Closing Remarks and final speech

I guess it’s about time, but I am beginning to realize its time to close up shop on Kivunim. I’ve eagerly anticipated the email that tells me which age group I am assigned to this summer, which will act as a nice buffer, but won’t quite do the trick. Going home will be sad no matter the transition.

The general feeling is definitely sentimental. Although we saw these last days coming, no preparation eases us into these closing moments. And it’s sad. There’s no doubt about this year. It was the single most profound, influential, educational and defining year of my life. I have grown accustomed to the quirks and habits and comforts of my fifty new friends. All of the brilliance, humor and idiosyncrasies that have made this program what it is.

When we reunited with the “forgotten 15” in the airport in New Delhi, I wrote in my journal: “time apart makes the heart grow fonder” even if only for two days. Joni Mitchell said: “You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone”. poems, music and literature, theatre. Much of the words, some of the greatest art is induced by the feeling of longing; a desire to be elsewhere with others in another time. I know already that this group, these experiences have occupied a substantial part of my heart that will be left empty, leaving me searching, sketching out the shape and size of that hole that it will leave.

How have I been changed? How did I grow? What was this year and why did I do it? The questions are endless and I am only getting the first tastes of them now. What ever sentimentality these moments create I am comforted by these few things. The first product of this sentimentality is that it only makes me want to soak up, slurp every last drop of this delicious treat. The second comfort is knowing that the effects of this year will be forever, and it will take me that long to discover all the ways it has changed me. But lastly, and maybe most sadly. As best articulated by Reb John Mayer

It’s really over.
You’ve made your stand.
You’ve got me crying, as well as you planned.
But when my loneliness is through, I’m going to find try to find another you.

However profound this year and the amazing experiences that come with it, I will find another group that will only help further this growth. I know I will never be able to replace this group of people. I just know that some of you will be at my wedding whenever that is. Like Reb Mayer, I can only hope I find another group to help me grow, “find another you” to do some of what Kivunim has done; Intellectually stimulate, think, love, appreciate, self reflect, laugh, be ambitious and passionate. I cannot thank you all enough for what you have given and what you have done.

It seems to me that this trip to India more than anything defined Kivunim’s goals in 9 days. There is a fundamental aspect of this program, a rock steady foundation, which speaks to the idea that you must not run away from that which makes you uncomfortable. We are asked to grapple with these ideas and then embrace some of them. Everyone on this program came from a place that they found themselves truly comfortable in. Yet, there we were. In the middle of a country with a language completely foreign to us; a population on a scale we could not possibly understand; a level of poverty that brought many to tears; a religion that our monotheistic cultures term ‘pagan’. We were surround by ideas and images that made us uncomfortable. And we embraced them. We took a step back and took a deep breath.We grabbed it close, and despite the scalding heat, we took a good long look at it.

And now, even in the closing segments of this wonderful year, we are letting all that we experienced, everything that was foreign, to sink in. There is little about this program that will sit lightly. There is little that we will have firm answers to. There is little that we will understand immediately. It will take days, weeks, months and even years to properly digest.

If I may offer an analogy: cows have three stomachs. Once the food goes down, straight to the stomach and it sorts through all the things it has just devoured, it needs a second stomach to reexamine, sort through all that it just let it in. And even then, when the cow thought that it had completely taken all the nourishment it could from the food, it discovers there is more to be gleaned from that tuft of grass it had nibbled on seemingly so long ago. Its not the poop that’s important here. But like the cow every time I thought I knew what this experience meant, there was more to be digested and then more again. And its not done.

Kivunim is an experience that has changed the way we think and the way in which we approach life. Coming back to North America will be strange. Paying for things in our own currency, speaking English, and standing in normal lines– we are after all going home. In leaving, a challenge to us all is processing the Kivunim experience.

As we have talked about so many times, this country is called Yisrael. Meaning to struggle with god. That Ben Gurion dude had some foresight. This entire year has been just that – a struggle. We have struggled with our Jewish identity; our relationship to Israel; our connection to the Jews around the world, and even to understand why that horse. We have spent the year soaking in everything. The beautiful views from Delphi, architecture in Sophia, the foreign sook in Marakesh, anti-Semitic graffiti in southern Spain, a Burger King with Minarets visible just beyond the top of the building in Istanbul, a place with a sinister, beautiful and haunting past in Berlin.

This is an Israel that we continue to discover, reexamine, embrace and push away, passionately love and embarrassingly reject; that we were unsure of the role it played in our lives and we wanted to approach it; an Israel we have learned to love as a lover: to know and explore every bit of a beautiful face, acknowledge its flaws, even when we know that sometimes she is mean, unfair or difficult, love it with every bit of our being.

We have taken it all in and struggled with every moment of it. Most every piece of this program has been difficult, with the rare of exception of a wander through the shuk. But we have grown. We have expanded our minds. We have matured. We entered with questions but leave with many more. I am sure when I say that there is not a single person here that has not been transformed by this program. And for that we are forever grateful. Grateful for the opportunity, the experience for this special moment to do this to our minds and ourselves. I cannot begin to thank you all enough for this year, for this experience. Every bit of this has been wonderful and will not end June 12th.