A Year's Time

Today marks a year since I left New York and a lot has happened since then. Here's what's changed:

I moved to Tel Aviv
Entered the Israeli startup scene
Fell in love with a guy
Married him
Visited 3 different countries
Found a great job
Did the honeymoon thing

When I think of the difference this year has made I am astounded by all that. Usually it's the silent swoosh of another year passing with accelerating speed that astounds me instead. This has been happening more or less since my 20s and throughout my 30s when school, semesters and summer vacations gave way to the flow of Life As Is. Milestones happened along the way but never so many that were so meaningful in the mere span of 12 fleeting months.

There's a nice saying that reminds us life is what you make it. Each day counts because even though 24 hours may pass in a flash they add up to 24 hours. And the next 24 hours after that. So what you do with that time matters, including working hard, eating right, loving well and taking leaps of faith. For me coming to Israel was a leap of faith.

So today, to mark my one year anniversary since I arrived, we went hiking. Or so that was the plan. Now that I've been in Israel one year and feel like I'm settling in I want to get back to the things I love from before. Art. Reading. Teaching Yoga. Hiking.

Used to be I hiked all the time. Upstate New York, Patagonia, Colorado, the Palisades, Nepal. I have a list I'm pretty proud of but I haven't hiked much since coming to Israel. So today was a sort of new beginning. Also it's Saturday, the Israeli "Day of Rest."

We picked Nahal Taninim which loosely translated from Hebrew means "Alligator River." Israel is a beautiful country, from its European-style rolling hills up North to its Biblical desert landscape down south. Nahal Taninim is somewhere in the middle, a noncommittal 30 minute drive from Tel Aviv in the Carmel region, near Haifa. The trail itself is small and full of other people who had the same idea about how to spend their day not resting. That's the thing about hiking in Israel. Israelis love their country and getting to know it is popular among outdoor enthusiasts, youth groups, families, and all other citizens alike. That makes for a lot of people on one trail in a country this small, especially when that trail is considered "family-friendly."

Nahal Taninim ends up being nothing like the hikes I've experienced before or what I imagined for the day. But we are with some friends so we don't stop there. We end up at another park after that, marvel at its beautifully landscaped grounds and gardens of fresh herbs, then end up at one of Tel Aviv's best steakhouses. By the time we sit down to eat we must've "hiked" about 3 km.

But for a one year anniversary celebration of sorts it isn't bad. Nothing like what I imagined it would be but fun and full of laughs. Fall is just beginning and a cool breeze helped temper the still hot sun. We saw an ancient Roman aqueduct and the steak was delicious.

Mostly, today was pure pleasure in a series of moments that wouldn't have existed if not for every step and every minute that came along the way. These 12 months before could have just passed me by but they brought me here, to this new previously unimaginable life that I love. As the writer Milan Kundera says,

"There is nothing more obvious, more tangible... than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact."

We can grow heavy with such sadness. Or we can learn to take advantage of the "obvious." And revel in it.

Morning window

This is the view I snapped from my bed this morning. I lay there thinking about how much it had changed in less then a year. How the one before had been my view for 11 whole years before I moved. The window then hanging over to my right, shuttered against the sound of West 60th and Broadway, and covered by almost always closed dark green Venetian blinds. There was no point in opening them, as the only thing to see was the Time Warner building blocking any glimpse of the park (though sometimes I did lift the shade to see if people were carrying umbrellas). Walking up in my shuttered room was like waking up in a dim cozy cocoon before descending 11 floors down to face the city day.

Now my morning window lies over to my left. And is almost always at least a little open so I can feel the breeze and hear the birds in the trees right outside. Our window points towards the sea and even though our apartment is too far and too low for a view, you can still feel it in the air. But  my favorite thing about the window is the birds. If I peer out I can see them in the branches, nonchalantly looking about as they make their festive noise.

The new window is indicative of everything else that has changed too. The rhythms and patterns of my days. The constant sunshine with which they begin this time of year in Tel Aviv. The way I move laterally to get to work across the apartment instead of down to the street and then the subway further below. Everything is quieter now too, the forever longing of New York replaced with the calm contentment of knowing better where I belong. There is still so much I need to do to feel truly settled here but I know that it will come.

In the meantime, there's the view. 

