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September 1987 My plans for a new life in a foreign land had not worked out, so I did what any sensible person would do. I returned to the US and enrolled in graduate school. |
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I returned to Los Angeles, a more sober young man, and a rather depressed one too. Seven years, and as the card attests, many graduate assistant jobs later, I would emerge with a Ph.D. in International Relations. ~ Why hadn't Israel worked out for me? With hindsight of a decade and a half, I was too much of an American, too much of a liberal, my selfhood too closely tied to the English language. Mostly, I was too much myself to adjust to another culture. I had gone to Israel with the foolish confidence of A.A.Milne's Tigger, who said "I like everything." I had said "I can do anything I set my mind to... learn another language... study computer science in that language... live an orthodox life even though my thoughts are not really orthodox... cast asside familiar cultural and social supports... and I will come out on top." But everything is not possible. Goals need to be matched to abilities, proclivities and talents. Sheer will power alone may not be enough. ~ Today (2002) I still try to understand this period of my life. Even though Israel defeated me, I have come to see my "failure" to make it in Israel as process of learning about my own strength - there was some unbending sense of my self that I would not compromise and could not compromise - you say inflexible and rigid, but I say principled and self-aware. I did something audacious in going there, and its meanings were in many ways very different from the meanings of people raised in Jewish homes, or raised on Zionism. My religiousity was a rebellion - the fact that it was a Jewish religiousity made it doubly so - whereas for many people religion was conformity with family and cultural norms. My Zionism was a rebellious individualism while for most that I met it was an affiliative social act with roots in Jewish camps and family experiences. My Zionism was more about the parts of America that I rejected than the parts of Israel that I loved - a critique of my own country more than an endorsement of Israel. On many levels I was doing the same thing outwardly as other immigrants and Israelis, but for such radically different reasons that, in fact, I was playing a completely different game. For that reason alone my efforts to become an Israeli made no sense, and were probably doomed. I've almost got enough distance by now to find it all amusing. Almost.
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