Why Can't We Be Friends?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted in this very blog about Operation Pillar of Defense. I expressed my dismay at Hamas aiming rockets towards the holy city of Jerusalem, of the continued assault on Israeli civilians without a care in the world for civilian life, my concern for my friends taking refuge in bomb shelters, and my worry about the escalation of tensions, and what that means for peace on both sides of the conflict. I also expressed my desire to be in Israel and to stand with her and the people I care about, because I'm one of those wacky people who sees Israel as an actual functioning democracy in a sea of extremism and violence, imperfect as it may be, and love it so much, that I don't want to see its destruction. After having lived there for a year and having many friends and loved ones there who call it home, and actually possessing a non-biased education on the conflict itself, I sort of feel, you know, entitled to my opinion.

Entitled or not, I am usually pretty quiet about my political beliefs these days, meaning, I don't bother to preach them; I just live them instead. I've learned that some things cannot be discussed calmly and rationally with some people, and no matter what your intentions might be, you can't change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. But what can I say? Every once in a while I go out on a limb and talk about the things that I think and feel to people who may not be so sympathetic, or with one of those rare people who can disagree with me without hating me. Since I'm not the best at handling confrontation (I tend to get flustered and either sound like I've forgotten how to speak English or I start crying pathetically once the confrontation gets tense), I bite my tongue a lot. In some ways, it's taught me to let things go, shrug things off, and keep friends from all across the political, religious, and social spectrum. Still, I have had moments where I've felt personally attacked, and a bit disappointed in myself for not "saying something." There's something to be said for not saying anything sometimes, though. We are taught to"stand up for ourselves" so much in our culture that we seem to disregard that you can do that without starting an argument. We're also taught to pick our battles, but for some reason, we're never told how to actually do that; a battle is a battle well fought as long as we walk away feeling that we've won, and we've been vindicated through our perceived victory. We may walk away with one less friend or with a gaping wound in the relationship that is sure to only fester due to a lack of personal resolution, but damn it, who cares as long as you're still so sure that you're right?

So, I dared to discuss what was troubling me during the conflict, and it costed me a "friend." And I endured the loss of that friend in the most insulting way possible: I was unfriended on Facebook.

That's right! Unfriended. In this day and age, you might as well kick someone in the shins to express your dissatisfaction with them if you're going to remove them from your friends list. And since I was sort of anticipating less than positive feedback from some people, I kept an eye on the number of people on my friends list after posting a link to my blog, just in case someone was so disgusted with my views that they no longer wanted to even peripherally be my friend via a social network site that claims that we have hundreds of friends, simply because they are on a list of people that we know really well, went to high school with, are vaguely acquainted with, or met at a party once. Sure enough, that list changed to one number less, and I was filled with that ever familiar sense of anxiousness, because I was sure that it meant that someone had unfriended me due to my blog, and because it's pretty exciting to think that someone actually took the time to read my blog in the first place. Hey! Did this mean I had written something "controversial?" How thrilling! I felt an odd blend of pride in my rebelliousness and disappointment in what I was sure was someone unfriending me over my different opinion.

I had the culprits of my unfriending narrowed down to a few likely candidates, and pretty soon, I found out who it was. The predictability of it only compounded my sense of disappointment; I was hoping someone would surprise me, or that the unfriending wasn't due to what I knew it was over, but instead over something like someone realizing that we had met at a drunken party three years ago and had no reason to be friends with me, because I barely exist in the fuzzy, drunken memory in that person's psyche. But I was right, and I knew who it was almost immediately. Usually, like anyone, I love it when I'm right. But sometimes, I hate it because I don't want my assumptions to be correct. I messaged the culprit and asked him if I'd done anything to offend him. His only response was, "I support Palestine."

