Immigrant Mom musings

I guess I should take comfort in the fact that the experience of being an immigrant parent is something I share with my brother, my mother, and two of my great grandmothers, Pearl Antine & Fannie Diamond.

Today's Bat Mitzvah tekes (ceremony) at Gabi's school began with a learning session.  For the first activity the teacher asked everyone not born in Israel to stand up.  Alen & I stood with about four, yes only four other people, and two of them seemed to be grandmothers.  The other immigrant moms are the moms of my daughter's best friends in her class, who are Russian.

Then she asked everyone whose parents were not born here to stand with us, and then everyone whose grandparents weren't born here, and by then most of the room of parents and kids were standing with us.  Only a small number of kids and parents stood in the place for people whose grandparents were born here.

We learn from this that we were a nation of immigrants, but I learned from it that we are no longer one.   I felt sharply how we are different here and how we stand out, in my daughter's class at least.  She feels it and we feel it.  I know that other schools in town and other towns in Israel have different compositions, but we are mainly around people who were born here.

Then we had a Beit Midrash, which fittingly enough began with a verse from Psalm 126, "When G-d returned the capitivity from Zion we were like dreamers."  I had plenty to say, as did the other parents, but I was conscious how the girls in the group, my daughter and her friends, were not talking much, and of her strictures to me earlier that I was to keep my mouth shut.  We were two men, four women, three girls, and one man did most of the talking.  I would have said more but for the pressure I felt to be quiet from my daughter.

The story was about Honi HaMaagel, who slept 70 years and woke up to a world he couldn't understand.  I can relate.

At the ceremony itself, the 59 Bat Mitzvah girls from her grade in the middle, the boys in two sections on either side.  I'm thinking how much I hate gender, the whole thing about what girls are meant to be and look like, the whole confusion.  The girls are wearing white with garlands of flowers on each girl's long hair.  I'm thinking of all the conflicts and contradictions of this age.

Two moms tried to sum it up in their blessing and couldn't - saying that times have changed, that girls can be anything, knowing full well that if they choose "anything" they will give up on some other parts of things.  They reminded the girls to stay true to what is real in being girls and women, whatever that means.  One mom said that the girls should speak up or be quiet as they wish - could it be I am a mom who speaks up with a daughter who prefers to keep quiet? 

I was emotional all along, but got most emotional hearing the boys sing, with cracking voices, about how "Mashehu hadash matchil achshav" (Something new is happening now).  There was something so cute and poignant.  Each boy gave a girl a plastic flower with a heart, very embarassedly.  And the girls did their dance, and everyone clapped.

Then at the end Hatikva, and me feeling emotional that I am here, and in a Jewish setting, and at the same time wishing I was some place that felt familiar or comfortable in any way.  I'm probably the only person who thinks at the end of Hatikva, "play ball!"

And my daughter came out smiling, until about two minutes later when she got mad at me for posting a photo I took of her, and stomped off.  And in the car on the way home she told us how the moms who gave the blessing, the kind of moms I like, aren't cool and how I had better never stand up and say anything like that at any event.

And I came home feeling......like an immigrant mom of a teenager, awash in a future and a country I will never understand.

עליה לצור הדסה

This is something I read at our shul for Yom HaAtzma'ut - סיפור עליה

עליה לצור הדסה

בלילה הראשון שלי בארץ ישראל, בשנת 1977, שתיתי הרבה ויסקי עם החבר שלי לאותו קיץ שהכרתי אותו באותו ערב.

טיפסנו בגדר הבריכה של חוות הנוער בסן סימון בירושלים, גדר די גבוה.  שחינו, יצאנו, נתפסנו על ידי המדריכים.  זאת היתה תקופה יותר סובלנית להרפתקאות ולא נזרקנו מיד מתוכנית הקיץ.

כמה שבועות לאחר מכן, ביקרנו לשבוע במושב ליד בית שמש, שהשנה גיליתי היה מושב נוחם.  וכמה שבועות אחרי כן טיילנו בהר שמשם ראינו את המושב מלמעלה – אולי זה קרוב לנו כאן אך איניני יודעת איפה זה היה.  אני וחברה ראינו את המושב "שלנו" מרחוק ויצאנו דרך היער לקפוץ לשם להגיד שלום.  אחד המדריכים היה צריך ללכת אחרינו ולהחזיר אותנו באוטובוס.

