זָכַ֤רְתִּי לָךְ֙ חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ אַהֲבַ֖ת כְּלוּלֹתָ֑יִךְ לֶכְתֵּ֤ךְ אַֽחֲרַי֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר בְּאֶ֖רֶץ לֹ֥א זְרוּעָֽה

I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved Me and followed Me through the wilderness, in a land not sown.

Jeremiah 2:2

Costumed Carpool

This morning, I drove a bride, Hermione Granger, and “Art Project Gone Wrong” to school.

Purim is around the corner!

When I was single and living in Israel in my early twenties, I experienced Purim as a rollercoaster of unpredictable spiritual highs (and sometimes lows).

Nowadays, as a wife and mother in Orlando, Florida, Purim is mainly about making sure the kids are happy and not too pumped up on sugar while rushing to fit in the various mitzvot of the day.

Sure, I try to take a few moments throughout to tap into the deeper essence of the day, but in general my attention and energy are spent more on the practical plane.

Seeing my own little Hermione reminded me of an essay I had written in 2007 describing various Purims I had experienced up to that point. One was from my life as a seminary girl in Jerusalem, when I met my teacher “walking her four Harry Potters down the road.”

Back then, the thought of having my own children to dress up was an uncertain dream – and now it felt like I had come full circle.

I arrived home with the urge to revisit that piece of writing. I headed to the storage room and pulled out the big grey crate containing all my folders and notes from the Israel years.

It didn’t take long to find the essay. But, as I flicked through the pages, I realised it’s not always easy to return to something I’d written from what was honestly a time in my life of much uncertainty and loneliness.

In Process

I’m not sure if I knew it back then, but I was using writing as a way to heal and process some big changes I had been going through: becoming religious, moving to Israel, and jumping into adulthood.

I had just made Aliyah and left my life in England behind, but didn’t really know what I was doing or where I was going.

The Israeli college program I had tried hadn’t worked out so I was taking an Ulpan class and holding down an afternoon job – floundering, basically, and trying to discover my next steps.

Above all, I wanted to get married, but that was still a number of years away.

Growing Pains

The choice to stay in Israel was one that I had made with my whole being – but there’s a difference between the moment of making the choice and living with its reality.

I still hadn’t found my way, and felt an extraordinary pressure to prove to myself and others that I had indeed made the correct decision and was on the right path.

I remember the deeply spiritual and growth-oriented outlook I had back then and how I worked so hard to stay cheerful and positive while trying to find my way through a thick dark cloud that I only truly saw after I had left it behind.

We must learn to view our prophetic texts as poetry from our youth. We have changed and our connection to reality has changed. But this does not invalidate the insights we had at a time when we were more intimately attached to reality and being.

Jeremy Kagan, The Jewish Self.

I was reading the above book during this time of change and it had a profound impact on me, shaping my understanding of spiritual consciousness to this day.

I fell in love with that phrase, “poetry from our youth”. The author was using it as a metaphor for how to approach Torah texts that seem inaccessible to our lived experience, but beyond that, I was struck by the image itself. It was something I’d never considered before.

The idea that rather than disregard a previous version of myself as too young, eager, and inexperienced to know anything real about life – perhaps she did know something, and knew it more deeply, than what I presently remember.

A Voice from the Past

When I go back to my essay, this “poetry of my youth” – itself a collection of rememberings – I’m confronted with the intensity of that bittersweet time.

I blush as I recall the way I used to pray, the natural openness and trust I had when talking to God.

Why be embarrassed? I hear my 21-year-old self gently chide.

Perhaps she’s wondering what happened to me, why I might seem dulled compared to her hopeful, striving ways.

After all, isn’t this the most real thing you have?