Written by Jackson Mercer
I left San Francisco Tuesday night and after hours over the Pacific as well as hours roaming Gate E in the Zurich airport, the anticipation grew even more as I boarded El Al towards Tel Aviv. I couldn't sleep. I fully expected to wait six hours in the airport. However, that eventually turned into more than eight. I was awake every minute, too excited to fall asleep.
Migrating back and forth throughout the international arrival area seemed to be a fitting metaphor for the journey leading up to the Nachshon Fellowship. Transition was something I had thought I had become use to, going to URJ Camp Newman for the first time and transferring from a small community college to the small town in Westwood that is UCLA. Each change, each shift seemed to be a short period of waiting towards the next big change. I sat for eight hours, searching for outlets and food and things to do until finally meeting up with other Nachshonim.
Nachshon was another change but as I got up from my tenth movie of the trip to introduce myself, the overwhelmed feeling of searching disappeared. The constant wandering throughout college, metaphorically wandering throughout my Jewish journey, and the centuries old wandering of the Jewish people were masked by smiles, hugs, and Jewish geography. The moment when I felt at home, was running on basically two hours of sleep over forty eight hours instead of dozing off on the bus ride to Shefayim, I found myself lost in conversation with a fellow Nachshon Fellow Naomi Bennett. She described the sites as we passed them while we talked about our lives up to that point and our aspirations for them after Nachshon. Within that moment, I was no longer searching. In a foreign, far away land I felted welcome. I finally felt like a member of the tribe.