On Planning My Wedding

The wedding is now in three weeks minus a day. People keep wanting to know: how is the planning going? are we getting excited? nervous?

Oh fine, fine, I tell them. We have a list. Slowly we are checking everything off. As of early this week, we even have a rabbi!

I'm still enjoying a mild disconnect between everything that's going on and the fact that it's happening to me. The whole concept of a wedding on the cusp of turning 40 still a bit difficult to grasp as someone who had stopped really imagining such a chapter existed in her personal storybook.

Nevermind a floor length white gown custom tailored and sewn. Or a hall full of ~400 people I will mostly still only marginally know. And a person who will charge a small fortune to style my hair that day so it will look bridal when I myself barely even ever brush it.

But so it is. I am getting married. It's amazing to me still how I've gotten so swept along and up in the momentum of it all. Weddings in Israel are a very big deal. For such a small country there is an extravagant amount of boutique wedding dress, jewelry and shoe shops lined up in a row on Dizengof Street. Everybody knows a good bridal hairdresser or makeup person they are dying to recommend. And money is no object, although the whole affair usually costs a disproportionate amount of most average Israelis' income.

It wasn't so much that Tzury and I picked this particular way to get married as we just followed the steps that seemed set so clearly before us. Ironically, as intense as it's been, having a proper Israeli wedding was actually the path of least resistance and also what felt most naturally right to us both. When in Rome.

And so the invitations have finally all been sent and the catering has been sampled and set. Tomorrow we go ring-shopping and next week we meet with Danny, our famous Israeli DJ to pick a soundtrack. The week after that our friends and family will begin to arrive from all over, starting, most appropriately, with my mother. I am good with it all and I'm even beginning to get a little bit excited.

Still, I laugh a bit when I think of what awaits on July 3rd. Lying in bed at night I wonder what was I thinking? and have small fantasies of wearing a casual white pantsuit instead and just brushing my hair. There is no rabbi and we simply exchange vows (mine is poetic and long and in English). Our friends and family are happy for us and we dance. It is a night we will remember forever.

And we will. 

Room #8

We gather outside Room #8 like so many girls waiting for a free check-up. After T and I opened our tik nisuin - marriage file - at the Rabbinate a week earlier, the Rabbi had instructed me to go to Room #8 to set up "my appointments" with the Rabbanite. I did as I was told. The Rabbanite, I then learned, is the female Rabbi who would tell me everything I needed to know about getting ready to get married. I didn't know there were things I needed to know (aside from whether I wanted to marry T). 

Apparently there were. The first order of the day was to attend a 10 am lecture with the Rabbanite for brides-to-be. Wait. That was me.

I am one of the first to arrive and as the pack grows it starts to feel like a special little clique. Maybe it's the quiet milling about. Maybe it's just me. Indeed I'm one of - if not the - oldest among us. Everyone is wearing a diamond ring on the finger that's meant to declare our engagementhood. Ironically today is the day I've forgotten mine. 

Despite my missing ring - and my relatively advanced age - I feel an overwhelming sense of belongingness here. A sense of having gotten into grad school. Or passing the audition. In the near 2 months that have passed since T proposed I am still basking in the aftershock glow of the sudden turn my life has taken towards bilateral, unconditional romantic love. This was not the script I thought had been written for me. Then somebody decided to give me another. So here I was. Waiting for our 10 am lecture with the Rabbanite to start.

When she opens the door at last at 10:20 am (this is Israel, after all), we pile in and find a plastic seat around her desk. The Rabbanite is a tall thin woman, pale with pointy features and wide, clear blue eyes. Brown bangs peak out from beneath her beige head wrap and pale forearms jut out from her rolled-up beige sweater sleeves. She is not wearing any makeup and is not particularly pretty but she is a commanding presence at her small schoolteacher desk. When she speaks her thin body vibrates with emotion.

The Rabbanite begins with a hearty, heartfelt mazal tov! to us all then gets down to it. We are told that everything we are about to hear has been passed down for 3324 years. We are told that according to the Torah, there are three mitzvot - commandments - specific to keeping house in the Land of Israel. One is the lighting of candles on Shabbat. The second is the keeping of a kosher home. The third has to do with relations between husband and wife.

