really institutionalized it.  It’s becoming a joke among the group that in an effort to achieve “world consciousness” we must release ourselves from any preferences that we may have to one time zone or another.  In this way, Kivunim truly is a globally sensitive program!  But don’t get me wrong—we haven’t begun traveling abroad yet; it’s really not necessarily necessary yet.  First we must gain appreciation for the power of living with the world in mind on the local level. 

I’m only being half-sarcastic.  The truth is that after hiking and indulging at the Ein Gedi Dead Sea Spa all day yesterday, we returned to the hostel and were allowed about three hours of “nap time” after dinner, even though we know that anyone trying to adjust to a time zone should really strive to conform to the local time as strictly as possible in the first few days.  We woke up at 9:30pm and drove to the bowels of the Negev.  We were greeted by a mystical and biblical-looking man named Yisrael Hevroni.  We hiked in relative silence all night, with brief stops for Yisrael to read poems about the desert’s sanctity to the Jews (in Hebrew, translated into English by our counselor Gabi).  Bruchim habayim lamidbar (“welcome to the desert”) he would remind us at every turn.  This experience really epitomized the symbolism of beginning our journey together in the desert.  We wandered.  In the desert one finds the peace of mind to feel the raw and pure quality of existence, the long-term transformative processes of the earth, and the foundations of civilization and culture.  Above all, this is where the Jewish People was conceived, and where current and future generations can feel most connected to each other, their place and time.

It wasn’t all deep canyons and profound conversations/personal reflections though.  We laughed…a lot.  We found unity in delirium.  At 7am this morning we returned from the desert and slept until lunch.  We visited an ancient synagogue and botanical garden kibbutz, and then the sun went down.  A short day?  A long day?  The consensus seems to be that days just simply aren’t effective ways to measure time anymore. 

We live in continuity and take naps when we need them to appreciate what we have.  There is no routine or gridlock.  Maybe living such a privileged existence—a lifestyle that rules out most steady jobs (indeed, who gets to work for Kivunim anyway?!) and would strain responsibilities to people in organized society (don’t worry, Mom.)—could alienate us from the world, but frankly we have never felt more connected to the big picture and the people in it.  My peers and I have found ourselves feeling more lucky to be alive more frequently during these days than ever before in our lives—and, perhaps most significantly, not in the wake of tragedy that reminds us of how fragile our lives are, but in the utter wonder of company, growth, belief, building memories, and working for a better future. 

This is a program that transcends generations.  Next year Kivunim will be even better than it is today, but decades from now the work that Kivunim and other like-minded organizations are doing will be what makes the world better.  We just got back from an introduction to our coexistence education for the year.  The work is waiting to get done, and we have the privilege not to have to wait to do it.  The second exodus is a call to action, a delivery from lack of leadership, communication and education…and it is not a clean break.  It has begun—like the original migration of hominids and the journey of the Israelites—in the desert.