אותו המדריך גר כיום ברחוב הפלמ"ח, בבנין שגרים בו חברים שלנו מקורס הכנה ללידה שעשינו לפני הלידה של גבי.  ראיתי אותו לפני כמה שנים והיה נדמה לי שהוא זוכר אותי - לא לשבח.

בשנת 1990-1991 גרתי בירושלים ברחוב וושינגטון.  כשחזרתי לארץ עם אלן במסגרת עליה, התקבלתי לעבודה כמעט ליד המקום שגרתי בו אז, וגרנו ברחוב טשרניחובסקי, לא רחוק ממקום ההרפתקאה הראשונה שלי בארץ.

כשהגענו לצור הדסה ולקהילה, בא אלינו להציג את עצמו דוד קריגר.  הדוד שלו, Seymour, היה מורה של אלן אחרי הגיור שלה ב1995 ולימד אותה להגיד שמע ישראל וואהבת בעל פה. 

אחרי שהגענו לצור הדסה, גילינו שאבא של רחל שבת ואבא שלי למדו ביחד באוניברסיטה, שסיימו ב1950 ו1951.

בשנת 1999 כתבתי שיר שדמיתי את עצמי לרקפת צומחת ליד אבן בהרי יהודה.  כל הרקפות שאי פעם נתנו לי בארה"ב מתו בקלות.  כאן נדמה לי שהן צומחות בלי שום מאמץ של אדם.

לא קשה לי להאמין במושג של "unseen hands",ידיים שמובילות אותנו למרות שאנו לא רואים אותם.

Books, fear and all that

It’s the end of 2^nd grade and my son, like most 2^nd graders in Israel at the end of the year, came home with a book report assignment.

Having no prior warning and with several other pressing matters involving a distant health appointment for my other child, a trip to the pharmacy for what I will lovingly call “school drugs,” and a short effort to appear at the job that pays our bills, I came home late.

“Mommy’s home, time to turn off the TV.”  Having lost half my audience here, I will continue.  We are bad parents.  We work too late and come home too tired.  Our kid watches too much TV.

“He has homework and I couldn’t get him to do it.”

Now this is the kid who the night before at 9 pm, after a special birthday dinner party, sat next to me on my bed while I studied to teach, got out his own math homework and did it.  But instead, on the following day, I can’t even find him.

I check the inside of the house and the entire yard.  I check the closets.  He’s not here.

He is found outside, climbing on my car.

Back inside, he develops an intense interest in his Lego.

I finally corner him.  “Is the reason you are running away because of what the homework is?”  I get a nod.  He tells me it is something about a story; he is going to write about Bon 12.

Bon 12 is a comic book with very small writing.  I estimate he has read maybe 20% of what is written in the boxes.  I can’t read the book – the writing is too weirdly shaped, I don’t understand the plot or the characters.  It has too many words. Comic books don’t work so well for me for reading, but I do pretty well with Ricky Robot and Lunch Lady.  I've worked to get my Hebrew reading skills up to reading to him (that was Kitah Alef for me), but when we move into Hebrew comic books, I have a tough time.

We get him to the dinner table and attempt to talk him out of Bon 12.  He says he told his teacher he is doing this book and she won’t let him change it.  He develops an intense interest in pasta and salad and becomes completely non-responsive verbally.

I decide we need a change of scene and tell him we are going out for a walk, which he is very excited about.  “See a friend!”   We take the homework, a soccer ball, my phone and a bag of bamba and start walking.  

I start reading to him from the 3 page assignment.  I start reading the first page out loud, which is addressed to parents.  “Read that to yourself” he tells me.  I read to him that he has to write the book name and author and he tells me them.  I tell him he has to write a summary including beginning, middle and end.  He tells me what happens in the book - about 4 sentences in a row, including some characters’ names, and one he has forgotten but then remembers.  I understand none of what he says but at least he is putting words together into sentences.  I start to feel a glimmer of hope.  He is speaking Hebrew, I am reading Hebrew to him but switching to English to talk to him.  I wonder distantly to what extent this is part of the problem, but having achieved 5 minutes of actual verbal communication about the homework assignment, I feel a very minor sense of victory, coupled with ongoing dread about the coming days.

We get to the park.  He takes his ball and goes to a group of boys.  The park is fairly empty, and the clientele is 90% boys on their own.  It’s about 7 pm.  Not a parent in sight.