It's an interesting response because I support Palestine, too. I would support a Palestinian state, just like there was supposed to be one during the UN partition that was going to ensure an Arab state and a Jewish state in British mandate Palestine 65 years ago, before the Arabs declared war on the new Jewish state that supported them. I support them so much, that if I could be given any kind of reliable reassurance that such a state could co-exist peacefully with Israel, I'd be the first to wish a sincere mozel tov to my new Arab neighbors in their new homeland. Since it's been 65 years and we've been shown time and time again that that is not the aim of a Palestinian state as of  yet, I don't have high hopes. Hamas says it will never recognize Israel, and I believe them. I also support a theoretical Palestine so much, that I care about Palestinian safety, freedom and well being, that I don't support Hamas, an extremist terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. I support Palestinians  so much, that I'd love to see them overthrow violence, extremism, propaganda, censorship, corruption and hatred in their governing bodies. I support Palestine, but nobody knows what that means in practice. You have to actually know what the reality is first before you can say that you support or don't support Palestinians or Israelis. People are baffled when you say both, because they don't know that it doesn't have to be an Us vs. Them situation. So far, the Palestinians give Israel no choice. Israel defends itself, the world watches while it gets pummeled with rocket fire, and somehow, Israel is the villain. Call me crazy, but that's crazy.

In any case, nuance is not a strong suit of a lot of people, especially in regards to such a polarizing issue, in the very polarized country that we live in. Being moderate tends to get looked down upon, no matter how moderate people claim to be. I've met true blue extremists who insist that they are so moderate, that they can't understand why everyone thinks they're crazy.

I used to be extreme in my views as well. I was very far left, and believed in ideals more than I believed in reality. I have nothing against ideals these days, but at some point, you have to take in your experiences as you grow, and understand that it is a rare treat when life presents you with such clear cut, black and white, right and wrong, good guys and bad guys situations. Life is so complicated, and yet, we seem to be unable to resist the urge to simplify things down to a yes or a no, or a right or a wrong. We're all guilty of that sometimes. I used to live that way, too. I didn't want any friends who could challenge my notions of the world, and because I was in my early 20s, I was sure that I knew everything, and was beyond impatient and intolerant of people who didn't agree with me. Needless to say, I was angry a lot, and my friends started to bore me, and my life started to bore me, and I started to bore myself. Sometimes, you need someone around who will challenge and push you to question all those things that you are so sure of. Once I started to allow those views into my life without fear of being proven wrong (and those views started with an academic interest in Judaism), life became a lot more colorful and I became a lot more open, and less angry. I made more friends, and they came from all over the spectrum of human experiences and thought. I began to value disagreements, and was humbled to be proven wrong from time to time. Turns out, it can be really satisfying to be wrong. Victory is not everything, especially when you're still angry after you've won.

So, why can't we be friends? I can't speak for the person who no longer wants to be my friend over my blog post, and it's tempting to assume what his reasons are. Whatever they are though, it makes me a bit sad. I still hold out hope that one day, the conflict will come to a peaceful resolution for both Israel and the Palestinians, even though it, as always, looks grim. It feels even more hopeless when you realize that this is an issue that some people cannot agree to to disagree upon, and that friendships can break to pieces over it. If we can't peacefully disagree with each other over a political situation and there are no rockets, or suicide bombers, or bus bombs or military operations standing between us, then I wonder what we can expect from the people who do have these things between them, and between conflict and peace?

This is one of those things that I'd love to be wrong about.

Times like these....

Dear readers (all three of you), as you can see, it's been almost four months since I've written for my blog. I could blame writer's block or the typical day to day distractions as the reason behind my silence. For instance, I've been getting into Lost, because my parents have Netflix, and I'm a sucker for TV dramas. This is like Star Trek: Deep Space 9 all over again, when watching five episodes in one extremely late night became a common occurrence. That time, I believe my addiction nearly destroyed my Hebrew classes in college, because I lent the series to my professor; I managed to hook he and his wife both, like a junkie looking for fellow junkies to connect with as we slip further in between the cracks of the productive parts of society, boldly spiraling to where no man has gone before (except for millions of other hopeless Trekkies). Talk about distractions. But the reason for my virtual silence is really quite simple; I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted, and thinking of my beloved Israel and Jerusalem is even more exhausting. I miss being there so much, that it drains me to think about it. I then get sad, and when I get sad, it looks very similar to anger, and my poor family has had to put up with my sad/angry shit for years. I'd rather not be sad and angry, if for nothing else, to save my family the headache of my bellyaching.