She tells us real love is something we will only truly experience once we are married. Because that's when the real work begins. We are told maintaining our purity = good gynecological health for our husband as well as ourselves, and that practicing abstinence during our cycle only kindles the sexual fire (Disclaimer: I am loosely translating her Hebrew). She tells us everything we ever wanted to know about paying a visit to the mikveh.

Most of us stare at the Rabbanite as she speaks. I am the only one taking notes (albeit for this blog). Some girls nod their heads in apparent agreement with some of her finer points. Only one girl is alternately studying her painted fingernails or some magical horizon on the white wall before her. Everyone is secular but most everyone looks pretty serious about this.

I find it all fascinating. These traditions. These laws about love and age-old practices meant to help preserve a marriage. I am not religious but I am not dismissive either. I know married people sometimes need all the help they can get. I also know that, since moving to Israel, the fact that I am Jewish is probably more important to me than it's ever been. Sitting in the Rabbanite’s office with 13 other girls I feel the strange, unexpected thrill of belonging to something bigger than just me.

A Jewish Wedding in 1903

And here I was thinking that getting married was all about me.

When the lecture ends the Rabbanite calls us each up by name to receive a small package. It is something resembling a Jewish How-to-be-a-Bride Kit, complete with helpful pamphlets, blessings for the bride, and a list of mikvehs in the Tel Aviv area. I sheepishly also request a copy of the CD she recommended earlier of some famous rabbi’s talks, telling her I thought it sounded interesting.

Outside I fiddle with the lock on my bike while a young man on the bench beside me loudly coordinates a meeting with someone on his cell phone. He interrupts himself as I get on the bike to ask me whether I’d just come out of the building and whether I am about to get married.

“Yes?” I half-answer half-question, on the verge of laughter.

He’s already speaking into his phone when he replies, “Mazal tov."  

------

Picture: Painting by Jozef Israeli (1824 - 1911), courtesy of Wikipedia

On remembering the Holocaust in Israel

Make no mistake. Israel is The Jewish State. Lest the governmental strife between religious and secular; the bravado of the stereotypical Israeli male; or all the amazing technological, medical and scientific advancements throw you off, there is no disassociating the Land of Israel from its legacy. And there is no better reminder of this than Yom HaShoah.

The Yom HaShoah siren stops traffic. 

Holocaust Memorial Day is dedicated to honoring the memory of the 6 million European Jews that perished under the Nazis. The sense of sadness and loss has not diminished with the 68 years that have transpired since World War II ended; the country all these years later is still heavy with it.

I remember people wondering if September 11th would always be such a solemn day for Americans after the 10th Anniversary came and went in 2011 - how people would experience the day long after the monuments were erected and the collective national memory began to fade. That doesn't seem to have been a question here. Or if it ever was the answer speaks for itself.

Much of this has to do with the great ceremony and ritual surrounding Yom HaShoah. The Holocaust movies on TV the night before. The annual recitation by members of Knesset of their relatives who died. And the annual March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Though not all Israelis are in the mood for such sobriety. It is a regular work day for most and life does go on. The teacher at yoga class today told her usual jokes. My mother never was one for Holocaust movies and my fiance similarly channel-surfed his way past them in search of more appropriate "entertainment" to accompany our dinner last night.

But most Israelis did stop what they were doing when the siren went off at 10 am this morning to mark the moment of silence. Even though I live here now, this wasn't the first time I happened to be in Israel on Yom HaShoah but it still caught me off-gaurd, standing at a busy crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Ibn Gvirol traffic stopped and drivers opened their doors to stand alongside their cars. For 2 minutes the sound of the siren was the only sound there was. Everything else grew quiet. And in that quiet we were not just strangers waiting at an intersection but Jews settling into a shared moment based on history and identity.

In well-paced timing, a week from now Israel will mark the memory of all those who died during military service. This will culminate with Independence Day directly after, which this year commemorates Israel's 65 birthday. Already the blue and white flags are everywhere. It will be a day of celebration, full of bar-b-ques and parties. Israeli-style.


Photo credit: The Times of Israel

Chag Sameach and Happy Spring!

This is my nephew Ariel (aka the whirling dervish). 

This will be our first Passover together now that I’ve moved to Israel. Since I arrived he makes me happy regularly by reminding me about the joy of fresh starts. Watching his reactions to a new discovery or game or word is a lesson each time.

