Same Path. New Directions. Deeper Intention.

In the closing moments of our flight back to Israel from Mumbai—the year’s final flight back to Israel—as we descended over Tel Aviv, taking in the simple familiarity of the city’s skyscrapers and beachfront hotels, it finally began to sink in that we were all but at the end of Kivunim. When we landed, the plane was filled with sleepy applause and cheer, as people who had been steeped in a foreign culture felt the relief and comfort of returning home. After thanking our flight attendants and bidding them shalom, we stepped onto the jet-way and began our final walk through the arrivals section of David Ben-Gurion International Airport. From the moving walkways to customs to baggage claim and the bus waiting outside, we felt the epitome of appreciation for routine, as we took in every moment of a tradition that had started nearly eight months before.

We drove back to Jerusalem as dawn blanketed the country. With most of the group sound asleep, there was a beautiful silence on the bus. As we drove past the fields, and up into the hills outside of Jerusalem, the sun began to rise on the last short chapter of our time together. The route to the hostel was achingly familiar. Those who were awake gazed out at the buildings that had become our neighborhood, looking on the surroundings of our daily life with equal parts calm and frantic endearment. Finally, we turned onto Eliyahu Shama Street with the sun blaring over the Old City, across from Beit Shmuel. We checked back into our rooms, and fell asleep for a few hours, putting India behind us, and preparing to conclude the program.

The next two days were a blur of final visits to favorite places in the city, from restaurants and bars to the shuk and the Kotel, combined with hours of simply enjoying each other. We would wake up early, and go to sleep late—even more so than we had through the entire year. We had an emotional final banquet together at Beit Shmuel, before a final night out in Jerusalem, and a final night to sleep in our beds.

As our last day came to a close, we had a wonderful barbecue gathering at my Hebrew teacher Atara’s house outside of Jerusalem. On the way there our bus driver Yisrael Peretz, whom we had all met on our first day in Israel when he joined us on our orientation in the Negev, brought us to the Haas Promenade (better known as the tayelet), where we looked out on the vista of Jerusalem for the last time.

Taking in the beautiful skyline, complete with the Dome of the Rock, we weren’t the tayelet’s customary tourist crowd (though there was plenty of picture-taking as usual). We were family. This city had been our home. We said farewell to it, in denial for the most part that it was really goodbye, whether because of determination to come back, or simple disbelief after having left so many times throughout the year only to return. With heavy hearts we boarded the bus, and savored the time.

After the barbecue, which coincided with our last Israeli sunset, and included a final ceremony featuring a skype appearance by Peter, we began our final ride to the airport. We blasted our favorite songs from the year over the sound system, and sang along together through tears and laughter. We said final goodbyes to most of our staff at the airport, and enjoyed a lengthy delay including some hours of sleep in an airport that had come to feel strangely cozy. Our first flight from JFK on October 12^th had also been delayed. I remembered back to those final hours of anticipation, when Peter had predicted that our comfort with air travel, delays and all, would be one of the major ways in which we would be able to observe our growth throughout the year. Exactly eight months later, his words rang true.

Just before we boarded our plane back to New York, we watched the sunrise of June 12^th, 2009 through the windows of the terminal—a sunrise we never expected to see in Israel, having been scheduled to leave in the middle of the night. I couldn’t help but feel sentimental, as I went back through the sunrises of the year, from the Negev to the Sahara to the Ganges to Jerusalem. In a moment of sheer unknowns, as the routine of a lifetime was coming to an end, the sun shined especially brightly as a symbol of continuity.

On the plane we were hit full force with our shifting identities. Sporting our commemorative Kivunim t-shirts, we were surrounded by a sea of other American teenagers, flying back to the US after their respective programs—ranging from a year in yeshiva (religious school) to a weeklong college trip. To our dismay, after a year of bus rides that often exceeded ten hours in length, the eleven-hour flight seemed like nothing. We laughed, cried, and cuddled the whole way—with naps expertly placed in order to maximize the quality of our inescapably short time and little energy left. As soon as the plane touched down, our last landing of the year, we alarmed every other passenger on board by launching into a soulful rendition of the old Greek melody that had become our anthem over the course of the year. Some of us, who were held captive by our seatbelts in seats assigned apart from the bulk of the group, choked back our tears as we listened to our best friends chanting away—the first experience of distance on what would be our first day apart.