However, my exhaustion isn't just from my perpetual state of longing for Israel; it also comes from what has been my job for the last couple of months. You see, I'm a candy packager. I get up at 4:00 in the morning to work from 5:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. And yes, I work full time, standing on my feet for seemingly endless hours, placing truffles into boxes on an assembly line, putting lids onto boxes, tying bows onto boxes, folding boxes, labeling boxes, taking things out of boxes only to put them into new boxes, and taking the old boxes out to the recycling to make room for the new boxes. This job is the definition of monotony, the most concrete example of tedium that I can imagine, so much so, that I've fallen asleep on my feet while doing it (my hands never missing a beat as I nod off and jerk back awake, startled and disoriented), and I've cried in the women's room in the middle of the day, hiding in a stall and talking myself down, while making a mental list of why I'm voluntarily doing this to myself (It's all for my return to Israel! Israel, my cruel, tormenting mistress! I love you dangerously close to insanely)! I start a new job tomorrow where I'll sit on my butt in a cubicle, dealing with customer complaints for our company's products via the phone. Right now, I should be practicing my "I'm smiling widely and am so happy with you yelling at me, sir" voice, which I've cultivated from all my years in customer service positions, having reverted back to my naturally occurring Daria-style cadence of speech after spending months imprisoned in a candy factory, away from civilization. I know that I have a whole new level of monotony and tedium in store for me until January 10th, when I make my way back to the Holy Land, and resume this thing called "my life." See? It's exhausting to even type it all out.

"My life" in Israel is not as I left it, though. Last week, Israel's IDF eliminated top Hamas operatives in Gaza in the interest of maintaining Israeli safety. This prompted Hamas to do what they apparently love to do more than anything, which is to shoot rockets into Israel, with not a care in the world for Israeli civilian life, or even Palestinian civilian life. Well, actually it was more rockets than usual, because Hamas has been tempting fate by doing what every country in the world would call and act of war, by firing into Israel as though it's Hamas' way of saying "hello." Rockets reached Tel Aviv. They reached the outskirts of Jerusalem, a first in Hamas' history of terror and violence. Apparently, Jerusalem isn't as holy as declaring jihad on normal, every day civilians, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Muslim--just whoever happens to be in the line of indiscriminate fire. Sirens went off as the rockets were fired in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities. This is unusual for these cities, while places in the south, such as Ashkelon and Ashdod, are used to the sound of air raid sirens and rocket attacks from Gaza; this is how they have to live their lives. The sirens are not common in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem though, and my stomach churned each time I read the news. I know what those sirens sound like from drills and tests that occasionally took place in Jerusalem while I was there last year, just in case the unthinkable were to happen; those sirens are terrifying to hear. They wail like the end of the world is upon us, and we all need to act quickly, if we hope to save our lives. When I heard those sirens though, Hebrew class went on as normal, and we practiced grammar as they howled forebodingly throughout the city. This time though, when the sirens went off, my friends and loved ones were ducking into bomb shelters and stairwells, posting about their safety on Facebook, flooding my news feed with reassurances, calls for prayers for a ceasefire, and new headlines would pop up with the breaking news of where the rockets had landed. One of them landed in Gush Etzion, a settlement (as much as I hate to call it that, it is what the media has decided we need to know this community as) just outside of Jerusalem, where several teachers of mine live. I've spent time in Gush Etzion, had Shabbat dinners there, strolled through the peaceful streets of a quiet Modern Orthodox neighborhood in the summer, when little kids were running around outside, playing in the middle of the night, because it's so peaceful and quiet there, it truly feels as though there's no reason to be concerned about their safety. I imagined the rocket exploding there, my teachers, their children, their grandchildren, all scurrying for shelter, just as their Arab neighbors would be doing at the same time. And all last week I packaged candy, feeling like I live in another world.

As I chatted and emailed with friends, some of them in the IDF themselves, some of them students, some of them long time Israeli citizens, some of them new Israeli citizens, I was, quite understandably, asked over and over again; well, now what am I going to do? Am I really going to go back there with all the rocket fire? What if, even if things quieted down, it all started up again while I'm there? Would I come back to the States? Would I stay? Considering how easily the conflict can explode, how suddenly things can escalate, am I sure I want to go back? Aren't I scared? Worried? Anxious?

