It started as a song. I was in my car (on the way to yet another doctor’s appointment) and singing harmony along to some of the Israeli songs on my playlist, and I started to think about how I could write a song specifically for an alto (like me) where the harmony line becomes the melody of the song. But I was too busy driving to record what I was singing, and by the time I got to the doctor’s office and tried to record the tune on my phone, I’d forgotten most of it. But while I was in the waiting room, and then waiting again in the exam room, I wrote down some of the lyrics that had come to mind while I was singing, and the words kept coming, all in Hebrew.
By the time I got home from the appointment, I had four or five pages of potential lyrics, but no music to sing them to, and no idea how to get the music back. I decided to keep working on the lyrics anyway, shaping them into verses and a chorus and a bridge, in the hope that the melody would come back to me; but I found myself writing a poem instead, without any strict rhymes or rhythms. And after ten or fifteen drafts, and some help from Google Translate, I ended up with a poem I was happy with, about returning to my online Hebrew classes after a year away.
It took me a while to get up the nerve to send the poem to my current Hebrew teacher and ask for her corrections, though. I felt self-conscious about presuming to write a poem in Hebrew, and embarrassed to share what had turned out to be an ode, and kind of emotional and squishy (AKA not cool).
My teacher made a few corrections to the Hebrew, but mostly she just showered me with praise. She told me how meaningful it was to her, after teaching through the past year in Israel, to see that her work was paying off and reaching people at such a deep level. She also asked if she could send it to some of her friends, who also teach at the school, and I jumped up and down for a while before I could calmly type back, Sure. It took me a few more days to get up the nerve to ask her if I could send the poem to our WhatsApp group, to share it with my classmates, but when I finally sent it I got some very nice responses, and I felt great for a whole minute, maybe even two!
Then, of course, the letdown kicked in and I thought, ugh, I’ll have to keep writing poems in Hebrew to keep getting this much attention, and each poem will have to be better than the one before it or else they’d get bored and, really, over it. Or, maybe I could send the poem to new people, so they could be impressed, and then I wouldn’t have to write a whole new thing. And I thought, Aha! The blog! But, most of my readers are not fluent in Hebrew, so I would have to translate it, but I could also include the Hebrew, so they could be impressed in theory, if not in fact.
And as I started to translate the poem I realized that, except for a few details, this poem could just as easily be about the blogging world, and the kindness and curiosity and love we share here, in this place that doesn’t quite exist in the real world, but is very real, for us.
So, thank you for being such amazing, passionate, and compassionate people, and I hope you like the poem.
Hinei! (Here it is!)
An Ode to Citizen Café Tel Aviv
A year ago, I thought I was done with this,
I thought I’d finished learning Hebrew
After two years in the Zoom rooms.
Maybe, I thought, this is my Hebrew
And it can’t improve anymore.
And so, I closed the door on this world.
But,
I still dreamt about the zoom rooms
That existed outside of space, or
I worried,
That didn’t exist in reality at all.
Those zoom rooms were closed to me for almost a year,
And what a year,
In which the world shattered into many little pieces.
I watched the news and said to myself,
Maybe the whole world is different from what I imagined
And there’s nowhere to go for comfort.
Finally I understood
That I missed the zoom rooms
That exists outside of space or that I’d imagined completely,
But,
I’d lost the key
Or I’d lost the path to the rooms
Just when I needed them the most.
I missed all of the weird sentences,
About the beach and the traffic in Tel Aviv,
And about Ross and Rachel from Friends
And about Beyoncé the queen.
I missed all of the speed dating questions that we answered in the rooms,
And I missed this place where love is in the air,
Love of languages, love of food, love of music and laughter,
Love of the land of Israel and the Jewish people.
And so I decided to return
Even if these rooms only exist in my imagination,
Because I remembered that here everyone believes in this world that we create together.
This world isn’t perfect, I know.
Here everyone speaks Hebrew with a different accent,
And they don’t agree on a lot of things.
One man believes in every word of the Torah, and one doesn’t believe in anything.
One woman believes in world peace, and one thinks it’s impossible.
But,
In these rooms, all that matters to us
Is to learn from each other and to support each other
And to create a different world,
A world filled with kindness and curiosity.
That’s why we’re here
From Barcelona, and New York, and Berlin,
And Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, and London,
And Argentina, and Toronto, and Arizona
To create a beautiful world together,
With all of our words and all of our love.
And because of this, our world, which exists outside of space, is real
For us and for always.
עוד (או אודה ל)סיטיזן קפה תל אביב
לפני שנה, חשבתי שמיציתי את זה,
חשבתי שסיימתי ללמוד עברית,
אחרי שנתיים בחדרי הזום.
אולי, חשבתי, זאת העברית שלי
והיא לא יכולה להשתפר עוד.
ואז, סגרתי את הדלת לעולם הזה.
אבל,
עדיין חלמתי על חדרי הזום
שהיו קיימים מחוץ לחלל, או
דאגתי,
שלא היו קיימים במציאות בכלל.
חדרי הזום האלה היו סגורים לי כמעט שנה,
ואיזו שנה,
שבה העולם התנפץ להרבה חלקים קטנים.
צפיתי בחדשות ואמרתי לעצמי,
אולי כל העולם שונה ממה שדמיינתי
ואין לאן ללכת לנחמה.
סוף סוף הבנתי
שהתגעגעתי לחדרי הזום
שקיימים מחוץ לחלל, או שדמיינתי לגמרי.
אבל,
פספסתי את המפתח
או פספסתי את הדרך לחדרים,
פשוט כשהכי הייתי צריכה אותם.
התגעגעתי לכל המשפטים המוזרים,
על הים והפקקים בתל אביב,
ועל רוס ורייצ׳ל מחברים,
ועל ביונסה המלכה.
התגעגעתי לכל השאלות הספיד דייטינג שעשינו בחדרים,
והתגעגעתי למקום הזה שבו אהבה נמצאת באוויר,
אהבת שפות, אהבת אוכל, אהבת מוזיקה וצחוקים,
אהבת מדינת ישראל והעם היהודי.
ואז החלטתי לחזור,
אפילו אם החדרים האלה רק קיימים בדמיון שלי,
כי זכרתי שפה כולם מאמינים בעולם הזה שאנחנו יוצרים ביחד.
העולם הזה לא מושלם, אני יודעת.
פה כולם מדברים עברית עם מבטא אחר,
ולא מסכימים על הרבה דברים.
איש אחד מאמין בכל מילה בתורה, ואחד לא מאמין בכלום.
אישה אחת מאמינה בשלום עולמי, ואחת חושבת שזה בלתי אפשרי.
אבל,
בחדרים האלה כל מה שחשוב לנו
זה ללמוד אחד מהשני ולתמוך אחד בשני
ולהמציא עולם אחר,
עולם מלא חסד וסקרנות.
בגלל זה אנחנו פה
מברצלונה, וניו יורק, וברלין,
ותל אביב, ויורשלים, ולונדון,
וארגנטינה, וטורונטו, ואריזונה
ליצור עולם יפה ביחד,
עם כל המילים שלנו, וכל האהבה שלנו.
ובגלל זה העולם שלנו, שקיים מחוץ לחלל, הוא אמיתי
לנו ולתמיד.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?