He finds a group of four of his classmates, three of whom live right next to the park.  (We missed the memo about buying a home right next to the park.)  They have a shopping cart and are collecting wood for Lag B’Omer.   They bring the cart and unload the wood in one kid’s yard.  A dad is there, talking either to dogs or younger children, paying little attention to the boys.  When they tip the cart over and the wood spills out, the dad rights the cart for them.  Another dad, we’ll call him dad #2, rolls up in his car, coming home from work.

After about 5 minutes, Mom #2, wife of Dad #2, comes out of her house.  I ask her if the boys always come here on their own; she admits how convenient it is to live here. 

“I’m trying to talk with him about the book report,” I say, showing her the page in my hand.  She glances at it, interested but not alarmed like I am.  “Yeah,” she says, “I saw they have that but my kid forgot his book at school.”  I detect no major anxiety.  I recall, as I do each time we meet, that Mom #2 works half-time and comes home by 2 pm.

I say I don’t feel I can leave my kid here to come home on his own so I am hanging around.  “Does he have a sense of time?” she asks.  “Could you tell him to come home in half an hour?” 

I look at her like she has three heads.  If my boss, who pays my salary, asks me to come to his office in the next building in half an hour, and I am sitting at my computer, with a clock staring me in the face every second, I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance I’ll show up there on time. 

“There’s a big street between here and our house.” I say.  She knows, and I know, that the kids aren’t supposed to cross streets by themselves till age 9.  Age 8 is the most challenging age.  Ready to go but….

As if on cue, a car starts backing out of a driveway where the boys are, and one kid runs behind it into the street as it is backing, and as I draw a sharp intake of breath and start moving, my son comes behind him and does the same thing.  “Oh no, it’s not going to be like this,” I say loudly as I start running.  I’m next to my kid in about 10 seconds.  Mom #2 is still where we were standing, mid-sentence.

A difficult encounter ensues in which eventually I get my kid’s attention and convey to him that we are now leaving, and that he may not run behind a car that is backing up and must stop.  All in English, pretty loudly.  Mom #2 arrives and decides to maybe say something to her child.  I am half way down the block on the way home with my kid, with him arguing with me that the man who was backing up saw him and the other boy.

Hours later I wonder, what would it be like to be an Israeli parent, who didn’t jump, who didn’t worry, who knew her kid would understand and complete the assignment?  How is it that the native born in this crazy country, full of minefields at every turn, can be so relaxed and confident?  Would language, a sense of belonging, a part time job, a husband who came home late and earned a good salary, a quiet son, any of the above, ever give me that elusive sense of “yihyeh beseder?”

The End of Exile

The End of Exile

There’s a woman or man like me

Waking up this morning

In Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver

In London, Berlin, Amsterdam

In Stockholm, in Sydney, maybe even in Tokyo

Waking up next to a lover, a partner, a soulmate

She’s thinking of California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida

He’s thinking of how they met in Provincetown, Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami

In Rio, or Jamaica or Amsterdam

It’s been 5 years, 10 years, 15 or like us 20

Of falling in love, of worry, of lawyers bills, of fears and new horizons

Of losses greater than could be borne – of learning greater than ever dreamed

They have friends, family, new roots of all sorts

They have bills, mortgages, contracts, commitments

Is this home? They wonder
 

For years home has been where you are, choices limited, decisions made by others
For years I have held injustice, reached for acceptance, tried to understand G-d’s plan

For years we have missed loved ones, family events, a sense of all that’s familiar

It has been a kind of wall at each side, defining a narrow path

 

And suddenly, in an instant, what has held, constrained, controlled us for decades has fallen away
I am left standing, wondering, laughing, crying

Reaching for meaning in all we have walked through

Knowing that wherever you are is home

Mikvah, Safety and more

A visit from Aliza Kline of the Mayyim Hayyim community mikvah brought up a kind of intense and weird nostalgia and homesickness in me today.

When Aliza arrived at my work, she called to ask about parking. I said I'd meet her outside and when I got there, the driveway was blocked by a van. After I yelled and got the van moved, the driveway was still made very difficult by cars parked on either side. Then she had to take her car down the steep, curved incline to our parking, while I was simultaneously berating the man who was blocking easy entrance (he said he wasn't) and talking to a student who wanted to talk to me.

Later, after the presentation, her entrance seemed like a metaphor to me about my life in Israel. There was one moment during it when I thought "wait, she's not an olah, she may not be able to handle this".

