Elul Again
Living life to the fullest.
Elul has come around again.
Every year around this time, much like many Jews around the world, I take a step back and examine my life. Where I was last year at this time, what’s happened since then, where I might be next year. And every year, for the past few years, anyway, it’s always seemed pretty much the same: I’m alone. Some years I’ve been happier than others: I’ve had tight, warm groups of good friends around me, or hope and excitement for the future. But without fail, every year as the holidays approached, I was scrambling to find chag meals and places to pray, desperately trying to figure out where I would be and who I would be with, knowing that once again, a year had come in which I didn’t have what I wanted: a partner, a family, a tiny little bunch of people in which I made up a center. I didn’t have a family to cook and care for, or a home to prepare, or loved ones to share the holidays with. I was a side dish, a leftover trying to squeeze into an extra spot at someone else’s table. Every year, as the same awful ritual repeated itself, my cynicism and despair grew stronger.
Last year was a little different. In an attempt to shake up my life a bit, I had moved out of the Katamon apartment I shared with a roommate for nearly 5 years and into a one-bedroom in Nachlaot. The move was a last-ditch effort to revive my commitment to Israel, to meet new people, try new things, just make a change. It failed spectacularly. In retrospect anyone could have seen that a classic introvert living alone was not a recipe for success. I was still alone, as always. Perhaps even more so. And, partly as a result of the deeper despair into which my move had thrown me, I was now contemplating leaving Israel. As the holidays drew closer I found myself more and more occupied with the major decision I was struggling to make about my future: should I stay or should I go?
Just before the holidays I had met a new friend - pretty much the only new friend I would make that year in Nachlaot. We didn’t know each other well at that point, but we ended up spending nearly all of Rosh Hashana together, and during that time we discovered that we had quite a lot in common: we were the same age, both chozeret b’teshuva, had both made aliyah within the last 6 years, were both unmarried and, most significantly, we were both thinking seriously about leaving.
During that long, three-day holiday we spent hours discussing our reasons for going or staying, our hopes and fears about being single, our dreams for the future. The moment I remember most clearly took place on a bench outside of my apartment building. It was late afternoon, and every few minutes we could hear people blowing the shofar up and down Agrippas. We were talking about turning our lives upside down, seeking adventure, newness, excitement. And through all of that wove the constant thread of being single at 30. We talked about how we felt pressure to date, to find someone, as we got older, as many of our friends got married.
“What would you do if you knew, for a fact, that you would meet your husband when you were 35?” she asked me.
“Wow, that’s a really good question,” I said, and thought for a moment, imagining myself in that position. “I think I would feel . . . happy,” I said, almost surprised at my own answer. “I’d feel relief. Like I could go and do whatever I wanted, because I knew for sure that I’d meet him, that I wouldn’t be single forever.”
We reflected on that for a bit. I was sure that, despite the prospect of being five years older and unmarried, the mere fact of knowing that I would meet someone, that I wouldn’t end up alone, would allow me to shake off the obsession over my marital status, to live my life without the oppressive thought of my singlehood grinding me to pieces. And the thought was so freeing: that if I had that total faith, I wouldn’t have to stay stuck here, waiting, hoping. I could live for me, not the prospect of some future that simply wasn’t materializing.
It was a new way of thinking about the future. I didn’t have to shape my life around my singlehood; I could go out into the world. I could have adventures, travel. I was free, unbound, unbeholden to anything or anyone. In this view, singlehood wasn’t an albatross. It was a gift, if I decided to see it that way.
A few months would pass before I’d make my final decision, but the gears were in motion. I wanted change, progress, movement, even if my vision for those things was unclear and vague. I could cling to the familiar, the comfortable, or I could spring off into a world of complete unknowns. I could face another set of holidays scrounging desperately for companionship in Jerusalem, or I could - do something completely different. So different that I wouldn’t even be able to guess at what it might be.
And I wanted that. I wanted something different and new, whatever it was. As long as it wasn’t this, as long as it wasn’t the life I had been living up until now.
So I did it. After months of thinking, I took the leap. I really had only the haziest idea of how I’d be spending the next year, which seemed to really discomfit my parents and other clearer-headed people in my life, but I felt I had reached a breaking point. I was 30 and single and nothing was going to change that. I could own that fact, or I could fall victim to it.
I decided to own it.
I began to take concrete steps. I quit my job. I’ll never forget the feeling of pure ecstasy and gratitude that came over me after I talked to my boss about it. It was my first blazing moment of clarity that I was making the right choice. And I had loved my job; leaving it was a major con on my list. That sense of joy and release wasn’t about the job. It was the knowledge that I had finally committed to this. That I would really be going, I would really have adventure, excitement, newness in my life. I hadn’t felt that light in so long.
