My friend's husband Yinon met me at the airport and drove me back to their apartment. It all seemed so "normal" -- paying for the parking ticket in the automated machine (even if it was all in Hebrew), getting in the car in the parking garage, driving along the city streets of Tel Aviv to an apartment complex. I've been mulling over what's different about this trip, why I feel so much less "out of place" here than I have in other countries I've traveled to. Is it that Israel is so influenced by America and so many American-born people find there way here to live? Or is it, perhaps, that I am a different person than I was in 2005, the last time I left the country? That perhaps I am a bit less timid, a bit more comfortable with difference, a bit more at home amidst the "foreign"?
Yinon drove me to their home and impressed me with his knowledge of the history of the Episcopal Church along the way. He grew up in Israel and studied both Christianity and Islam in grade school, and did some kind of graduate study in history, including Western history, which of course, included the history of Christianity. But somehow he remembered amazing amounts of detail particularly about Episcopal Church history, things I didn't even know before I went to seminary. He could have passed Ben King's Church History course with flying colors! I was very impressed.
"Well, I certainly didn't expect to get a re-cap of Episcopal Church History upon my arrival in Israel," I said with a laugh.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, quickly.
"No, no, no," I said. "This is great! That's very impressive that you know all that!"
"So my history of Christianity is pretty good?" he said, with a smile.
As we arrived at the apartment, our conversation shifted to the weight that ordained people carry in terms of the power they wield in the pulpit, for good or for ill, and the burden of being aware of that and using it well. He said he couldn't imagine wanting to be a religious leader, knowing that plenty of people out there would take whatever you say as fact, without questioning it, just because "the pastor" or "the rabbi" or "the imam" said it. "As an educated person, that really bothers me," he said. I agreed.
We walked in and I was greeted by his wife Naomi, whom I had known before she ever met Yinon. She and I had been housemates for a summer in Boston, in 2005. At the time, we were both single, independent women pursuing intellectually-stimulating careers, wondering if we'd ever find a partner with whom to share our lives. Now we were both married, she with kids -- an almost two year old and another one on the way in July. I'd never met her husband, though I'd seen pictures, until my arrival at the airport. I hadn't seen Naomi since that summer in 2005, but it was like we picked up where we left off.
Their daughter Aya was a bundle of cuteness, talking incessantly to herself in a mixture of Hebrew and English. "Ken" [Hebrew for yes], she'd reply to a question her mother asked her in English, or "No!" to a question her dad asked in Hebrew. As I had on the plane, I felt so at home hearing Hebrew spoken again.
One of my housemates in Boston, Ayala, who had shared a house with me for all three years I lived in Boston, was Israeli and was always speaking on the phone to her relatives in Hebrew. I got used to the melodic sound of Hebrew, with the gutteral "CH" sound somehow much softer and muted than it had sounded when we all tried to pronounce it in biblical Hebrew class at Furman as undergrads, playing in the background of my life for those three years. I heard people on the plane speaking it, and it felt like home. It was so familiar, and yet I had no idea what they were saying. Little bits and pieces that I'd learned through living with Ayala started to come back, though -- oh yeah, ken means "yes!" Oh, and besedel -- that means "ok." It reminded me of how the French I'd learned in middle and high school started to come back to me, slowly, the first time I went to Paris for a few days. But this was a language I'd never even studied! I wanted to join right in, imitating their throaty and clustered sounds, but was trapped within the silence of incomprehension.
I watched Yinon read story books printed in English to Aya, but he read them aloud in Hebrew. They read books about "Good night, Mr. Bear" and "Waiting for a Baby," a picture book about expecting a new baby in the family designed to prep the big sister. Then Yinon was called out to address something at the military base near Tel Aviv, put on his Israeli Army uniform and all his gear, and left. They were so apologetic, but I replied that I could understand -- I might have similar nights myself in my future as a priest, called away to attend to a death just as I was about to give my daughter her nighttime bath.
So Naomi and I shared Shabbat dinner together alone, without Yinon as we'd expected. She made a lovely dinner of salmon with couscous, hummus, Israeli salad (cucumbers and tomatoes), and green beans. It was restaurant quality, really wonderful. And despite all my interfaith encounters, I'd never been to a regular ol' home Shabbat dinner before. I'd been to seder dinners for Passover before, but never a Shabbat dinner. So Naomi taught me the prayers, and she blessed the challah bread and the wine (actually grape juice), and we dug in to our dinners, catching up on the lost years and all that had happened between in love and life. As I write this from my mattress on the living room floor, the Shabbat candles are still burning on the table, keeping their watch over the night, bringing light into darkness, dividing day from night, holy from profane. It feels like home.
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