After reclaiming our bags, already missing several people to connecting flights and other complications, we huddled together next to our luggage carousel, and began to sing. Soon we were ushered out of baggage claim by a characteristically unsympathetic security guard, and then, rushing to say hello to our families, we lost ourselves in a mess of hugs, kisses and goodbyes.

In just minutes we would be on our way, going in different new directions…

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Today, over two months since returning to the United States, and over ten months since embarking on the life-changing voyage that was Kivunim, I am still reluctant to look back on it as if it is truly over. As advertised, Kivunim presented all kinds of new directions, perspectives, people, places, and experiences—new ideas to think about, and new ways of thinking about classic ideas. The year was endlessly enriching, introducing me to new life-long friends, exposing me and my friends to more of the world than most people ever have the chance to experience, and challenging us never to settle for simplification or cease to search for further complexity in the narratives that we encounter. It is difficult to say goodbye to an experience like that.

While it is hard to believe that my friends and I are no longer making Kivunim memories, the nostalgia is fully intact. I no longer live with my best friends. We don’t go to class together everyday, or roam the streets of Jerusalem in the morning, afternoon and night. We don’t plan adventures all over Israel every weekend, or travel to different parts of the world every few weeks. I no longer look outside the window of my bedroom and see the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. I can no longer touch the smoothly dimpled ancient stone of the Kotel, or smell the fresh and fragrant fumes of the buzzing and teeming Machane Yehudah shuk, on a whim. At home I don’t speak to people on the street in Hebrew, or haggle with them when I’m buying groceries.

Yet, while I miss the daily life of Kivunim, and we’ve already been home too long for this to be just any other Kivunim international trip, my reluctance to acknowledge the end comes from more than difficulty with saying goodbye. While the program may be over, the process is certainly not; from friendships to worldviews, there are basic core elements of the Kivunim experience that are alive and well—works in progress. While I felt that Kivunim was already an integral part of my life from the moment that I read the mission statement on the website, now, on the other side of the experience, I carry the program’s central questions and vision with me all the more.

I went on Kivunim to gain a broader perspective on the world and my personal roots through the lens of my Jewish identity, to take my relationship with Israel to the next level, to explore the possibilities of peace, to grow personally, and to meet some new and wonderful people. Kivunim allowed and encouraged me to pursue these personal goals, and they feel dearer to me than ever, as real people, places, and experiences. Yet, I could never have imagined what they would truly mean in reality. Indeed, at the core of my interest in Kivunim was what I perceived to be a unique opportunity to test my mostly intellectual understanding of Israel and the world with real, first-hand experience. I wanted to gain some integrity in talking about issues that I had only read or thought about.

Struggling with the complexities of the world, while also finding commonality with people in the most and least expected places had been a primary aim of mine since before Kivunim, but it had never been so much a part of my daily life as it became during the past year. When it came to Israel I found myself relating to the country more and more as home, finding deeper bonds with its people, and developing a more nuanced and multi-dimensional perspective on its political and social issues. Today I find myself struggling more than ever before, on a deeper and more meaningful level, with my relationship to Israel and my role in the world as an American Jew.

This also played out in a broader sense on our international trips. While I had a theoretical definition of “world consciousness” before going on Kivunim, developing emotional connections to the peoples, histories, places, and cultures of ten other countries around the world throughout the year has very literally expanded my consciousness. It’s certainly not that I feel I know these countries inside and out. (Indeed, my pre-Kivunim definition of world consciousness as a commitment to an ongoing process of embracing the challenge of balancing appreciation for complexities and commonalities still stands. The ongoing process is still quite nascent.) We only got a relative taste of these countries. Still, I can’t help but look at world maps differently today, or feel more personally invested in the news coming out of different regions of the world. Today I feel connected inextricably to people and places all over the world that I wouldn’t have even recognized in a photograph before this year.

Exploring Judaism in an international perspective meant being awestruck by the simultaneously striking diversity and cohesiveness of the worldwide Jewish experience, while at the same time, especially in India, being humbled by how small a slice Jewish life really is in the global context—even as it has existed in and contributed to a disproportionately broad collection of the world’s major civilizations at pivotal points in history. In enriching my sense of Jewish identity, as a vehicle for learning more about myself and the world, Kivunim suggested that perhaps the Jewish story could be a model for the story of humanity, that within the history and geography of the Jewish people could be the seeds of the diverse yet common international identity that we all ultimately share. Exploring the synergy between my Jewish identity and my concern for the world is a process that has only just begun.

