Lachzor

It’s been a week since I got back to the UK from my latest trip to Israel.

I’m struggling yet again to start to write about my time. Not because it’s hard to write, but because it’s hard to decide where to start.

In the space of 13 nights and 14 days so many things happened… So many experiences new, old and changed.

Many people asked me yet again, “Why are you going to Israel?!… “Why now?!”. My answer remained almost the same as my answer I gave in the post I wrote last December - Hineni.

It felt like a calling.

With my flights confirmed just a few days before the Iran war (within a war), I thought for a while there was no chance of me going. Yet, the world works in its mysterious way and off I went for another jaunt around and across our ancient homeland.

The trip had distinct sections: Time with my chosen family just south of Haifa, Time on and around the Kineret, and then a hectic 6 days between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

I visited special places, went on some hikes, went rowing, had meetings about the work I am doing and saw (and for the first time, in some instances met) some amazing friends… but most of all, I needed (and boy, did I receive) the soul boost.

Something happens when the plane lands in Israel. I can’t describe it, I know I’m not the only one who feels it. Perhaps it begins at the airport, when you see a plane with a Magen David on the tail… perhaps it begins when the door opens and the air rushes in… Perhaps it begins when you walk down that ramp… I don’t know.

But what I do know, is something magic happens to you, when you’re back in your homeland. Most interesting to me, it’s said that those who convert to Judaism always had a Jewish soul…. and they too feel this feeling on arriving home.

I’m hopeful that this piece is the piece that unblocks the writers’ block I’ve been suffering for the past week since I got home and opens up a little mini-series from this trip, but we’ll see…

But for now, to end, I’m share this little poem I wrote. I started it as the plane crossed over the coastline over Tel Aviv, and somewhat fittingly, wrote the words “touch down” in the penultimate line exactly as the wheels touched down…

HaBayita (Home)

There’s nothing quite like the feeling,
When you see the coastline come into view,

As it creeps closer, the bright lights of Tel Aviv shine at you.

It might be night time but the country is still awake,
She never sleeps, not slumbers,
Her inhabitants have no other place they can truly call home.

We fly over the countryside, A desert in bloom.

The wheels touch down. The entire plane claps.

We’re home.