In the Land of Discovery

by Yogev von Kundra

My journey begins at JFK airport with three dozen strangers going on a tour of Israel. And it also begins 5,779 years ago at the beginning of the Jewish calendar: a collective experience, a blood memory, and the birth of humanity. The universe began with everything in one single point, our common ancestor before we were scattered in a big bang.

I feel disconnected now, searching for myself after quitting my job a week before this journey,  to buy a farm and fulfill my lifelong dream. I’m uncertain I made the right move as I feel like an imposter, not belonging as some people introduce themselves at the airport with their Hebrew names. I was never given a Hebrew name and was surprised to be accepted on this trip. I applied only after the encouragement of a friend who worked for an organization that funds Jewish youth to travel to Israel. I only identified as half Jewish with my atheist father calling himself “culturally Jewish.”

I knew Judaism as a religion, fragments from my childhood, incomplete and narrow in focus. I remember my dad bringing just me without my mom and siblings to a coworker’s home for Passover seders. I remember feeling out of place the only time I went to synagogue for my friend’s bat mitzvah. On this trip I meet other Jews who share my insecurities and others who give me inspiration to see Judaism in a new light. 

I find myself in the mystic mountains of Tzfat, the holy city of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah. I learn about Jewish meditation, art, and culture. I sit on the floor of an abstract art gallery with a painting of the word God written in Hebrew with a rainbow of color. Abraham, a gallery guide whose name means father of multitude, teaches that our names have meaning and all sounds are vibrations with a message. As I explore the gallery, I meet a woman who tells me of her heroic journey to walk further than she ever had in terrible weather to make it to synagogue to pray for her daughter’s life who lived despite doctors’ grim predictions. Miracles are possible.

 Israelis appear less faithful than the other American Jews on the trip. I learn from the founder of the organization funding my trip, who is an atheist Jew from South Africa, that Jews throughout the world identify with Judaism as much more than simply a religion. One Israeli explains how many Israelis lost faith because of the Holocaust, and he cannot believe in a protector above with the violence ongoing in the Holy Land.

We drive from the northern snowy mountains of the Golan Heights to the warm beaches on the southern tip touching the Gulf of Aqaba connecting with the Red Sea. Fish dance among the coral beneath me as I snorkel above them. The coral is a symbiosis of organisms, algae and animals living together in harmony. The animal part, polyps, are the farmers, building brick by brick with calcium carbonate from the water, to protect and grow their algae crop, the zooxanthellae. Due to climate change, the polyps are forced to leave their home and the algae to become foragers, searching for food out of desperation in the open sea. The algae crop gives both food as well as the coral’s brilliant colors. Bleached white and starving, the foragers reach into the depths of the ocean for food.

 I reflect on who I am, cultivating life on my farm back home. I am given my Hebrew name during a naming ceremony by a rabbi and a group of Israeli youth: Yogev, which means one who cultures the land.

Every day is a new adventure. One morning I eat breakfast at a Bedouin camp, ride a camel in the Negev Desert, visit the memorial of Ben Gurion, and hike into the desert canyons. All this before lunch. On the lowest surface on Earth, along the eastern border of Israel, I dip into the cold, dense waters of the Dead Sea as time slows while I dive into the present moment. It smells different than the seaweed of the ocean. Little life can survive in these extreme conditions. Like an Epsom salt bath, the water smells sterile, crisp, and healing. I relax into pleasant thoughts, floating with my head high above the water. Everything I need is already there; I can just be.

History and faith layer like an onion in the city of Jerusalem. One building houses a Muslim mosque, the site of Jesus’ last supper, and the tomb of King David who united the twelve tribes of Israel. Ruins nearly three thousand years old rest below a playground where a child plays. I approach the Wailing Wall, the holiest place for the Jewish people. I hear Arabic chanting above me. I feel the strength of dense rock supporting an enormous mass, the strength of the Jewish people.

I awake at 4 a.m. for my bar mitzvah to ascend Masada, a mountain in the desert, where Jews faced near annihilation. High above the open vistas around me, I stand at sea level. Within the ruins of an ancient synagogue, I sing from the Torah as I echo the same words every Jew does during their rite of passage. I make a covenant to the infinite to live by my ideals to reduce human suffering and meet needs as much as possible—in every moment, to meet my needs fully and meet others’ needs with unconditional empathy and compassion.

My identity as a Jew deepens, while simultaneously the walls of my identity deconstruct. No one word can summarize this identity anymore, but if I must choose one, it is culture—to be a part of something bigger than myself.

Now that I have left Israel, I miss my home on the other side of the world. One day I shall return. I remember what my Ethiopian Christian driver said when he took me back home in Virginia, “Jewish culture is the culture of the world.”

Five years have passed since my transformational journey. War has broken out again in the Holy Land. I am asked to speak at a local fundraiser for humanitarian aid for Gaza. I sing the words of my great grandmother from a song, Israeli Lullaby, she composed many decades ago. I feel a similar feeling to her of sadness, hope, and the interconnectedness of life. Her song concludes, “But there will come another day when peace will rule this land. And there will be another boy to play upon that sand. So go to sleep and have no fear because you are safe tonight.”