Aliza started her presentation talking about what makes a ritual work. In 11 years in Israel, I feel I have not heard people ask this kind of question. I had trouble understanding it - rituals work and don't work - it's rarely one or the other to me. She asked the students what a ritual was and they had answers - I could not remember what a ritual is. I was trying to figure out which parts of my life are ritual and which are not, and did not feel sure I could distinguish.

But I should back up. That was after another conversation on our way over to the Beit Midrash. My boss had mentioned the old mikvah in Brighton, and I said I had been there before my wedding, and then started on thinking about that and about what it has meant to me to pass at the mikvah - pass for straight that is, because I've never been to the mikvah when I was not a lesbian, and I've never been out at a mikvah, whatever that would mean.

Aliza talked a lot about safe space and what it means to create a space where people are going to feel safe taking off their clothes. I didn't even feel safe talking about it. I noticed most faculty were not there, and I noticed the relative ease with which the students participated, and I thought about how much more restrained a culture Israel is when it comes to talking about sexuality.

I thought about my kids, and about how I went to the mikvah before I got pregnant, for a period of months each time, and about how I was always passing as a straight person. I thought, and almost said something, about how the mikvah lady told me "livriut" and about how I prayed to get pregnant each time. I thought of the Reform rabbi who married us and who had recommended mikvah to me when I was trying to get pregnant, and I thought of the ultrasound technician who, the day after the first time I went to the mikvah in that process, asked me, "did you go to the mikvah?" Could she see it on my face? It was the one and only time in the fertility process that I was asked. I didn't think of, but think of now, the kavannah a friend gave me for mikvah, and how I prayed for everyone who was trying to get pregnant, and how until this day I have a track record - all the people I have prayed for, there and elsewhere, that they be blessed to become parents, have received that blessing.

I listened to Aliza talk about making mikvah in Massachusetts safe and accessible space for everyone. It kind of reminded me of how I feel when I daven with a Reconstructionist siddur - like, oh, my spirituality used to be like that - open, full of possibilities. Aliza had asked for an example of what doesn't work and when I said, "when you can't bring your whole self there" she said, "like maybe when a mechitza isn't done in a way that can work for you," and I thought of the many Shabbat mornings I spend in a mechitza shul where I daven and what it means to try to bring my whole self there to a space that doesn't reflect my values and what it means to pray or be part of any ritual moment and not be all of me but still feel transformed and uplifted. And what it means to sit with contradictions and discomfort and not knowing.

I thought of the parking lot entrance, and how much that feels like my ritual life here. I wondered if I will one day experience some reclamation of mikvah. Alen said maybe we shouldn't be planning a trip to disney world and instead should be thinking of going back to Massachusetts for a trip to Mayyim Hayyim. Then I think of my very real moments in the mikvah, and my very real kids, and thank G-d.

My Pinkwashed Life

The title of this post is a tip of the nib to Ma Vie En Rose, a great film!

So I heard about Pinkwashing last spring, but it's gotten a lot of press recently with Sarah Shulman's Op Ed in the New York Times.

The basic accusation of pinkwashing is that Israel, seeking to win support of both gay and left-leaning people around the world, touts its record on gay rights to obscure the serious violations of the rights of Palestinians. For a well done example of this kind of PR, see Bret Stephens' video, Will Israel Survive?.

I have two responses to Sarah Shulman and those who accuse Israel of pinkwashing. The first was summed up on my friend Rich's facebook post with the link to her article: No matter what we do, they hate us. I would say it differently like this: When Israel is wrong we're wrong and when we're right we're wrong.

My second response is that of course I agree. Of course gay rights are an incomplete indicator of human rights. I've had ample time to think over the past 11 years about whether it is right that my partner and I took advantage of the benefits allowed us under the law of return and moved here while millions of Palestinians do not have the right of return to this area and while my neighbors across the green line in Wadi Fukin and Husan do not have the right to vote and have limited freedom of movement.

But for me it's not about pinkwashing, it's about reality. It's about my life. And my reality is that my family can't live in the US because my partner and I are a bi-national same sex couple. So gay rights in Israel isn't theory for me, it's fact. It's not something to like or not like, it's something that makes my family life possible. And no David, this is not about my pain. This is about my reality.

The reality is the every country that surrounds Israel has human rights issues. Nothing is black and white, and every country lives with a messy reality. Because Israel is subject to an organized media campaign of de-legitimization, and because Israel cares about its image in the eyes of the western world, for self-serving reasons no doubt, we have people out there making the case for what's good about the reality here. Whether you like that or not, it doesn't make a difference to me. I can't live in the US as a lesbian and I'm here because of the reality of gay rights in Israel.

