From the beginning, it was something of an out of body experience. I took a car service to the airport, waving goodbye to Mom in the parking lot of our co-op, chatting with the driver about all manner of things (gardening, mothers, compression socks, and, of course, traffic at the airport). When I arrived at Terminal Four at JFK, I was immediately overwhelmed: people were rushing in different directions and there were no clear signs, that I could see, telling me where to go. I had already checked in online, so I was pretty sure I didn’t need to stop at a check-in kiosk, but beyond that I was lost. I asked a man in uniform (hopefully he actually worked there), and he directed me to a woman who was checking boarding passes. I showed her my electronic boarding pass and she let me through, and then I had to show my electronic boarding pass (AKA my phone) to two more women as I followed the crowd around cones and other obstacles onto the security line. I tried to do exactly what everyone else on the line was doing, showing my passport, lugging my carry-on and my personal bag into the gray buckets and pushing them towards the scanner, but I must have missed some of the instructions because my personal bag was pulled aside and I had to wait on another line until they could hand check it, and tell me that I was supposed to have taken my laptop computer out before putting the bag through the scanner. Live and learn.
When they sent me on my way, I still wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go next. People were wandering in a bunch of different directions, and signs listed different lounges and gates and floors, but nothing said: this is the way to EL AL. I followed an elderly couple to the elevator, which said “to all gates,” and followed them in, and, luckily, when the doors opened there was finally a big screen listing the destinations and flight times and gates, and I found my flight on the list and followed the arrows to my gate. At least, I thought I was following the arrows in the right direction. I walked past endless toy stores and candy stores and restaurants and people waiting at other gates for other planes, but I couldn’t find my gate. Eventually, I found another nice man in a uniform (this time I was pretty sure he worked for the airport, or at least for one of the airlines), and he directed me to go back to where I’d started and then keep going in that direction. Finally, after walking through what felt like the whole airport, I found my gate and sat down in the waiting area – two hours before boarding was set to begin. They say to get to the airport three hours before your flight, just in case.
I spent the next two hours people watching, and texting with Mom. There were casually dressed couples (jeans and t-shirts like me) carrying babies, and Haredi men in long back coats with special boxes to carry their hats, and Yeshiva boys in khakis and polo shirts and black suede kippot studying and eating together at a work table. There were also enough other solo female travelers to make me feel less conspicuous than I’d expected, and people reading actual hardcover books like the one hiding at the bottom of my bag while I stole a few last looks at my phone. At some point, there was a group of men on the other side of the waiting area saying the afternoon prayers, and then ten minutes later, after sunset I assume, another group gathered to say the evening prayers, and then our flight was called to start boarding.
I showed my electronic boarding pass to the woman guarding the line to board the plane, but she said, “Oh no, I will not look at that. You need a paper boarding pass.” Luckily the line at the EL AL desk was short, and I only had to go through a short security interview (Do you understand Hebrew? Are you sure? Why are you going to Israel? Where are you staying?), and then they scanned my passport, and handed me my paper boarding pass and sent me through to the plane.
The last flight I’d been on was years earlier, and barely two hours long, so I was anxious about the 11-hour flight, without Wi-Fi and with no one to talk to. When I found my seat, a nice man (no uniform this time) helped me lift my carry-on suitcase into the overhead compartment, and then I discovered that my personal bag didn’t actually fit under the seat in front of me, the way all the videos said it would, and there was no more room in the storage compartments, so I was going to have to sit with my legs on an angle for the whole flight. At least I had an aisle seat, though. I’ve been watching Stephen Colbert do his Colbert Questionnaire for a very long time, so I knew I was supposed to get an aisle seat, rather than a window seat, to avoid having to climb over someone else to get to the bathroom.