Of course what I most expected to get out of Kivunim were those things that I could never have anticipated. Especially as I look forward to college, I realize that through spending a year in which the educational program took place in classrooms, in daily life, and around the world, learning about subjects that were at once my academic passions and deeply personal questions and concerns, Kivunim helped me reconcile my identity as a life long learner with my commitment to be a diligent student. Indeed, on a fundamental level Kivunim taught me how to ask questions—how to get the most out of one week in a country or one hour with a special guest speaker. I also found that as Kivunim exposed me to new dimensions of my areas of interest, I achieved new focus in exploring those passions. My interest in politics, international relations, conflict resolution, and psychology led me to fascination with public policy and neuroscience. One of the least expected and most profound levels of the Kivunim experience, in Israel and abroad, was its ever-unfolding relationship to language. Indeed, to express my new appreciation simply, I realized that the term “world consciousness” is in English.

When it came to my Jewish identity, I found myself struggling with my religious identity in ways I couldn’t have predicted. For the first time in my life I started to ask questions about observance. I started trying to understand the core meaning of Jewish traditions and prayers, what inspired them in the first place, and what their function is in the modern world and my life—casting off what had become a simple disregard for rituals and practice that I had barely tried to unravel due to discomfort rooted mostly in unfamiliarity. I began to explore what I want my Judaism to look like in my adult life, and what I eventually want to pass on to my children. Even regarding Israel, I can no longer rely on the prospect of a summer program or a gap-year program to bring me there (apart from staffing opportunities of course), and to make the country a part of my life. It’s strange not to know the next time I will be in Israel. These new, un-programmed responsibilities to my identity development, and to communities of which I am a part, speak to deeper underlying growth processes that Kivunim facilitated in exceptional ways.

More than ten months after writing that starting Kivunim “may not be best described as a crossroads, where one must choose a new path, but as a rotary, where one stays on the road he has been on as it opens up an array of different potential directions,” I stand by the metaphor. The very word kivunim, meaning “directions,” connotes unbridled search for identity, broad and deep sampling, and escape from the pressure to simplify or specialize. It calls to mind an image of a post in the road, with countless street signs pointing at all different angles. At the same time some might argue that Kivunim is very specialized, or even that it provides directions as instructions more than suggestions. Indeed, on the other side of options are choices to be made—rotary exits to take, leaving other options behind.

In an April 26 Boston Globe article called “Inside the Baby Mind,” Jonah Lehrer quoted psychologist Alison Gopnik, saying that “for a baby, every day is like going to Paris for the first time.” While I often related my process of sustained excitement, learning and growth on Kivunim to this wide-eyed state of constant discovery, Kivunim also made me reflect freshly on the path I was following, helping me to confront for perhaps the first time that we can’t do everything in our lives. Indeed, as Lehrer explains in the article, even on a neurobiological level, being able to take in everything around us as babies is directly related to our inability to tie our shoes; it is only the focus, and accordingly flawed perception and slowed neurological growth, that we develop as we grow that makes us productive.

The article echoed questions and concerns that followed us everywhere throughout the year. As I was forced to recognize and question the fact that I simply wasn’t seeking preparation to be an engineer, Kivunim put into sharp focus questions that are central to growing up: Does growing up mean closing doors? Does solid identity development have to come at the cost of open-mindedness and curiosity? Do finding definition, becoming an adult, and finishing brain development ultimately mean settling for rigidity? From the Greek aphorism, “know thyself,” that is inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi to the inward-looking eyes of the Buddha sculptures we saw in India, issues of personal identity were central to the entire year’s experience.

As a gap-year program, Kivunim didn’t close any doors; it allowed me the luxury of a year of less conventional education as a means to get more out of college. It was as much about following the most appropriate next step on my path of development as it was about delaying inevitable choices of specialization on that path. While I did start thinking about how I would choose classes at college in the fall, I felt a renewed commitment never to “let my schooling get in the way of my education”—a Mark Twain quote that I interpret as a plug for life long learning.