It's not lost on me that Sarah Shulman is in all likelihood, like myself, a descendant of Sarah Imenu. And perhaps that's a good thing. We are a people with a conscience and our arguments and differences are leshem shamayim. For better or worse, the Jewish people still want Israel to be a light unto the nations and for many people it is love of justice and of the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition that motivates their criticisms of Israel. I would not for one minute want my brothers and sisters to stay silent about what they believe is right. I just ask that they remember that there are people, including gay Palestinians, for whom these issues are not words on a page, are not a matter of spin or of "washing" one way or another. There are many people whose lives are directly impacted by the reality of gay rights here - for the good.

None of us knows where this is all leading - if the decline of women's rights in Israel is any indication, nothing is working out the way we planned. I'm grateful that the anti-gay policies of the US government compelled my family to move to the place where the Jewish tradition and politics are intertwined, where the messy imperfection of reality is the challenge that faces me every day.

Driving Questions 2 - Gabi and Prop 8

Once they learn to read, it's a whole new world of parenting.

A recent care package from our friend Rosalind who lives in California included a bag of buttons, "NO on 8". When we picked up the package on our way to the pool, Gabi wanted to know, "what is NO on 8?".

So I was trying to explain Prop. 8 to her and that some people don't want people of the same sex to be able to get married. She thought she understood that, "so when the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced???"

That just about made me cry - that she would think they would pass a law that we have to get divorced. Then she decided it would have to have a grandfather clause, "No, people won't have to get divorced, just new people can't get married."

So I tried to explain to her that there's a difference between being married in the eyes of G-d, family and friends and being married by law. She understands the G-d, family and friends thing, and she checked that Ima and I are married that way, but she didn't really understand what being married by law means. It was weird to tell her we aren't married by law after all these years of telling her we are married. It felt very strange to tell her that not everyone recognizes our marriage. I mean, this is the kids whose classmates when they came over wanted to know which one of us broke the glass at the wedding. How much more married can you get in their eyes?

It's even more complicated because here in Israel, there's a long legal tradition of giving folks who are common law married, in Hebrew "known in public", the same rights as legally married folks. And our courts have extended those rights to same-sex couples such that there really aren't so many legal rights that have not been or could not be claimed by same-sex couples. So here in Israel, not married by law does not have so much force.

But of course that's not true in the US, as any bi-national couple like us can tell you.

But the hardest part of the whole discussion was the punch in the stomach impact of her 7 year old words, "so if the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced?" As though a vote in California could create havoc in the lives of thousands of kids like her. Thank G-d it is more complicated.

Sea Change

So we're getting ready to celebrate our 17th Passover together and our 10th Passover in Israel. Did I just write that? Can it really be true? I am as shocked as you are.

I often wonder if we will ever feel like we live here, but some of the stuff going on right now makes me feel like we do. Not big stuff, just day to day stuff. The level of involvement we have in our local community, which feels very high after 3 years. The number of people we know and the connections we have. Small things.

I went by myself to a shloshim commemoration for a colleague and friend's father. She had gone to the states for the funeral and shiva so this was a chance for her community here to greet her. There were lots of people there I did not know, but lots of people I did know. And there were some people there I know who I had not seen in years. That means I've been here for years and years could go by with my not seeing them. I sat and easily listened to talks in Hebrew and English. I thought about what it means to lose a parent far away and about what it means to live in two civilizations. Then I came home.

There's a lot going on here - there's a bad conversion bill before the Knesset (see www.irac.org for what you can do). There's the new housing being built in a place I for the life of me can't figure out why they are calling East Jerusalem - it's in Ramat Shlomo. I guess it's at the top of East Jerusalem somehow. I'm much more worried about what's going on in Sheikh Jarrah, which is in the heart of East Jerusalem. There are problems right here in our area, which I hope to write about soon.

Sasha has a book about chocolate and it talks about how Cortes conquered the Aztecs. Gabi wants to know who was good and who was bad. When I can't answer that, she wants to know which side I am on. Help me out here if you can - should I say Cortes was bad? Is it important that I take a side here? The book says the Aztecs were very fierce and the Mayans were afraid of them. Who were the good guys anyway?

