Author's note: This piece was originally read aloud, at a Rocket Companies TMRN (Team Member Resource Network) MCAN (Multicultural Alliance Network) event titled, "People's Library." This event was modeled after the Human Library Organization's "living books," which are people's narratives meant to defy stereotypes and explain identity. For the Rock FOC event, six team members were selected to share their stories on identity.
If you would like to listen to the recording of this read aloud, it’s here.
With the risk of losing half my audienc in the first few minutes, I’m going to begin this with a poem I wrote years ago, when I thought I was going to be a poetry professor. The reason I’m reading this will become clear as I share the rest of my story.
Or right now, when I tell you the title of my poem which is….
My mother was born sad.
The tender arms
that embraced her in infancy
were engraved with a sorrow
she would carry
for the rest of her life.
An only child
of holocaust survivors,
she learned the nature of suffering
before she could tie her shoes
or even count to ten.
Even at six,
she stares out of photographs
solemnly, her eyes full
with a terrible understanding.
She is nearly indistinguishable
from the placid-faced dolls
she clutches, mute companions
who share her silence.
In later photographs
She smiles carefully,
her mouth flawlessly painted
for the cameras’ probing eye.
She smiles
trying to reassure the world
that time heals all wounds,
that sorrow cannot be passed
from parent to child
like some nameless disease,
flawed DNA
or a birth defect.
But her eyes
betray her every time.
The sadness she holds there
is so ancient
that only the prophets,
their own eyes
heavy-laden with anguish,
would understand.
This poem was about so much more than my mother.
My mother was carried by her parents’ experience, and this experience touched every aspect of her life. I didn’t know it then, but I would I spend nearly 15 years struggling to break away from the experiences and culture that inevitably carried me on my own path. You know what they say, the more you try to run from yourself and your problems, the more you realize that you can’t? You are you, always. We can’t escape ourselves, no matter how hard we try. But I didn’t know this then. And so I fled. I left my country, twice, searching for who I was, trying to piece together an identity that made sense. I fled, searching for a better version of this story, of my story, of my mother’s and my grandparents’ stories. I wanted to find the solace at the end: The part where God, if such a thing exists, sighs. And so I ran.
I decided to leave my small town and dead-end job in the most dramatic way possible, by doing the thing that terrified me the most: I was going to move to a foreign country alone, to a place where I didn’t speak the language or know anyone. I moved to Prague, the Czech Republic, where my Hungarian holocaust survivor grandfather had once lived. Prague is a dark, mysterious place full of castles and medieval myths, with a rich history hidden for several decades by the iron curtain.
I didn’t know it then, but I would I spend nearly 15 years struggling to break away from the experiences and culture that inevitably carried me on my own path.
I ran full force into Prague, into the expat experience, full of fear and recklessness, chain-smoking and drinking and writing bad poems in dimly lit cafes, searching for anything but my roots. But it was my roots I found. And ghosts, so many of them. And a people whose culture seemed so different from my own. Distant, at first cold-seeming people who were really just intensely wary of strangers. They redefined what it is to be genuine and authentic, wisely revealing their true selves to only those they trusted most. These are the people I got to know and grew to love, who took care of me during some of my darkest times. Wandering down the cobblestone streets, I stumbled, and I fell. I taught English haphazardly. I made friends and enemies. I stepped way out of my comfort zone. It was both everything I had expected and nothing at all like what I thought my journey would be. It was contradictory — wonderful and terrible, full of both dark and light.
During my time in Prague, I learned a lot about the role that culture plays in our experiences. I learned deeply about pain. I learned what it means to lose everything, and still find beauty in my most desperate hour: The beauty of history, art, language and experience. The beauty and the power of friendship. The things that carry us through, that force us to be resilient. I thought to stay a few months. I ended up leaving after two years, much changed — both for the better, and for the worse.
I came home broken, but a survivor. Enriched by my experience but equally desperate to leave again. Somehow, miraculously, I met the man who would later become my husband. I fell in love. And a little over a year later, I emigrated to Israel, where he is from.
Audience, whatever preconceived notions you have about this country, I urge you to leave them at the door. Israel is a place that defies definition, or the simplistic, black and white narrative told of the centuries-old conflict that you see in the news. It is a country of massive contradictions. It is both richly ancient and blindingly new. It is both incredibly liberal and at the same time, very repressive. It is the meeting place of multiple cultures, religions, of time itself. Contradictions are what make people unique. But they can also be confusing and overwhelming, especially when it’s a country that contradicts itself. I came with my own expectations, which once again were shattered: I thought: I’ve done this before. This time it will be easier, since it’s my own heritage. And this time I’m not alone.