In this way the rotary metaphor feels as appropriate as ever, not just retrospectively in terms of Kivunim, but as it applies to my life today. As I approach the next series of choices on my path—the next rotary, if you will—the questions remain. While I hope to have integrity and a strong sense of self in my decision-making, I also hope never to lose broader curiosity and a will to learn. Especially after Kivunim, I have hope and belief in the power of education. Indeed, who knew that a program focused on language, culture and politics would lead me to neuroscience? Maybe there is a biological window that eventually closes on further growth, but as our Civilizations teacher Shalmi would say, history shows us that identity is always in the making, and never made. Maybe the seeming fork in the road between solid identity and life long learning simply represents a false choice. Perhaps, I hope, the will to grow and learn continuously can be one of the most central and consistent parts of a sound identity.

These challenges of identity development are deeply rooted in perhaps the single most important piece of what I am taking away from the Kivunim experience. At some point in the first week of the program, I realized that Kivunim was giving me a new appreciation for life. As we were immersed in a world where every moment was teachable, and a life-changing experience was never far on the horizon, I became consciously determined to get the most out of every moment. A conviction to take as little for granted as possible soon became central to the way I spent my time.

Before Kivunim, especially when it came to my organizational responsibilities to Young Judaea, and in listening to Barack Obama speak about America’s need to reengage with its core ideals and institutions, and cast away bad habits, I had some theoretical understanding of the idea that meaningful progress was a product of conscientious analysis of the meaning behind any present tradition or routine. Still, with the routine including an exceptional community, a consistently engaging educational program, independent life in Israel, and trips all around the world, Kivunim brought the need for such a commitment to conscientiousness to the next level.

With exploration of life and the world at the center of this uncommonly powerful and meaningful experience, I found that I was trying to get the most out of something that transcended Kivunim. As I lived in this ideal world, while also encountering more and more of the real world, I began to appreciate everything from my health, my family and friends to technology, government and religion. In studying and visiting the most distant elements of human civilization, both in time and space, I became more appreciative not just for my own privileged circumstances, but also for the precarious and miraculous nature of life and human progress itself.

Perhaps alongside my expanding appreciation for the fact that our ability to form an identity and develop a contribution to the world would be limited to choices that we made—in tandem with other factors of the world beyond our control of course—I began to connect to the idea of intention in life, the idea that our experiences, traditions and existence as a whole are ultimately only as valuable as our will to take stock of them and translate them into improving ourselves, each other and the world. That ultimately is the meaning of this blog, and it presents another uncanny example of the often profound and intuitive ways, about which I have written at length, in which common letter roots connect Hebrew words. The word kivunim has the same root as the word kavanah, meaning intention. Usually kavanah is used in religious contexts, suggesting that in order to be moved by prayer and tradition we must appreciate it for more than simply going through the motions. Fittingly, the Kivunim experience did introduce me to new endearment to Jewish traditions and spiritual exploration in many ways. Still, that is just one dimension of how trying to appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime quality of this year, and to reaffirm that appreciation every day, brought me to new levels of zest for life in general.

While I don’t feel I took this year for granted, there is always more to take into account, more meaning to glean as experiences grow with distance. The commitment to search for underlying meaning and appreciation in the smallest and biggest parts of life is something for which I will always be thankful to Kivunim. Besides, in the end, it seems that the ultimate goal is balance—another central theme of human civilization, exhibited by the other Greek adage inscribed in Delphi’s Temple of Apollo, “everything in moderation,” and integral tenets of Buddhist philosophy. Of course achieving balance, of all lofty goals, is easier said than done. Still, just as I hope that growing up will not hinder further growth, I hope that a certain level of deliberateness and intention in life won’t impede creativity or flexibility. As I stand here, as in between childhood and adulthood as possible, I suppose it’s only fitting that I envision a balance between the constant curiosity of an infant and the focus of an adult.

Now, less than a week away from starting college, I am more connected to my roots than ever before. I have a broader sense of who I am, and the people and world of which I am a part. For a year I called Jerusalem home, and now I have returned to a home that I am soon to leave again. In the end, I am far from homeless, and the routes to uncovering and understanding my roots are far from fully traced. At the same time, however, in these next legs of the journey it seems that I am to extend these roots to new places, on new horizons. While I may be turning onto a new rotary, with new choices, opportunities, questions, and directions—true to life—I am still on the same path. Going forward with a new level of intention, and a renewed commitment to balancing it with sustained open-mindedness, I will always remember Kivunim as a unique learning experience, an opportunity that helped me better appreciate all opportunity. For now it is time to take the next step, and if there is one thing that hasn’t changed since I wrote that first entry almost a year ago, it’s that I still have a passion for embracing the process.