The truth is, it didn't even occur to me to not go back. It didn't occur to me to cancel my plans for five months of my life between January and June, to cancel my aliyah application with Nefesh b'Nefesh, to rethink my plans to study creative writing at Bar-Ilan University, to find a new place to call "home" after falling in love with Jerusalem. These considerations did not come to me, even as I watched the rockets above Tel Aviv's skyline on the news--I still love swimming those beaches and walking those busy streets, marveling at the modern, secular, cosmopolitan buildings, billboards and people, just a 45 minute bus ride from the ancient, religious, cobblestone streets of Jerusalem. I love Tel Aviv so much, I'll put up with her disgusting humidity in the summer, because she's worth it to me. These considerations did not come to me when my chats with Jerusalem friends were interrupted because a siren went off, and they needed to get to shelter, just in case. These considerations did not come to me even when a city bus exploded in Tel Aviv, a city that I've bussed around in numerous times. These considerations didn't come to me when the terror suspect for the bus bomb was apprehended in Ramat Gan, where Bar-Ilan University is, where I want to hone my writing skills, and obtain my Master's degree. These considerations didn't come to me because I've been sitting here fuming over the fact that I'm not there right now.

Sounds crazy, right? I want to be in the middle of a war zone. But I can't help it. I love Israel and feel that Jerusalem is my home. If your home was under attack, wouldn't you want to get back home right away? Wouldn't you want to see the people you care about with your own eyes, and have the comfort of having them at your side? Wouldn't you rather huddle into a bomb shelter with them and get through it together, rather than feeling that you live across the universe now, passing your days by putting truffles into boxes and counting down the minutes of your unbelievably long shifts until you can run to a computer and get the latest news on what's happening at home? Call me crazy (it's probably partly true, anyway), but I want to be there. I wouldn't abandon something that means so much to me, something that I love when things are at their worst. I'd stand by it, and what's more, I truly believe that I could live like an Israeli, cautious and concerned, but still able to sip coffee in a cafe after the sirens stop and we get out of the shelters, still going to the shuk to shop for Shabbat dinner, still heading to the Kotel to pray for a ceasefire, and hopefully, a long lasting peace for all of us, Israeli, Arab, immigrant, sabra, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever. I think I could live my life, even without the reassurance that most of us have in the States, that we're mostly safe from rockets, from bombs, from terrorism, from suicide attacks, from hatred, and a blindness that has turned conflict into a propaganda-ridden political issue, with such misinformed blowhards screaming ridiculous solutions to a problem that they don't understand, one would think that exploding from frustration is just as likely as dying in an explosion on a bus or from a rocket. Sure, anything could happen anywhere. But there's a difference between calling Israel your home and calling the United States your home; one is constantly under threat, the other is peripherally under threat. And while the U.S. will always be my home, it will be my home from my childhood, so to speak. Israel is the home you find when you grow up and have to leave the nest.

So what does one do in times like these? Certainly, Hamas will not succeed in changing my life by scaring me off with rockets and saber rattling. The ceasefire has quieted things down, which means of course, that things are back to the status quo: Israel ceases, and Hamas still fires, although they've gone  back to their usual, sporadic rocket fire, and not their constant barrage of rocket fire. I suppose I'll just start my new job tomorrow, earn my paycheck and put it away for my life in Israel, which is rapidly coming upon me. It's what an Israeli would do. What else can you do with your life except live it?

Trying to Mourn by the Book

Last week was Tisha b'Av, the "saddest day of the Jewish calendar." Commemorating the destruction of the Temple, observant Jews fast for a full day, restrict Torah study to the sad books of Lamentations, Job and Jeremiah, and mourn in typical Jewish fashion. This was my second Tisha b'Av as a Jew, and even though I was in Jerusalem last year for my first one, I just couldn't get swept up in the sorrow associated with the day. This year, in a small American town with so few Jews that you think you'd sooner encounter a unicorn than a fellow Semite, I struggled for a few days with the idea of fasting for the full day before deciding against it. After all, the Olympics were on and it was my father's birthday, too. I wasn't exactly in a mournful mood.

While I understand and can get behind the fact that a large portion of Jewish observance is based on tradition and ritualistic practices, and participating in them enriches one's experience as a Jew, and I certainly am not the only Jew who feels emotionally disconnected from mourning events that happened a couple thousand years ago, Tisha b'Av sits uneasily with me for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are personal, some are political, and some...I can't quite put my finger on.

