By Chloe Baker, Senior Opinions Editor
As a Resident Advisor (RA), I often find myself conversing with my residents and new students about how they deeply miss their year in Israel. While listening to their stories, I sometimes feel as if I’m conversing with an old version of myself. I too once questioned when I would get used to my new environment, or when school would get better.
I wondered how long it would take until I no longer felt sad every time I thought of my gap year, or when I would finally feel at home in this new concrete jungle, which was much different than the kibbutz life I had quickly become accustomed to.
The truth is, it took me a while to become the version of myself that I am now, and I would like to think that the first-semester version of me would be quite proud and shocked at the path I have carved out for myself in the four walls of Stern College for Women.
I wish I could sugarcoat it, but in the spirit of my favorite app, I’ll be real. At this time last year, I was miserable. I left Israel against what felt like my own will. I left what I thought were my best memories, I left some of my closest friends, I left an environment I thrived in and I left what I thought was my best self behind.
I spent most days wishing I was still in Israel, yearning to be around my friends I wasn’t with, wishing I was walking around the kibbutz rather than the streets of New York City. I wasn’t myself. No matter how good the day was or how much fun I was having, I wasn’t where I truly wanted to be. I continued on with this mindset for a while until I couldn’t anymore. I knew something needed to change, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint what.
As time went on, I became more involved in student life, branched out of my comfortable group of seminary friends, openly spoke about the way I was feeling and most of all, accepted the fact that I had to give the transition time.
You can’t put expectations on yourself for how long it will take you to settle into something new. That’s the thing about new things: they’re new. You haven’t experienced them before, so how will you know anything about them? As the ever so true Hebrew phrase says,“kol hatchalot kashot,” all beginnings are hard. While these are the things that helped initiate the mindset change, what solidified it was what I like to call my “full-circle summer.”
This summer, I spent nine weeks away from home. One week in London with close friends from seminary and eight weeks in Israel. One of those weeks volunteering in the south and seven of those interning with an incredible company in Jerusalem. In between volunteering, interning and attending nightly shiurim, I was able to carve out time for myself. I spent weekends exploring the country, reconnecting with friends and teachers who are like family to me, and soaking in the beauty of Israel. I felt like I had been transported to an old version of myself. I had finally gotten that part of myself back that I had been missing.
That feeling of pure happiness, that everything is good simply because it is good, became my default mode again. A part of myself I left behind in Israel after my gap year was back in my possession and my worst fear – that I would never be as happy in the future as I was in seminary – was proven untrue. With each new memory made with my friends this summer, whether it be our weekly Monday night dinners, traveling over an hour just to be with each other for 30 minutes, traveling up north for Shabbat, getting stranded in the middle of Tel Aviv due to a bus shutdown, or not even knowing if our plans would work out until the night before because of off-time from the army.
With each new adventure, I realized that while the experience was new, the feelings were old. So much time had gone by and so much had changed in the state of the world and our own lives, yet we were still the same people, laughing at the same things, and enjoying each other’s company just as we once did in the past. I experienced with my own eyes and my own heart, that although life changes, and we may not like the changes that always come our way, things end up coming full circle.
My summer was by no means similar to my year in seminary. I had an internship, a new environment to adapt to, new freedoms, new friends and most importantly – a new mindset. As I went on about my day-to-day, I realized that although my days looked different and my life as a whole was different, I still possessed the same good feelings I once possessed on my gap year.
As the summer came to an end, I was simply filled with gratitude. Grateful that I was able to go to Israel, something that I davened for every day last year. Grateful for my internship experience, grateful for the amazing friends in my life whom I got to spend time with and even grateful for the challenges I faced the year prior.
As my favorite line in Nishmat Kol Chai says, “Were our mouth as full of song as the sea, and our tongue as full of joyous song as its multitude of waves, and our lips as full of praise as the breadth of the heavens, and our eyes as brilliant as the sun and the moon and our hands as outspread as the eagles of the sky and our feet as swift as hinds – we still could not thank You sufficiently, HaShem our God and God of our forefathers.” I left the summer feeling full of thanks.
As I got on the plane to leave Israel and head back to YU, I wasn’t an emotional wreck at Ben Gurion like I feared I would be. I didn’t want to repeat my past behavior and feel the same way I did when I left after my gap year. I stepped on the plane confidently and calmly, still processing this full-circle summer I had experienced. Reassured by the life lessons I learned this summer, energized for a new school year and excited to approach my junior year with a happier and more open mindset. Content with the outcome of my unforgettable experiences this summer and comforted by the fact that these experiences aren’t ending, they will just begin to manifest in different ways all over again, fitting in with the cyclical nature of our lives.
As I sit in my dorm room late at night, pausing from writing this article, my eyes wander to a poster on my wall – a collage of serene images of Israel with the words, “The sun shines here” displayed across it. Reflecting on my first year at YU, I can confidently say that despite it all, the sun shines here too.