I often write about creating a sense of community on the Beren Campus, using language and reference to my favorite period of American history (Transcendentalist 19th Century) to help articulate my thoughts. Something, however, that is crucial to the community of Transcendentalist thinkers is the idea that everyone can and should create her own sense of place.
This sense of place concept is often defined through the classic example of Henry David Thoreau and his unconventional stint in living at Walden Pond. This was a man who “went to the woods” for many reasons: to grieve his brother’s death; to explore the Nature surrounding him; to write. However, many readers (myself included) extract from his poems, essays, and journal entries that in living at Walden, there was an incidental lesson learned. While Thoreau intended to achieve specific things at Walden, he additionally discovered a place for him to exist as yet another cog in the machine that is the ecosystem.
While Thoreau and many of us at Stern College look for meditative oases and absolute removal from our academic or even overbearing surroundings, we often find something else we weren’t looking for—that is, a connection to place. Typically, the word place is used in a geographical, spacial way. “I think I left it in that place,” or, “I’m looking for a place to stay for Shabbat.” Yet, when reading Thoreau and his contemporaries it becomes apparent that place is a much more malleable term that can be applied to identify the meaning that we derive from a location, not just the location itself.
Now, if I were to say that this sense of place ideology is absent from this college, I would be enormously misled, and perhaps even oblivious. On the contrary, I think that this school tends to foster a sense of place that is consistently articulated in a myriad of ways. Of course, this sense of place I refer to is not informed by the 19th century American elite and their terminology for finding elevated meaning in varied locations. At Stern (and YU in general), the sense of place promoted is the pro-Israel attitude that permeates this university’s administration, philosophy, course options, and club opportunities. But, as someone who did not attend a seminary in Israel—nor have I ever visited this “homeland” that I am trained to love and yearn for—I struggle to relate to this particular sense of place that so deeply molds my community’s identity.
Having attended elementary and high schools similar to Stern in their Israel advocacy, I have absorbed many conflicting opinions about when, with whom, where, and for how long I should visit this land. Especially in my senior year of high school when my entire grade attended mandatory information sessions with each visiting seminary and yeshiva, I found myself second-guessing my compliance to the path laid out before me. I interviewed with seminaries, filled out applications, even put a down-payment on one seminary I was accepted to, all before I realized that I never asked myself the most important question revolving around this process: Did I want to go? Only once I allowed myself to review my choices without the background noise of teachers and friends constantly assuming I would be leaving on a plane that August was I struck with the adamance of my answer: No.
I discussed this conflict with my parents and they were supportive of this new path I had chosen, yet I felt a sense of shame and worry as I began telling my friends that I would not be joining them in the Old City in Jerusalem that fall for falafel. I went so far as to hide it from my closest friend until she heard from another of my decision, obviously significantly hurting our friendship. Eventually, I came to terms with this decision, and I still have yet to visit Israel. But now, things are changing…
As I slowly, but not so slowly, approach my senior year of college, I consider what formative experience I will concoct for this upcoming summer—perhaps my last “free” summer before diving into employment or a Master’s program. I have a few options for summer jobs local to my home in Massachusetts, but I feel a sense of obligation to actively, and perhaps more importantly, autonomously explore this mythical world that I have imagined since infancy.
My conflict, of course, lies in my personal sense of place that I have cultivated over the past few years. After working on multiple farms and specifically working with Thoreau scholars at the Walden Woods Project last summer, I have become very attached to the land that I call home. I have gained a deep sense of place for the many “Waldens” in my life, whether they be little nooks in my hometown, Sharon, or sunkissed memories of embracing trees in Central Park, and going forth into this next chapter, I am torn.
I suppose that I am a sentimentalist in that I fear that my current senses of place will deteriorate if I leave them behind and explore new places. What if the next time I visit the farm near my home or the trails of Concord, MA, I feel numbness instead of spiritual transcendance? Essentially—will leaving a place allow me to grow in new ways or, will the nostalgia overtake my openness to other places?
Although I ask these questions and so deeply wish I could have my cake and eat it too, I know that I will never visit this new Land if I retain this fearful and insecure mentality. Yes, it is extremely bittersweet to look towards this coming summer and know that I will not share it with my coworkers at Walden, but I also know that Thoreau would encourage me to follow my soul’s desires and to explore the Earth, finding my own Walden instead of piggybacking his.
So, after much deliberation and discomfort I have decided that I will go to Israel this summer. I will bring my copy of Walden, and I will walk through the Land as I have walked before—with the universal teaching of Thoreauvian thought that “heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads,” no matter where we go.