Dream Season

One night last week, I had two dreams in one night. My mind skipped back and forth between the two of them all night long. In fitful sleep, I imagined renting out space near a grocery store where I had noticed an available storefront, and I was selling imported towels from the States. (We have been missing the thick, luxurious towels from the US.) The other dream involved us living back in the states, in upstate New York, where we met up with random strangers and invited them to our house to study Torah and spirituality. (Living in upstate New York on a big farm is one of my husband's fantasies.)

The dichotomy between these two dreams is a paradigm in my unconscious that I struggle with. Part of me feels at home in a world where people don't appear to be lacking physically, and I feel that I have a niche- something to offer them in terms of Jewish learning and a more spiritual culture. On the other hand, being in Israel, I finally feel like I am living in a place where involvement in mundane activities is, in itself, a spiritual experience, and one where I feel worthy of those mundanities and I feel they are worthy of me.

It's ironic, really. Dozens of Olim with similar background to mine compete daily for the precious chinuch jobs, and many Israelis and Olim who couldn't make it here return to the states to go into business there, but this is how I've been experiencing this place. I also feel that there is such an overflowing of religion here that I have little to add or contribute. Surely I would have something, but I don't feel like I can compete with the culture. I sit on the bus, and I overhear an old woman who gave something to someone say, "It is not mine, it belongs to the Master of the World!" The power of such a conversation- to overhear this humbles me to no end. I am in love with the culture that can produce that sentiment from strangers, who will give freely of their physical possessions in that way, and I feel unworthy of it.

I ask God to please make me worthy of this country. Let it rub off on me. Help me learn he language- not only in vocabulary and grammar (although that would be a great start), but its expressions and turns of phrase that are often so rich with meaning and history. And give me the inner wisdom to reject what I don't need from the culture here, and to find my own way, and help my family find our way here.