After not even 24 hours away from the Kibbutz, I returned from Jerusalem about an hour ago with a sense of relief and comfort that I am finally back home.
I decided to spend a night in Jerusalem simply just to go. It was a good chance to check out The Lone Soldier Center and The Base, two centers for lone soldiers in Jerusalem; and an opportunity to see my sister and get some food in the holy city. So, yesterday I hopped on a bus, arrived around six, and spent the night and morning there. This morning I walked around, checked out some stores, got some food, and was with some friends from the Garin. We left to come back to Erez at one in the afternoon, making sure to return before Shabbat.
Jerusalem, to put quite simply, is too hectic. Don't get me wrong, I like Jerusalem after all, but to me it's like going into NYC. I know my way around, there are always things to do and places to see, and it's always filled with life. However, I can only take the city in doses, and it's hard to feel a sense of calm or comfort among all the ruckus of the city. So, without even spending a day in Jerusalem, I was more than ready to come back.
The ride back, as one can imagine, was a bit more than two hours, and consisted of two busses and a decent amount of traffic. You feel like you are sitting on that bus for an eternity, waiting forever to return.
When the last bus dropped us off at the Erez Junction, I felt like I was finally home. I came back, saw everyone who stayed on the Kibbutz the night, said hi, and then came to my room. I put my stuff down, quickly unpacked, and then laid on my bed.
It is nice to have a place in Israel that I don't only call home, but a place that feels like home.
For me, while having spent a lot of time in Israel, that fact that I grew up somewhere else still gives me a romantic feeling about this place. This means that whenever I go somewhere else in the country, especially to a big city like Jerusalem, I want to and I do feel like a tourist. I go to the Shuk, I buy and try different foods, I want to walk by known places in the city to check them out, and I want to make the most of my time there. But, as a tourist, you are never grounded. Always on the move, always allured by the uniqueness of a place and the differences from what you know or grew up with. You feel like a spectator watching a different life that you don't live, and at the end of the day, there isn't usually a sense of calm because it's an area you are not used to and a place where you don't have a base or home.
The Kibbutz has given me just the opposite. Erez is just a community where people live, and now I live there too. There is nothing grand or touristy, and after three months here, I know many of the nooks and crannies to this community. With the more I know and the more familiar I become of the place and the people that live here, the more calm and comforted I feel when coming back after a night in a hectic city.
One of the things I am most excited to do in the army is to come back to Erez after a hard week on base and feel like I'm coming home. Here I have a community of friends in my Garin, a wider Kibbutz community, and an amazing host family. It might be cliché, but when Garin Tzabar places you on a Kibbutz for your military service, the goal is to not feel alone when you're called a lone soldier, and to feel as if you have a home when your real home is across the pond.
I love sitting on my own bed, in my room, on my Kibbutz. I feel like it's mine and that gives me a sense of comfort in this wonderful yet still foreign land.
*Picture of a replica of the original Erez buildings, constructed on Erez's 72nd birthday two weeks ago
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