In this picture - taken on his first trip to the Negev this past weekend - Ariel is discovering the desert wind (during a sandstorm). 

With Passover comes the fresh start that is Spring. Israel is in full bloom. Houses are being cleared and cleansed of bread crumbs and dust bunnies. And this eve we will commemorate the Jews' freedom from slavery. 

It is a time for joy!

May you find it in every corner of your life this Passover...and, like Ariel, every day thereafter. 

With love and best wishes, 

Keren

Happy birthday Ginny!

Dearest Dancing Queen,

Well I just finished seeing all the photos you posted on Facebook today, of the birthday you spent at your beautiful chacra at El Hueco. It looks like it was a lovely day, full of sunshine and friends. Sky trelissing beans from the garden, you on the porch with your easle and paints. You were surrounded with laughter and your horses, just like you like it.

I have such memories of our time in El Huecu with its one gas station, clinic and small grocery shop - where you sent me to pick up some FiberOne and yogurt one morning when we were out. I remember walking the dirt road as frequented by horses as cars and seeing the expansive views of the Patagonian mountains all around. For a good long while it was just me and those mountains and nothing else. I remember breathing deeply to internalize the feeling and remember it forever.

What age might you be celebrating now, is it 63 or 64? In the photos you posted you look radiant and ageless. I love the one of you and Sky smiling each other, your faces equally beautiful and full of love. So cool she made you a cake. She can do everything. Your daughter is amazing.

I see you said your birthday prayers too, complete with sage and condor feather in hand. I remember when we did that together, gave our thanks to Mother Earth and the sky and everything else. You taught me how to feel truly grateful, to live every moment full of conscious gratitude. I was drawn to yoga because of it when I returned to New York, and when I meditate I still sometimes think of Volcan Copahue outside our window in Caviahue. Often throughout my day I still think of you.

How you liked to turn up the music real loud and dance, even though sometimes you hardly could.

My life right now is very different from the quiet, nurturing, nature-filled days I spent in your presence full of reading, writing, hiking, laughing, drinking mate - and the great big Patagonian sky. Now I am a social media queen, helping startups do marketing in sunny Middle Eastern Tel Aviv - a place so opposite from where you are in every possible way you can imagine. I still wonder sometimes what my life would look like or who I would be if I had stayed. It was something I definitely considered. For one thing, I bet by now I would know how to ride a horse!

But at least I got to take a part of you with me. I learned how to be more fearless, to laugh more, to try to take it easy even when things aren't. Or to at least take things in stride. I learned how important it is to have as many adventures as possible because that's the only way to discover new places and people that will touch and amaze you and quite possibly change you forever. This has happened to me a few times now since leaving New York to travel or for good. These are lessons I try to live by.

For everything you taught me - and remind me when I see the updates and photos you post every once in a while on Facebook - I am grateful (like you) that you are alive.  Happy birthday dear Ginny and so many more.

Love always,
Karen

I don't want another story.

tzury asked me to marry him last night. he asked me just like that and i said yes. it was not a grandiose pre-meditated moment, far from anything i had ever imagined. there was not even a ring. 

i said yes then grew quiet, probably from the shock of how far the reality of the moment was from my imagining of it. i considered whether years of American culture and reality TV had effectively taken their toll: was i so deeply brainwashed by the tales of elaborate proposals and glamorous rings that i could not just revel in the beauty of this quite different approach by someone i simply wanted to spend the rest of my life with?

i hated to think that was so. i imagined the question that would invariably follow the news of my engagement to the man i loved - "how did he do it?" - and wondered what i would say. 

