when i turned.

With the risk of sounding pseudo intellectual I will begin my story with a the tired old phrase of my generation, “I was listening to NPR the other night.” The program was addressing the topic of Jewish Identity. The rabbi on the line was discussing faith and he told an old Yiddish tale that struck a cord, this is the memory of the story: There once was an young yeshiva student of a famous rabbi who came to a point where he could not find faith, he tried with all his might to believe as he once had, but no matter how hard he tried his prayers did not seem sincere, his Torah study could not answer his doubts, he was losing faith. In his distress he finally confessed to his Rabbi, “Rabbi, I have lost my faith in God, I can not make sense of him in this world.” The rabbi did not seem surprised by this; he asked him “does this fact distress you?” The young man answered, “Yes! It does, I have lost sleep, I have struggled, but it is no good, I think I must walk away.” The Rabbi took a moment and then responded in a way that surprised the young man, “You will be alright, this does not trouble me. The fact that the loss of your faith troubles you is the very thing that will drive you eventually back.”

It is the struggle that drives the faithful back to where they began, only they return from the battle with a faith more beautiful, vulnerable and honest. Rabbi was not troubled because he recognized that once one touches the robe of the most holy they would always return, in one form or another. Every wayward child has a moment they remember they turned from their old understanding and walked directly into the terrifying unknown of the faithless. One such moment for me took place in Ben Gurion terminal.

I still remember standing in that airport, knowing an era was gone and the adventure was over. I was returning home, but to what, I had no idea. During the course of my travels I had kept a sort of count down for my return home, I think this started as a picture of how much time I had left to soak in the wonders of the world, it slowly became a comfort to me, the promise of return.

I remember being struck suddenly by this terrible feeling of detachment. I had traveled through Africa to dig into depths of poverty and development, but emerged with a bitter taste of cynicism. I traveled to Israel with the desire to explore the land where the biblical epics become real by walking through the very soil in which they are set, instead my expectations of rootedness were met with a discontent of my childhood understanding of faith. Slowly the black and white answers I repeated to myself to feed hope to a doubting heart would not sustain it. I began my decent into the world of doubt and darkness, where good meets evil and it takes more than a verse and a prayer to satisfy a question.

I had left the safety of home to find myself and in doing so I lost all understanding of my God who had been the cornerstone of my identity. Something happened in those months between Nairobi and Jerusalem that made my world crack and all it’s understandings seep out on to the sands of reality.

I stood there staring at the last pieces of the golden Jerusalem sandstone I would see and felt sudden unbearable loss. But all I could do was turn, turn my eyes away from the stone and unconsciously turn away from the feeling. I gathered up the luggage that had been my one consistency over the months and wandered toward the security checkpoint where the contents would be laid bare before the line of travelers. I turned away because at the time I could not name the terror and emptiness I felt. I had no vocabulary or will to search it out and address it. But oh that emptiness, it followed me back across the ocean and settled on my soul making a troubled little home for all the doubts I still face today.