When I made the decision to leave, I thought: I have no idea where I’ll be this time next year. I could be anywhere. I have no way of knowing what events or travels or plans will shape my path. The thought was exhilarating, exciting beyond description. Anything could happen.
I certainly couldn’t have imagined I’d be where I am now. I’ll be spending Rosh Hashana in New York with my family - that sentence alone is incredible! - but a week from Sunday, I’ll be getting on a plane to Sydney, Australia, where I’ll spend Yom Kippur and Sukkot with Phil. My rabbi-in-training boyfriend. He’s been hired as assistant rabbi at the Great Synagogue for the holidays.
^^That's my bf!
Chew on that for a sec. I’m flying to Australia to spend the chagim with my boyfriend, the rabbi.
And after we get back, I’ll be moving to Washington Heights and looking for a job in the city. Never, ever would I have guessed last year that this year I’d be living in Washington Heights, I can tell you that much.
But life is so incredible and weird. All those years I said to myself, and others said to me, you never know when it’ll happen, life changes just like that, and I would reply, either in my head or out loud, yeah, but my life doesn’t change. Hasn’t changed. I didn’t see some colossal upheaval coming, I didn’t see everything being turned upside down. I couldn’t imagine that happening to me.
And in fact it didn’t happen to me. I made it happen.
I made it all happen. I made the decision to come back, to leave Israel. I quit my job, I closed all my accounts, I packed my bags. I traveled and open my horizons. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone in every direction. I downloaded Jswipe and began dating. I, myself, made all of this happen.
With God’s help. I’ve known that from the very first minute of this journey. With God’s hand guiding my path, of that I have no doubt. For so long in Israel, I had felt so completely lost. I hadn’t felt God’s presence in my life for years. I didn’t know what He wanted from me. And then, from the moment I decided to leave, He was with me.
I’m not going to get into what that means in terms of theology, Zionism, the Jewish homeland, blah blah blah. I know He has been with me every step of the way this past year, and so I can’t question that this is where I’m supposed to be right now. I don’t, I won’t, I can’t. My faith won’t permit it.
He was with me. But it was a dual effort between us. It’s kind of like He was patiently waiting for me to come to this conclusion, to make this decision, to set my eyes on the right path, before He could actually help me towards happiness and connection. There wasn’t much He could do while I was plodding around in miserable circles in Israel.
He wanted to take me here, to guide me to the right place, but before He could do that, I would have to take the first step on my own. He would help me but only if I helped myself. And I did. I took those steps. I took all of them, one after another. And for once, or rather, for the first time in a very long time, I knew I was finally moving in the right direction, doing the right thing, fulfilling my own destiny.
This year has been too intense to take in in one glance. It was colored, first, by the loss of my beloved Nana - a shock none of us saw coming. And yet even within that incredibly painful event came another moment of clarity: the knowledge that I had come back exactly when I was supposed to, just in time to be with her, to spend her last weeks together. Losing her, and gaining that knowledge, that I was finally in the right place at the right time, both of those things, inextricably intertwined, formed the bittersweet heart of my return.
And then my travels - that first road trip that opened up so many vistas for me, that revealed to me this amazing, brave, powerful version of myself I honestly had no idea existed. It was like a revelation.
And then meeting Phil. In some part of myself I had known I would meet someone this year - there were a few reasons why I thought so. But when I did meet him, I was still blown away that a man like him could exist for me, that it would work so well, that it could be so easy and good. I’ve never felt more #blessed.
Then Adamah and its complexities. My epic summer road trip. Coming back home. Now, looking ahead to the end of my adventure year and the beginning of something more settled, but still entirely new.
Everything has changed. Now the future is neither a dull, unchanging landscape nor a swirling mass of colorful chaos, but a place quietly exciting, something vibrant yet comfortable, a place I want to see.
So, on this last day of Elul 5778, before I usher in a new year which holds so much potential, I can only try to express a tiny scrap of the overflowing gratitude I feel for the changes, growth and blessings of this past year. Alongside its sorrows and losses came clarity, comfort, closeness with my family, endless new experiences, so much beauty, lessons and learning, exploration, inner evolution, and love. My soul is nourished after being parched for so long.
In short: Thank you, Hashem.
To get REAL* cheesy: Shana Tova to all. May we be blessed with the sweetest of sweet new years.
*This is an ironic usage of the colloquial form of "real" to mean "really". I know it is grammatically incorrect, but sometimes I feel it suits the tone. I just want you to know I know that.