A Parting of Ways

I have some very important news to share with you all. 

As of this past Monday, I am no longer a part of the teaching program in Beit She'an through MASA.  I made the difficult decision to leave the program after a lot of thinking on my part and conversations with the coordinators.  It was a mutual agreement.  

It's no secret that for a long time I have not been happy living in Beit She'an and I have a had a lot of challenges and struggled with problematic situations while teaching.  I was becoming very discontent and negative, which is not a person I want to be seen as, nor project into the world.  There was a vast difference from my demeanor when I arrived on this program, and how I was behaving and feeling over the last few weeks. When you embark on this sort of experience, there's the expectation that you will change, but I was backsliding and not changing for the better and was very unhappy; furthermore, my heart was really not in the work I was doing.  

Just last Wednesday (Dec. 30) I traveled to Tel Aviv with my Beit She'an coordinator to talk about my exasperation with the Tlalim Director of Pedagogical Programs.  My goal was to have a peaceful and assuring discussion on my experiences thus far, and come away from the meeting feeling that I had communicated with someone in the organization my desire to have a better quality experience. We discussed my time teaching in the schools, as well as living in the town itself and my struggle to find a place in the community and foster a Jewish identity in a place where I felt the definition was very narrow and stifling.  

We both came to the agreement that it was not a positive fit for me to be in Beit She'an. The objective of this program and being in this town was for the both of us to positively benefit from the relationship and opportunity and that simply was not being fulfilled on either end.  I chose to give up 10 months of life and invested in coming here to teach in Beit She'an, but I was not having an experience that was giving me direction and purpose.  

I was clear on the fact that I did want to stay in Israel; there's still so much more in this country that I want to learn and experience, so to me, to just going home was not something that I wished to do.  

In the meeting, we discussed other ways for me to stay in Israel and do a different program, but like most things in life, the options that were proposed were limited by either money or time.  I've been volunteering for the past four months and that doesn't exactly result in stock options, or 401Ks. Tlalim said that they would look into the possibility of finding a program that was "free", but that didn't leave me a large sense of hopefulness.

Things NEVER happen fast in Israel, but this time they did.  As I was still turning things over in my head and brainstorming ideas and possibilities, I got word that MASA had decided to take me off their roster as of Monday, January 11.  So that basically made the decision for me.  

Getting this new was very climatic - at the same time, Ron and I were stuck in traffic and trying to accomplish 1,000 things: him getting to a bank and a meeting and me trying to go to a MASA conference in Jaffa.  The traffic had us at a standstill and the car's gas tank was in the red.  It was a very stressful and aggravating moment.  

Thriving on the energy of the situation, I jumped into action; all the ideas that I had come up with in my brainstorms were now possibilities, so I began making calls and emails like a whirling durbish.   

I was still tense and anxious when Ron dropped me off at the hotel in Jaffa and I went to my MASA conference on Leadership. It seemed like the last place I should be at that time.  Not one to ignore irony, I tried to get out of my field experience session, but the organizers would have none of it, so I wound up on a bus feeling overwhelmed and agitated.  I'm not sure if you could actually sense the air buzzing around me, but another conference goer suggested that I listen to a meditation app on his phone.  The universe tends to work in mysterious ways, and I think that was one of them since it helped me calm down a lot.

Over  the next couple of days, I slowly began to come up with a plan and then once the conference ended and I returned to Beit She'an, I've been able to make things happen.

On to greener pastures

Firstly, and most excitingly, I will be staying in Israel, for the time being.  
Dr. Uri Chissick and his co-workers at the Institute decided to hire me on as a full time volunteer.  I will be working with them at their facilities on the kibbutz for the next couple of weeks.  I will be involved in 1) foraging tours, 2)cooking and concocting spices, teas, vegan cheeses and spreads as well as fermentation, and 3) working on the Institutes media materials in English so we can better explain and represent the work we do there

Afterwards, I have a couple more ideas of what I will do and where I will go that make me feel really optimistic and curious. Currently, I'm living in this wonderful state of spontaneity and possibility -  it's at times frightening, and at others very inspiring and free.  Since making this decision, there's been a notable change in my body and mind.  I'm standing taller and my eyes look clearer; a couple people have even remarked upon it as well, so I think that if the positive adjustment is that apparent, I'm very confident in this decision. 