I felt some panic just before takeoff, thinking about every possible thing that could go wrong on the trip, and feeling trapped because getting back home would be so much harder midair, but it passed, eventually. I watched my seatmate to find out how to use the entertainment system in front of my seat, and I found a bunch of Israeli TV shows, in Hebrew, which I hoped would help me acclimate to all of the Hebrew I’d be hearing in Israel. I ended up finding a really interesting interview show and watched episode after episode: with an Israeli actress, a past Minister of communications, a former head of Mossad, an Arab Israeli reporter, a comedian who specialized in doing impressions (including of Netanyahu), and the current head of the opposition in the Knesset. We were served dinner about an hour into the flight, and I had to watch my seatmate to figure out where to find the folding tray table hidden in the armrest, but I never figured out how to turn on a light to be able to read my book once the overhead lights were turned down.
They served breakfast about an hour before we landed in Israel, and at that point, a lot of the men on the plane got up to pray the morning prayer, even though it still felt like the middle of night to me.
I’d heard horror stories about people being pulled from the security line and interviewed by customs officials for hours upon landing at Ben Gurian airport, but when we landed, I barely had to wait on line before my passport was checked and I was sent on through. Then I followed a big family through the maze of hallways until I finally reached the arrivals lounge, where I had just enough time to switch my phone to my temporary Israeli telephone number before my friend arrived to pick me up.
I hadn’t slept at all on the plane, but somehow, I wasn’t tired, so she drove us straight to the Western Wall (The Kotel) in Jerusalem. I’d been promised that I would feel inspired just entering Jerusalem, and that being at the Kotel (the only outer wall remaining after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE) would be profound, but as we walked through the alleyways of the old city, past endless groups of Israeli school children on day trips with their teachers, and groups of soldiers in training, also on day trips with their teachers, I didn’t feel much of anything.
It was a long walk on hard stone, down steps and around corners, until we were at the Kotel, and my first impression of this ancient holy place was, eh, it’s kind of dinky. I mean, it’s a wall, with some greenery growing out of it, and pieces of paper stuck in every crevice, but it didn’t glow or anything, and no great voice called down from the heavens telling me that I was home. I’d been warned that I would need to wear a skirt to go to the Kotel, and that there were women guarding the entrance who would insist on wrapping me in a scarf to cover my pants, but it turned out those women were out for the day, or distracted, and I was able to walk in wearing my jeans and t-shirt from the plane. The women’s section was significantly smaller than the men’s section, but one of the men had already climbed up to peer over the divider to see what the women were doing.
There were plastic chairs set up for us to sit in, but many more women were standing right up against the wall, holding their prayer books and shuckling back and forth. A lot of the women wore long skirts, and elaborate scarves wrapped multiple times around their heads, and prayed with great feeling, but I just sat there and watched. I was fascinated by a pigeon with a peg leg. I don’t actually know if he actually had a peg leg or if he was just missing his foot, but he walked like a pirate and kept scanning the ground for crumbs. A little boy nearby was carrying a bag of snack chips, even though my friend told me you weren’t supposed to bring food to the area, so the bird was on the right track.
I didn’t feel like praying, or writing a note to shove into the wall. I’d always imagined that there would be a notepad and pen set up nearby, and ladders, so you could put your note into a crevice away from public view, but no. The notes were all homemade and folded into tiny shapes in order to fit into the tiniest spaces in the wall, and you had to really look closely in order to see them. The most interesting thing, to me, was the way many of the women would back away from the wall as they left, and when I asked my friend about it, she said it was a sign of respect, because you shouldn’t turn your back on God. For my own safety, I didn’t risk the maneuver myself, because I was sure I would trip over my feet, or a spare child, so I walked out facing forward while my friend walked out backwards. I hope God understands.
On our way back up the steps, I finally saw my first Israeli cats (they have stray cats everywhere) and took a picture to send to Mom as my first missive from the holy land. Then we wound our way back through the alleyways, passing little shops and food stalls and tour groups, and many men and women carrying paper cups, asking for money. They didn’t look like the unhoused people I used to see in the subway in New York, more like this was their job and they were proud of it. I could picture them finishing a long day of begging for money from strangers and returning home to their modest Jerusalem apartments to put their feet up and watch TV. At one point, there was a cat stretched out on a low wall, next to a discarded paper cup, but he didn’t make a move to ask for spare change. He seemed confident that someone would feed him eventually.