"um we were laughing about something in bed. and um chatting. and then he asked me." 

a few things came before. a wedding and a funeral, to be precise (no joke). two consecutive days of emotional intensity set the stage for the proposal that followed one late Wednesday night, as anti-climactic as it was. 

although the truth of the matter is that maybe anti-climatic is fitting for us. having met barely 2 months ago, then moving in together barely 1 month after that, people thought we were crazy to be going so fast. how could we be so sure, especially as set as we were in our independent ways at our age? did we even really know each other yet? 

but those 2 months were full of solid moments of positive reinforcement. we cooked and cleared closet space. met each others' friends and family (including over Skype). we visited Ikea and spent 4 days in Rome. and of course attended that wedding and that funeral. we discovered we had stores of patience for each other that never seemed to wane, and that being together was never dull even if were just watching bad TV.

as accelerated as things might have seemed from the outside, for us things were just moving forward as they should. every once in a while we would stop to marvel at our strange reality and laugh at the giddy conviction we thought only teenagers could feel when they were dating someone new. 

but in general we agreed, if something feels this natural and obvious why would we possibly waste time and energy fighting it?

so maybe tzury’s whispered proposal under the covers in the dark makes perfect sense. and the way his question came rolling out followed by my answer (i made him ask me again just to be sure). another story involving helicopters and hot air balloons might be more fun to tell. but this one is mine.  

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

I hate the question, "what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

I get it every once in a while when people find out I moved to Israel from New York. Everyone knows New York is great. I knew it too, when I left my hometown with some sadness if not mixed feelings.

New York is a hard place to leave. It is vibrant and awe-inspiring and it's magic was never lost on me even at it grittiest. I appreciated the movie-like grandeur of where I lived on W 60th Street smack dab in the middle of Woody Allen-ville near Lincoln Center in one direction, Central Park in the other - and a Whole Foods down the street. I would step onto the street in front of my building every morning to greet the pedestrian madness of students, doctors, businesspeople, tourists and residents always passing by. Columbus Circle was the point of so many destinations, and the centralized hub of so many subways lines branching out all over the city. You were never alone.

And I appreciated the grit too right down to the packed subway and the shiny concrete streets on grey rainy dreary days. Sometimes New York was overwhelming, but mostly I enjoyed the instant easy access to everything I could ever possibly need. Central Park was my respite for dog walks or long runs, and work was always an easy 20 minute commute no matter how many times I changed jobs. My neighborhood also happened to be my old high school stomping ground and every once in a while I would smile to think of the teenaged me hanging out at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art just down the street. And here I was now, all "growed up."

I loved New York to the bitter end, and chose to leave anyway. "Leave on a high note," they always say. I simply realized it was time for a change after several years secretly suspecting it was true. The moment of truth hit me in Nicaragua of all places on my way to a yoga class amidst mango and coconut trees. I was traveling again in between jobs and knew right then that I could not just go back to life as I left it. New York was great but there was no picking up where I left off to my office job interspersed with friends, parties, runs, dinners, weekend day trips, trips... and nothing else. My New York life lacked for nothing but I still felt something was missing. Perhaps a change of scenery would help me figure out what.

I thought family might have something to do with it so I came to Israel, where my sister and nephew live. My parents are in New York and I am close to them both. But we are only two sisters, who had never really gotten to know each other as adults and were now getting ready for families of our own. Getting to raise our children with the cousins and aunts we ourselves didn't have growing up so far away from extended family would be a gift.

And I was approaching 40. New York's celebrated diversity includes its fair share of single men and women who live the high life well into whatever age they see fit. I had been in and out of relationships but had counted myself among them for some time. Every once in a while, visions of my life 5 or 10 years later flashed before my eyes. Nothing had changed. I was still living my comfortable  Upper West Side existence, balancing work and pleasure as best I could, indulging every once in a while and saving as much of my expendable income for "the future" as possible.

That was the easy part. The rest had become one big murky blank I could not quite conjure into focus.

"What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" my American colleague wanted to know. It was an honest and sincere question. He really wanted to know, he who wears a kippa and considers himself "trapped" here by children and grandchildren who make it too difficult to leave.

Israel is not an easy place. Unless you are religious and filled with Zionist zeal - which he knew I wasn't - it can be hard to understand what compelled me to replace the ease and flow of New York with something more challenging and difficult on so many levels. A place practically claustrophobic with beauracracy, politics and geography where the money to just make ends meet doesn't come anywhere near as easy for so many. The question is in fact so understandable it is always hard for me to explain, so instead I laugh along and agree I must be crazy.

Sometimes I think I am. The rest of the time I look at my life with its new set of uncertainties and am filled with gratitude. I didn't leave New York for guarantees that things would be better. But I know a nice girl like me deserves to live her best possible life - even if means leaving the comfort of everything she knows with only some vague hope she might find it.

My sister and me enjoying a laugh.