Politically, I'm ambivalent about the idea of mourning the destruction of the Temple while Jews have since found their way back home to our ancestral holy land once again. I don't care how volatile or controversial the state of Israel is--it's ours, and as it exists, that's nothing short of a miracle. The fact that people are speaking a revitalized Hebrew as their mother tongue when the language was nearly dead and relegated to religious and academic usage for a thousand years, is remarkable. A country that is home to Jews from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and virtually every other pocket of the world along with a historically unprecedented number of converts, is profound. The existence of a country where Jews outnumber all other groups would have been unheard of a half a century ago, and only fantasizing, idealistic Zionists would have ever believed it would one day be a reality. Modern day Israel is a testament to the vitality and endurance of the Jewish people. It's hard for me to long for the restoration of the Temple, or Judaism as a sacrificial and centrally located religion. I long for the Israel that I left at the beginning of June this summer. Sure, it's imperfect (as is every nation on the planet since the beginning of time), and the challenges that Israel and Judaism itself face in a modern, largely hostile world, are massive, to say the least. But it is what it is today, because after the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish exile that followed, Jews were forced to adapt throughout the world and throughout time, maintaining their rituals, customs and traditions, and therefore, their identity. And here I am, a 26 year old WASPY small-town ex-religion-basher who only began to learn about Judaism a few short years ago, embracing a Jewish identity and faith as though it's what I have been missing my whole life...because it is. If Jews had not been dispersed throughout the world, who is to say that I would have found my way to Judaism, and my beloved, sorely missed Jerusalem?

This is not to say that observing Tisha b'Av is useless and the day is irrelevant. It's a part of Jewish history and the events the day memorializes could have very well destroyed the Jewish people. But Jews and Judaism were not ultimately destroyed, and given the present day circumstances of the existence of the state of Israel...well, there's something redemptive about that, right? Isn't it evidence of a Jewish renaissance? A kind of salvation?

Of course, many Orthodox Jews would read this (and they probably aren't) and label me an ignorant convert (that is, if they even considered me a legitimate convert in the first place). True redemption, the end of mourning the loss of the Temple, thus rendering Tisha b'Av obsolete, will only happen when the Messiah comes, all exiles are gathered out from the diaspora and back in the Holy Land, and all with the guidance of God's willing hand. Yes, I'm aware of Orthodox views of the state of Israel (some of them favorable, some of them insisting that Israel is a blasphemous example of Jews forcing God's hand before it is time for our redemption), and I'm aware that deeply religious Jews may actually be capable of mourning the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish exile that resulted from them (both Temples, that is) with a real sense of, well, mourning. But the saddest day on the Jewish calendar? What about Yom HaShoah?

Yes, Yom HaShoah is a new addition to the Jewish calendar, and was only established in 1953 by the state of Israel, and has been more controversial than the electricity vs. fire on Shabbat debate. Why don't we fast on Yom HaShoah? Why don't we engage in traditional Jewish mourning rituals? Why do ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel refuse to stand in silence during the sirens like the rest of Israel does in honor of the dead? Why are they inclined to go to the Kotel on Tisha b'Av and grieve the destruction of the Temple, but not to stand for a couple of minutes out of respect for the 6 million Jews that were brutally murdered only a few short decades ago? Are they heartless? 

Of course, the answer is no, they are not inherently heartless, and like most things involving Jews and Judaism, it's complicated. While I was struggling with observing Tisha b'Av last year in Jerusalem and figuring out what exactly that meant to me, I pondered these same questions. As it turns out, the way in which Yom HaShoah was established is a perfect example of Jewish modernity butting heads with Jewish tradition, and the schism in Jewish thought over how Judaism should thrive in the modern world.

Yom HaShoah happens to fall in the month of Nisan, a month that traditionally forbids some mourning rituals and is supposed to be a festive time. Why did the Knesset, then, decide that (against the suggestion of the Rabbinate to designate the Tenth of Tevet as the official day to memorialize the Holocaust) Nisan would be the month that Yom HaShoah was to occur? Perhaps there's something kind of poetic about observing the solemn Yom HaShoah right after Pesach, when we celebrate our freedom from slavery in Egypt, followed shortly by mourning those who fought and died for the establishment of Israel or were killed in terror attacks on Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day), to immediately (seriously, the next day) celebrating our freedom again on Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel's Independence Day). Or maybe the Rabbinate and the Knesset just really didn't like each other and often bickered over how much say one should have over the other...seems plausible. 