I learned deeply about pain. I learned what it means to lose everything, and still find beauty in my most desperate hour: The beauty of history, art, language and experience. The beauty and the power of friendship. The things that carry us through, that force us to be resilient.
But emigrating to a foreign country is entirely different from being an expat, as you must assimilate in order to survive. It can be an extraordinarily isolating experience. You lose yourself. Who are you, without the words to express yourself? Without your culture? To learn an entirely new language and customs and adopt them as your own. To literally become a citizen in every sense of the word. And in Israel, this also means becoming accustomed to perpetual conflict. War is constant.
Weirdly, so is the tenuous coexistence that blossoms from a shared culture, and similar experiences that both Jews and Palestinians have of being persecuted and rejected by pretty much every other country. But because war is a certainty, so is hope. And peace. A tenuous, often heartbreakingly beautiful coexistence. These things would appear to be dichotomies. They are opposites. But somehow, they are also truths that exist simultaneously.
And so I, of the open-mind, the social butterfly, the “yeah, sure, I’ll try that!” retreated into myself. I shut off, I stumbled, I fell again. So many times. I relapsed into old, destructive behavior patterns. I did not know how to cope in this new reality. If my life were a staircase, I would be black and blue from how many times I’ve fallen down it. Worse yet, I had a habit of pushing myself down the steps or allowing myself to be consumed by what was happening around me. Still I climbed, determined to find myself, my home, or a better version of both. Something akin to inner peace.
If my life were a staircase, I would be black and blue from how many times I’ve fallen down it. Worse yet, I had a habit of pushing myself down the steps or allowing myself to be consumed by what was happening around me.
A turning point: The birth of my daughter, in a hospital near the West bank. Half the maternity ward and nurses were Arab; the other half Jewish; but all were Israeli. The head nurse who handed me my daughter for the first time wore a pink hijab and pink lipstick and pink scrubs. She seemed to glow pink, or maybe that was the hormones flooding my body. But her smile transformed me. She smiled her bright pink glowing smile as she handed me my newborn child, who was a tiny, yawning and dimpled thing. The nurse smiled wide enough for the whole world, and believe me when I tell you, audience, that when she smiled I felt as though the sky had finally opened and God sighed. Later, two nurses, one an orthodox Jew whose hair was covered with a “tichel,” one a Muslim wearing a hijab, pushed me in a wheelchair back to my room, each nurse taking one handle of the chair. Opposites, but not really. They were talking and laughing with each other, and my eyes filled with tears, because I could still hear the sigh. I could feel it.
The nurse smiled wide enough for the whole world, and believe me when I tell you, audience, that when she smiled I felt as though the sky had finally opened and God sighed.
Four months later, we were at war again. Holding my daughter under exploding rockets searching for a bomb shelter, and I could still feel the head nurse in her pink hijab smiling through my daughter’s eyes. And I felt the hands of each nurse on my shoulders.
I closed my eyes and thought of Prague. I thought of Hillel Yaffe, the hospital where my daughter was born. I thought of my husband’s grandparents, who were expelled from Iraq with four small children in tow. I thought of my mother, and my grandparents. I thought of the complicated America I had left behind, twice. I thought of my own journey, trying to make sense of who I was and where I fit in, and if I would ever really be okay. Would I ever find the home I had been searching for? Would I ever find peace?
Places are special. But they are only special because of the people who make them what they are. And people are messy, and people are full of contradictions. These are the ties that bind us. The feeling of being home and planting roots. Or of wandering, endlessly searching. Of holding onto the familiar and seeking out what is foreign to us. Making art. Destroying what we’ve made. Building family — whether by blood or by choice, and then sometimes breaking away from those relationships. Of wanting to protect our children from the terrible world, but also knowing that to enjoy the beauty it holds, they must know its pain. Of wanting a life that has meaning. The desire that we should not just endure this life but thrive in it. Remembering a word or a look or a song, or a smile that seems to open the heavens themselves. These things we share are what carries across cultures, experiences, even feuds that stretch back over thousands of years.
The point is this: There is no simple answer. No easy way to understand our own identity, or the stories of others. We are all carried by our experiences, our culture, and the people we love, and those that we have lost. We are carried by our contradictions. We’re carried by the things that almost break us. I say almost because we’re all still here, sharp edges and all. So I say to you, audience, the things that I have learned on this journey towards resilience and hope, and okay, finding myself: EMBRACE IT. Embrace your journey, embrace being carried by every part of your story, and of your family’s story, your ancestors’ story, your country’s story — even the ugly and broken parts. You do not choose what carries you, but you can choose how to carry the pieces that make your experience. And trite as it sounds, never for a minute think you are alone in this world. We are all here, and if we listen hard enough, we’ll understand that we can carry each other, too.
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