Page 7 - Issue 19

Last year it felt easy for me to talk about my life
with an air of excitement. I spoke about the good
and the bad, but overwhelmingly I felt that I was in
the right place doing the right things. I assume
that I am not the only one who feels this way and
it’s impossible to say how I would be feeling and
what I would be writing if it weren’t for Covid, but
after spending the majority of the last year within
the confines of my home many of the things that
felt more obvious to me a year ago, no longer feel
that way. Questions that I thought I had answered
for the time being became gaping question marks
once again gnawing at the back of my skull or
bursting out of me in one of the many breakdowns
I had this year.

A year ago, I saw a clear future for myself as an
educator, in one form or another, I knew that I
would keep leading chanichim in the context of
Hanoar Haoved veHalomed or in Dror Yisrael. I
knew that I wanted to live in Israel in a socialist
commune and share my life with people who I
loved very deeply and with those who I barely
knew before and quite frankly often found it quite
hard to be around. I don’t remember exactly how I
felt about politics over here, but I know that my
optimism wasn’t quite as broken as it is now. Here
we are on the cusp of a 4th election just since I
arrived, in a country that hasn’t been able to pass
a budget in over 2 years. I think I would have
yelled at someone who called me naive back then
given how well rounded and informed I felt and
probably was. But today I feel like many of my
ideas about the state of this country, the future of
politics here, the social fabric of the society, the