Embracing

One reason I didn't want to get divorced is that I didn't want to divorce the Israeli side of me. I feel more Jewish now than anything else. I feel like I actually am "Ben-Ami" (son of my people.) Not exactly the most appropriate name for a shiksa, but I own it. I decided, thanks in part to the kind people around me who unquestioningly assumed that Israel is a part of me, to keep it a part of me. I am going to embrace it. That's why I put HaDag Nachash on the stereo in my car. That's why I brought fancy olives to a barbeque last night. The olives smell like home to me and the music is part of me. It's a little lonely to be the only one singing along, but I am embracing that as well.

I received a sweet email this week from my soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law, Orna, and I asked a friend her advice on how I should refer to her. Every time I refer to her as an ex anything, I refer to her son by extension, and thanks to the incredibleness of Orna and Oded, my relationship with them still exists, although my relationship with their son is pretty much dead.

"Maybe call them your Israeli parents," she suggested. And so it is. If you want to read a little bit about my Israeli mom, please visit her website. You can even see pictures of her at work in her studio, a place where I always loved to drop by for coffee when I was in the neighborhood. How many daughters-in-law can say that? Or rather, now I should say, how many American girls can say that about their Israeli mothers?

I feel like it's a pipe dream to try and hang on to my Israeli mother and father. I know what time and distance can do to any relationship, let alone one with the emotional burdens of a divorce, but I am going to take what I can get for as long as I can get. These are two people who taught me about love and warmth and support and family in a way I had never known before. I am better for knowing them and having spent years learning from them and loving them.