But there's more to it than that. Standing at attention during a nationwide sounding of a siren, observing a moment of silence, flying flags at half-mast, showing Holocaust documentaries on television and playing somber music on the radio, are all fairly modern and goyish ways to commemorate the dead. It's understandable that some ultra-Orthodox Jews would have reservations about mourning in such a way, especially if there is a disconnect between how they do mourn, how they understand mourning, and how they feel when they mourn. Imagine being expected to mourn someone close to you in a completely foreign way, and how uncomfortable and even meaningless that would seem. In ancient Egyptian culture, mourning Egyptians supposedly shaved their eyebrows when their cats died. Wouldn't it feel strange, if not absurd, to engage in such a practice after your beloved kitty passed, if you were, say, not an ancient Egyptian? Wouldn't you do more than raise the eyebrows that you refuse to shave off at the mere suggestion of it? And as your deceased cat is given a lavish funeral before being embalmed and mummified and lovingly placed in a tomb with cream and mice for the afterlife, you would protest. After all, you probably didn't regard your feline companion as a deity (much to the chagrin of your cat), and these rituals would feel meaningless...even offensive.

Some of the ultra-Orthodox in Israel also claim that their way of life commemorates those killed in the Holocaust. They continue to live just as they lived in Eastern European shtetls before that world was wiped out of Europe, and at every moment, they are remembering and honoring the dead...but I can't help but wonder what that means as far as remembering and honoring the Jews who didn't live in Eastern European shtetls, such as the assimilated and cosmopolitan Jews who were killed simply for being Jewish, even if they looked and behaved like their non-Jewish counterparts. 

And finally, Tisha b'Av, some opinions hold, is the official Jewish day of mourning, and the Holocaust, while horrific and still so fresh in the memory of the Jewish people, is just another tragic episode in Jewish history, like the destruction of the Temple. It's a hard argument for me to accept, especially if the destruction of the Temple is so far removed from our understanding of tragedy, while the entire world, Jewish and non-Jewish, is still reeling from the trauma and repercussions of the Holocaust. I was in tears all throughout the day on Yom HaShoah. I was feeling guilty for sitting in an Aroma cafe drinking Turkish coffees with my laptop open in front of me, researching and pondering how much Tisha b'Av should mean to me, on Tisha b'Av. But I don't see Judaism as a guilt-based religion, hence the lack of observance of something that I am ambivalent about. It's important to me to find a balance between meaning in my observances and rituals so it doesn't feel like hollow, just-go-through-the-steps tradition, but to also recognize the worth in engaging in such traditions and rituals as a Jewish person. The ex-atheist in me tells me to tread lightly and consider what my religious observances mean to me, and the newly spiritual side of me tells me not to shrug off observances that remind me of who I have chosen to be. I can keep kosher while I cook on Shabbat, drop f-bombs as though I suffer from Tourette Syndrome all throughout my pining for Jerusalem blog, and appreciate and value modesty while I love wearing fishnet stockings with heals and a mini-skirt. Not every Jew would agree with me, but I see nothing conflicting or contradictory in my behavior. I want to be Jewish, but I want to be Megan as a Jew, more specifically. If the day ever comes where it feels right to trade in my mini skirts for ankle-skirts, keep food on the hot plate on Shabbat and to clean out my filthy mouth, then I'll still be Megan as a Jew. But it has to feel right.

And of course, the subject of mourning for me as a convert is also complicated. A week before Tisha b'Av, was the one year anniversary of the death of my best friend from my childhood. When he passed away, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I was in Jerusalem. I had been there for about a month and was living in the dorms at Hebrew University, exhausting myself in ulpan. I had few friends since I was one of a handful of students who were there for the whole summer, and it was months before I found my circle of friends at Pardes. I was also having trouble disengaging from some relationships that I left behind in the States. I was lonely and still settling into my new environment, still settling into my Jewish skin, and then suddenly, friends I had hardly spoken to since grade school were emailing me about Ryan's death. 