I have a lot of choice words and feelings on the whole experience of living in Beit She'an, but ever since coming to this conclusion, they've fallen away and become moot.  So things haven't turned out exactly as planned, but without this experience I would not have had the opportunity to fall in love with someone, or be inspired and driven to seek out new options for learning and experiencing that I had never before considered.  

So long and thanks for all the fish

Throughout my time in Israel, I've been lucky enough to cross paths with a good many people, who have been encouraging and supportive of me finding my way to be happy in where I am and what I do.  I'm happy that I've been so fortunate, so I don't feeling isolated and helpless making this decision to try something new and a little against the grain.  Thank you for the support and confidence!  

So darlings, let's be adventurous and see what happens.  I've got food in my belly, a roof over my head and work that inspires and my heart is in.  

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"What do you fear, lady?' he asked
'A cage,' she said.  "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."

- Eowyn, House of Eorl

The Return of the King

J.R.R. Tolkein

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First Days, Part 1

A week has passed since I arrived in Israel and its been quite a whirlwind! 

From the moment I arrived, we have had a packed schedule with very little time to ourselves and I have had even less time to reflect over the fact that I've left my life in the States and popped myself right into life in Beit She'an.

Street crossing sign at the airport that features a rabbi.

First impressions of Beit She'an is that it is a small town of around 16,000 people, so bigger than both Burlington and Shelburne.  It is located along the path of the Great Rift Valley, which is also what the Dead Sea sits upon, so likewise, Beit She'an is below sea level, which makes it unyieldingly hot.  If you thought Florida, California, or even Texas was hot, you'd have nothing on Beit She'an.  "Welcome to the Inferno", said one of my fellow Americans.  It's a hazy, slightly humid hot from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm (19:00); there are typically no clouds in the sky, and the sun beats down and fries you without a care whether you are human or cat.

At night, you can look across to the East and see the lights of villages in Jordan around 3 kilometers away situated on top of the mountains.  During the day, if you hike up to Mount Gilboa in the West, you can see a glimpse of the West Bank.

Looking towards the West and the border with Jordan

These infamous presences don't feel threatening.  They're just entities existing along with us and filled with people like us who are just going about their days, maybe even vaguely noting that we're out there as well. 

If you stood from a vantage point on Mount Gilboa, you would see beneath you a patchwork quilt of fish farms spread out beneath you.  Yes, fish farms!  The Galilee region that Beit She'an pushes up against is a worldwide supplier of fish, so the area is decorated with large rectangular pools full of tuna and salmon, I think.  Somehow, in some Israeli sort of irony/devil-may-care attitude, they intermixed fish farming into the scorched earth of the area and there is rich, fertile production taking place here.  This is only supported by the other agriculture in the area, which includes row upon row of date trees and banana tree farms that stretch out for miles and miles.  

The most striking part of city life in Beit She'an that takes a lot of adjusting is the cat problem.  As my host sister explained, "Cats are like the squirrel of Beit She'an."  They sit menacingly on dumpsters, staring at you menacingly from on top of dumpsters as you walk by.  They are scarred and marked by how life is for cats in Beit She'an; they are marred from fights, encounters with jackals and diseases - missing parts of tails and even eyes.  Because of our proximity to Jordan, the cats have the ability to wander into a third world country where rabies is not controlled; therefore, there's a chance the cats have rabies and they definitely have fleas, so we cannot touch the cats.  In the yard that surrounds my home, we have a mother cat and her four kittens who live there. They're all very, very cute, but each is malnourished and suffering from some form of disease that is infecting their eyes, which they will likely go blind from.  It's hard to see and not do anything about.

Some of the kittens that seem to have made a home of our courtyard.  "One-Eyed Jack" is in the forefront.  

The city of Beit She'an itself is a jumble of crisscrossing streets, filled by one, or two story sand colored buildings.  Half of the city is being developed into new single family houses in modern suburban style and the other half was constructed maybe 15 to 20 years ago and hasn't been updated since, but it serves its purpose.  

The ITF House of Beit She'an is located in the older part of the city, that we joke is on the wrong side of town.  Our street is no masterpiece, it's filled with dry and dead grass and lots of trash; air conditioners from tightly packed-in houses protrude out from our neighbors nondescript houses. We have a bomb shelter on the end of our street.  But we are located in perfect proximity to nearly everything in the city.  Supermarkets, discount stores, liquor stores and favourite falafel spots are all around a 15-25 minute walk from us.