Liran Weizman is a senior at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. She is an intern in the OU’s Department of Communications and Marketing.
Last summer, I went to Hong Kong for three months. For me, that’s home. Although I was born in Belgium and lived in Lexington, Massachusetts for high school, Hong Kong is my home base. Now Hong Kong may seem exotic to you, but when it comes to observing kashrut and keeping Shabbat after a climb to the 45th floor, it becomes more difficult than exotic. My parents live there for business along with my married sister and British brother-in-law. (We accepted him into the family because he made us seem more international.)
I was raised in a very traditional and cultural Jewish home in Asia. My parents were proud Israelis who made sure that we always had a connection to the Land of Israel and to being Jews no matter where we lived. While others may have had their Bar/Bat Mitzvah at the Western Wall, we merged these two cultures with our Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebrations at the Great Wall of China. My first exposure to Torah observant Judaism was at Lexington High School, where the OU’s Jewish Student Union offered free pizza on Monday afternoons. (Jewish Student Union is a program that enhances Jewish culture at public high schools.)
Initially, Orrel (my twin brother) and I were attending for two slices of pizza a week. Eventually, however, we became interested and started attending NCSY Shabbatons in our senior year. As a result, we spent a year learning in Israel. Since we became shomer Shabbat, we had not been home to Hong Kong for more than a few days at a time. This all changed in the summer of 2012, when I was left to fend for myself in Hong Kong.
On the one hand, I was really excited to go back home to my family. On the other hand, I was scared. I was scared because since I became religious I had been immersed in Jewish communities from seminary in Israel to Stern College, along with a support group. When acquaintances from high school were placing bets on how long I would stay “religious” after NCSY, my support group was instrumental in keeping me engaged.
In Hong Kong, I was entering three months where I would be my only company. My connection to Judaism would be up to me, and I feared I would lose everything that I had worked so hard to build in the past two years.
Within the first weeks, I felt myself losing my desire to daven and to learn Torah. Recorded shiurim that used to excite me seemed no longer applicable to the struggles I was facing. I remember calling a friend from Stern College and telling her, “There is no way I am coming out religious after this summer.” But through phone calls of guidance from my support groups in America and in Israel, I slowly learned that the key to surviving the summer would not be the growth that I had planned for myself, but that instead I had to modify my plans. I realized I couldn’t simply focus on listening to shiurim; instead my focus had to be just making it day-by-day.
This change in attitude also applied to kashrut. Rather than thinking of kashrut as an impossible scenario, I viewed it as a process. I learned to keep my meals small and simple, and being forgiving when I made mistakes.
On the other hand, Shabbat became the ultimate adventure, as my parents were living on the 45th floor in a building an hour’s walk from the Jewish community. I would spend Friday night at Chabad and then walk back for an hour through the streets of Hong Kong. Since the security guard did not speak English and could not help me by operating the elevator as a Shabbos elevator, I ended up walking many flights of stairs to get home. But after a few weeks, I realized that the stairs were a small price to pay for the love and feeling of Shabbat I experienced from Chabad of Hong Kong.
By the end of July, I was coming to terms with my situation. The moment which I believe was the pinnacle of my growth took place on the last Shabbat of the month. It was the Shabbat in which I felt the most alone but at the same time, I felt God’s hand the most. I went with my family to Kowloon for Shabbos. Kowloon is another island in Hong Kong; it has a small synagogue for international travelers that hosted Shabbos meals. I was invited to stay at someone’s apartment and given directions how to get there. The building was in the apartment complex “Qing Wah Palace.”
I was walking around Friday night in an area in which the bars were going full throttle till around 4:00 am. I walked for hours in every direction retracing my steps. I walked until I had no idea where I was and felt my senses leaving me. Although I had no idea where I was going, it was in that moment that I realized the strength of my convictions.
The place in which I feared my ultimate failure became my most intense place of growth. Although I had strongly believed that I had to be in Israel to strengthen my values, my true growth happened in Hong Kong. Even when I thought I was falling, I was working on areas that never would have grown elsewhere.