I didn't mourn, not completely, anyway. I cried a bit, reminisced about my childhood, felt remorse for the reasons why we eventually drifted apart, unburied some dormant, unresolved issues from that time, contemplated my own mortality, panicked over the thought of wasting my life, second guessed everything I'd been doing for the last several years, and then cried some more. I didn't come to terms with any of it, though. I didn't know how to. So instead, I pushed it all away, shoved as many of the worms back into the can as I possibly could, and stared at Hebrew textbooks and flash cards until I thought my eyes would bleed. Somehow, a year passed, and the occasional sense of sadness that comes with loss would suddenly boil up to the surface, even as things improved for me, and I'd panic a bit and worry that everyone and everything I love might suddenly disappear from my life, and loss after loss from the whole year stacked up on themselves. Then I came back here. Another loss.

I am relatively ignorant when it comes to Jewish mourning. I haven't been faced with a close death in a Jewish community and my confusion over how to simply mourn someone even outside of a Jewish context, only makes it more difficult to wrap my head around. As the anniversary of my friend's death approached, I started to wonder what I should do; do Jews mourn non-Jews the same way they would mourn a Jew? How would I mourn my parents and other family members when the time comes? How would they mourn me? Will I be laid to rest in Israel? What about my Conservative conversion? What will the Rabbinate say about that? Will I be married and have kids? Will my grave be separate from them? Does Mom know that I shouldn't be cremated? What do I do?

After speaking on Skype with a teacher of mine from Jerusalem, I was comforted a bit to be told that, while such questions are big questions and are important, there are some satisfactory answers to them. It also became apparent that I obsessed over Jewish mourning rituals around the anniversary of my friend's death in place of actually mourning him, and coming to terms with his death and all of the things that his death had conjured up for me. "I'll visit his memorial," I told myself. It's been a few weeks. I can't bring myself to visit it, even though I know that I need to. Maybe confronting it in some concrete way will keep me from tearing the scabs off, and will finally allow some old wounds heal.

Which brings me to my final thought on mourning, rituals, and Tisha b'Av. Mourning a past that is only mine in a collective sense while I live in an exciting, miraculous, amazing time that allows a country like Israel to exist in a post-Temple destruction, post-exile, post-Holocaust world as a Jew who does not have the distinction of being born as such, feels...weird. Not weird like, "wow, you Jews are weird with your sack cloth and ashes, your fasting and sitting on the ground style of mourning...you guys wear black all the time, so isn't that, like, a symbol of mourning and stuff?" But it feels weird on a personal level. When I participated in the minor fasts like the Fast of Gedalia and the Fast of Esther, I did so because I was living in a Jewish environment where it felt enriching and meaningful to participate in such observances. But Tisha b'Av carries so much more weight with it, that I have to pause and consider what it means. It's certainly possible to glean meaning from Jewish holidays even if there is a bit of a disconnect between the actual thing it's based on and your life as you live it. Judaism is, after all, an ancient religion filled with codes and laws, and yet it has stood the test of time precisely because we are so hesitant to throw out the old and welcome in the new, redefining Jewishness and pushing boundaries that lead off into no man's land...or no Jew's land, as it were. That kind of attitude is a double edged sword; on the one hand, it means preservation of a people and its culture, but on the other hand, it means a lot of strife and clashing with the changing world, and the Jews who want to change with it while bringing Judaism with them as they go. Tisha b'Av, because of it's weightiness and because of it's association with mourning, and because of my disconnect between mourning and being observant, it feels weird for me.

In any case, Tisha b'Av isn't going anywhere any time soon, and hopefully, neither am I (except to Jerusalem, of course). Perhaps I'll have enough time on the planet to come to terms with the fact that, at this point in my life, I can't feel the meaning of Tisha b'Av in my soul, even if I try to translate the day into something personalized for me. So many things to come to terms with, so little time. Maybe all I'm really trying to say is...I've mourned so much lately, that adding a day of even existential sadness, is too much. I want to be happy that there is an Israel in this world, and I was there, rather than lament the many years of exile that seemed to destroy Israel altogether. That in itself, like the personal losses we can't get over, seems unbearable and impossible to come to terms with.