The neighbors borrowed two suitcases for their kids who are going on a school trip. I spent two hours at a birthday party where I knew the clown from Gabi's birthday last year and he greeted me like a friend. We hosted 4 kids at our house on Sunday for a host home for Gabi's school. These small things are making me feel like as we're heading into our 10th Pesach in Israel, we actually live here.

The coming year is right about when I expected congress to pass something letting us back in the US (and helping the thousands of binational couples like us who don't have the right to live together in the US). March in Washington on Sunday to make it happen (www.immigrationequality.org). I figured right around the time we felt really at home here, the laws would change. I'm feeling more at home, we're still waiting, but I'm not packing any suitcases.

P.S. One person who read this thought it meant we're moving back to the states - no, really we are not, we don't have that option and don't know what we would do if we did have the option. And P.P.S. Right after I wrote this I took Alen's car for inspection and was in and out in less than 30 minutes. I'm still waiting for where I have to pay the price for that miracle!

The Cup

I was asked to write something for my professional organization newsletter (it still comes out in paper!). The topic was how Torah stories intersect with our lives - they always have a piece from Israeli colleagues - and the specific Torah story we were asked to write about is the upcoming parshiyot about Joseph. I am posting it earlier than it will appear in print because of our upcoming trip. The piece I wrote seems especially relevant today - we spent the afternoon at the Thanksgiving celebration of neighbors - many anglos there though including Canadians, British and Australians. The food was terrific but Thanksgiving is really the only US holiday I miss and I've suffered from some homesickness as you read in my last post.

I began and ended the day singing the sentimental song Halley's Comet by Mary Chapin Carpenter to Gabi and Sasha - lots of tears in the morning but managed not to cry in the evening - Gabi said "you're almost crying" after I promised not to! I will mention the kids and I also did a great hike to and from the horse farm today today with some high risk bimba riding (with helmets of course). As a result Sasha was asleep at 7:30 pm with Gabi not far behind!

Here's my piece about Joseph:

The Cup

I want to use this space to explore what it means when members of our families and close friendship circles are far from us. The Joseph Story is of course the first extended treatment of life outside the land of Israel that we find in the book of Genesis. For a period of his life, the years in which he grew up and matured, Joseph lived far from his family. He seems to have brought with him to Egypt values and natural talents, but he exercises them without the benefit of parents or siblings, not to mention without the internet or facebook. Or we might say he is able to exercise his talents precisely because he is far from his father and siblings.

I know something about being an immigrant – I come by it honestly. My mother left her native England and moved to the US when she married my father at the (then late) age of 29. In some ways, she was a Joseph. She dreamed of going to the US and getting away from the small, closed London Jewish community and the multitude of aunts, uncles and cousins that surrounded her.

My mother-in-law, may her memory be a blessing, lived a similar story. She dreamed since high school of traveling around the world. She met her Trinidadian husband at university in England and eventually traveled to make her home halfway across the globe in Trinidad. In her last years, she traveled around the world for work, and she died while working in Africa. Both these strong women have been models to me as I try to make sense of living away from "home".

In the Joseph story, the cost to Joseph of his distance from his family is apparent. The distance is one of estrangement and his desire to reconnect with his brothers when they appear is palpable. In thinking of the story, my mind is drawn to the cup that Joseph sends back hidden with his brothers. To me, the cup symbolizes that part of Joseph that can never be reconciled with Egypt – the part of him that wants to run back with his brothers to reach his father. It reminds me of the special smile that I only see on my partner's face when she's laughing with her brothers in Trinidad – so like the special laughter my mother shares only with relatives in England. The cup is that piece that doesn't fit in – the feeling I sometimes have when I'm trying and failing to make connections with native Israelis – the feeling that I am always on unfamiliar turf.

At the end of the Joseph story, though, Joseph does not return to Canaan with the cup. Instead, he is the instrument of bringing his father and brothers out of the land of Canaan. Unlike Joseph, neither my mother nor my mother-in-law tried or succeeded to bring their parents or siblings from England. Rather, both experienced the same costs Alen and I feel today, raising our children far from their grandparents, aunts and uncles. As our remaining parents age I feel more acutely the distance. I also feel the pain of distance from friends and colleagues as they face illness and other challenges.

Joseph becomes whole when his brothers and father arrive in Egypt. I don't feel that wholeness is available to me, so I find ways to live each day with a missing piece. And when friends and family come to visit, I send them home with a cup.

My column from the Attleboro Sun Chronicle

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