Leaping Through Fear from the Promised Land to the Land of Opportunity

It had been raining and chilly in Clayton for a few days last week—a few winter days in what had otherwise felt like the coming of spring. On my way into a Jewish institution that, inevitably and sadly, requires security, the guard said to me, “Winter is coming.” I looked at him, thinking, Did you really just make a Game of Thrones reference, comparing this mild winter breeze to the Wall of ice? Without words, we both knew what he had done, and we shared a genuine laugh—two strangers connecting for an instant in the ridiculous, in the interconnected web we all live in.

Last Friday, after a night of wonderful rain—you know, the kind that makes you feel so cozy in your warm bed—I woke up to find Mount Diablo covered in snow. A white blanket, so beautiful, that I instantly said to my heart, Tomorrow is our date—Shabbat, my day to visit my mountain, my home, my sanctuary, to reconnect with myself and restore my soul.

I often begin my hike on Mount Diablo with a cloudy day—not the sky above this beautiful mountain, but my inner sky, a swirling cloud of thoughts. All the things I need to process, the lingering thoughts, the endless to-do lists, the drama. And somehow, like a magic spell, the wordless mountain brings me back to nature—to the wilderness of the wordless zone—where my clouds evaporate. I am just there, with the trees, the rocks, the golden fields of summer that have now turned into lush green meadows, the wildflowers waking up to a new season. Life is all around me, and I am in the flow of life with it. My thoughts slow, becoming pleasant, like a flowing river. Sometimes the river slows until I am breathing only the experience itself. And sometimes the thoughts return. It is a wonderful ebb and flow, where I emerge—and yet, the “I” is no longer there. Do you know what I mean by that? I am one with nature.

Mount Diablo was alive, more so than usual. Spring is renewing this mountain. You can hear the flowing stream—sometimes rushing, sometimes only a whisper from afar. The air is still damp, and with every breath, you can smell the muddy earth, the trees, and the blossoms in their many scents. It is spectacular.

As I was checking in with my body, being in it, I noticed a ping of sadness at the bottom of my breath—do you know that tiny little, almost like a pinch—when you inhale, your heart lifts, but just before you reach a full inhale, there’s a small weight in your heart that tells you, something is heavy here. So I got curious—why am I feeling sad? This is my happy place.

In this place of moving in nature, being in my body, the conversation is a flow. The clouds have disappeared. And when I ask a question—to myself, to the universe—I don’t expect an answer. But somehow, unexpectedly, it comes. I just have to let go and listen. To hear the silence. To pay attention inside the release.

It’s almost like walking upstream, holding your fingers open at the edge of the water, your palm immersed. The stream flows through your fingers—nothing catches. But in that release, you still know the water: its temperature, the ever-so-slight warm spots, the rush of movement as you go. You don’t need to hold anything to know. You are just moving—and knowing—all at the same time.

It was a few hours of hiking before, out of nowhere, in the live jungle, listening to the stream flow right by me, I was catapulted in time to my last day living in Israel. I have not thought about that day in a long time. