I'm sitting here on a flight to Tel Aviv, taking a group of students on a trip to tour Israel and look at potential yeshivot and midrashot for next year. It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep. I have so much on my mind but my thoughts keep coming back to the theme of Where Home Is.
The truth is I've been thinking about this theme for a few weeks now based on a couple of books I've been reading. In The Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner travels the world in search of the happiest country. It's a fascinating book in general, exploring what makes people happy. But one of the side themes he explores is how people define the concept of being Home. Is it being with likeminded people who share a common culture (ex. at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park)? Is it being with family (home is where the heart is)? Is it being where you spent your formative years (your hometown/your parents' house)? Or conversely, as one person he interviewed put it, is it being in the place you want to finish out your years and be buried?
I've also been reading a book by Daniel Gordis called Home To Stay, about his family's Aliyah to Israel. And he writes something which really got me thinking. He says maybe home is the place that makes you cry when you think about it. In other words, you might love America, feel very comfortable there, and appreciate the freedoms and opportunities it provides, but does it touch your heart and make you feel the things Eretz Yisrael feels?
This perspective kind of speaks to me. Over the last few months we have been creating a new home for our family in Houston, after nine great years in Boca, where we felt very at home. And while our transition is going well, thank God, it takes time to really feel at home with the geography, the culture, the weather, the people, etc... But the truth is that although we miss our friends in Boca a lot, we're not homesick for it, because we have each other. To me, I guess Home is the place from which it hurts to be apart. Boston will always be my hometown. Manhattan will always be the place we started our marriage. Boca will always be the place we grew our family. And Houston will bring it's own special feelings. But at the end of the day none of those places make me homesick.
There are only two possible places that make me homesick. One is being apart from wherever my immediate family is right now. And the other is being apart from the place (Eretz Yisrael) where my extended family comes from and is destined to return. I do believe that we should live in Israel, that it is our homeland, that after two thousand years it is a miracle and a blessing that we can come home. And yet, I'm not yet there, because I haven't figured out yet how to make a living there as a Rabbi. This painful feeling of not living where I wish I could is good, because it reminds me not to get too comfortable in Galut, as our People have done in the past, but to keep trying to figure out a way to make the dream a reality. In the meantime, I look forward to the sun rising in a few minutes and to seeing the coastline as we come home, albeit for just a couple of weeks. Here's hoping that this trip inspires the students to feel the same love and personal connection to the Land and the People of Israel that I feel. And that it inspires me to remember where my family's home should be. Because when it's all said and done, it's the only place in the world that makes me cry.