I’d read all about Jerusalem Syndrome, and how so many people went crazy and started to think they were God just because they were breathing the air in Jerusalem, but I guess I’m immune. I should have known that I wouldn’t be a good candidate for delusions of grandeur.
After visiting the old city, we drove around Jerusalem while my friend played tour guide. She’d lived in Jerusalem when she first made Aliyah, in her 20’s, so it was all very familiar and homey for her. She drove us through the different neighborhoods and past the Israel museum and the Knesset and the Supreme court and the National Library – everywhere a bus tour would have taken us – and then she pointed out the hotel where she’d had her wedding (which I missed, of course), and the neighborhood where her parents were living, though they were out of the country at the moment. And as we drove around Jerusalem, and then out towards her home, my friend and I started to catch up. We’d seen each other every few years when she came to visit family in the States, and of course we’d chatted through email and then WhatsApp, but this was, already, the most time we’d spent together in years, and I started to remember why we became friends in the first place: no matter how shy and anxious and out-of-body I felt, she was able to make to me feel seen and heard and comfortable. I’d been worried that I would feel like a burden, or that we’d have nothing to say to each other, but she was doing everything she could to let me know that I was welcome, and that she was looking forward to our next adventure.
When we arrived in Modiin, about thirty minutes outside of Jerusalem, it was still light out, and I was surprised to find that the city looked suspiciously like White Plains, NY – with all of the newness and crispness of an upper middle-class enclave. It’s a very young, planned city, so it doesn’t have the tiny alleyways of Jerusalem, or the crowded streets, and the wide-open spaces made it easier to breathe.
My friend’s four-bedroom apartment was huge, and in the process of being cleaned by her Yemeni Israeli house cleaner, whose rapid-fire Hebrew was matched by my friend’s equally rapid-fire Israeli-accented Hebrew – all too fast for me to follow. Of course, I knew that my friend spoke Hebrew – I mean, she’d lived in Israel for decades – but I hadn’t realized she would sound like someone who’d been born there. Up until that point, and on all of our visits in the States, we’d only spoken to each other in English.
I was set up in her older daughter’s room (since she was away doing national service), and, as I unpacked I, of course, fell back into my out-of-body, what-am-I-doing-here state of mind. I was trying to hide from the cleaning lady, who was busy mopping the living room floor with what looked like a squeegee, because she’d already asked me ten or fifteen personal questions, in Hebrew, about my career and family and where my friend and I knew each other from, and I was afraid the questions were going to get steadily more intrusive. I checked my email and found out that I’d received another rejection from one of my agent queries, which I guess is better than the silence I was getting in response to most of the others, but it didn’t feel great. I focused on unpacking and getting my bearings, and when the house cleaner was finished my friend introduced me to the two kids who were still living at home, and her husband (who I’d met briefly a few times over the years) and the family rabbit, Choo, who spent most of his time meditating in his cage, or wandering out in the yard, on the look out for stray cats so he could rush back to safety at any moment.
I don’t remember what we ate for dinner that first night, or what I did or said for the rest of the evening, until it was time to go to bed. I’d been awake for something like 36 hours by then, but I was still too keyed up to sleep, so when everyone went to bed, I went to my room and watched hours of Glee videos on my phone, spending some time with Cory Monteith, the lead actor on Glee, until his untimely death from an accidental overdose. For some reason he felt like a good friend, even though I’d never met him. It was an odd sensation, to find so much comfort in someone I didn’t even know, and who was no longer around, as if my brain was able to manufacture this reassuring presence to help manage my anxiety.
Eventually, I fell asleep, and slept well. I woke up late the next morning when my friend knocked on my door, after already having done the laundry and emptying and filling the dishwasher and sending the kids off to school and getting a few hours of work done. I washed and dressed quickly, took my meds, ate some breakfast, and, with a few more deep breaths, I was ready to start day two.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my 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?
