By: Mara Chaben
The sun casts a shimmer of light upon my body and the warmth is suddenly tangible upon my face. My camp director defines this as the sunspot. On sunny mornings at camp, overlooking beautiful Lake Huron, my camp director instructs the kids to face the sun, let the warmth provide energy to their bodies and harness that energy to power the fun-filled day. I stare at this sunspot, soaking in as much energy as I can and then allow the light to open my eyes.
But this time, I am not at camp. I open my eyes to a view from a yacht on the Mediterranean Sea just off the Herziliya coast in Israel. I take in the warmth from the sun, similarly to how I do at camp, but this time I think to myself -I want to save this golden energy to power the incredible semester ahead of me.
My first day back in Israel on the Nachshon Project was spent on a yacht. The Rabbis took us for the ‘ultimate’ icebreaker by putting all the fellows on two teams to race the yachts down the Mediterranean Sea. Although the yachts were a little slower to race than originally intended, the outcome of the activity was successful in a different way than expected.
For me, this activity was more than an ice-breaker. In my mind, water represents freedom. At camp, I supervise the water ski program- driving the boat and teaching kids how to ski, wakeboard and kneeboard. Being on the water all day doing what I love provides me with the utmost feeling of freedom.
As I take in a deep breath of air, fresh off the Mediterranean Sea, my mind wanders to thinking about when The First Aliyah of Jewish people came from Eastern Europe to Israel. This group of people must have been extremely wary of where this journey might take them. They too sailed in from the Mediterranean Sea, left behind everything they knew and gazed at the (what is now) Israeli coast from a boat. Analogous to my feelings, their trip also represented freedom: freedom from exclusion, violence and Anti-Semitism in their “home” communities.
Yachting on the Mediterranean Sea with some of my soon-to-be closest friends on the first day was meaningful to me because it set the stage for this new experience; an experience also shared by the original Zionists.
Just a few months after joining the cancer survivor club, I am finally free of doctor appointments, family drama and incredibly hard classes at school. The sunspot I felt sitting on the yacht reminded me this is finally my time to be free and explore my Judaism, similarly to the Zionists who traveled long and hard to reach our promised land. Again, I breath in fresh air that blows off the Mediterranean and the let the sun empower my first activity of the trip- bonding with other Nachshon fellows– chatting, laughing and most importantly, feeling free.
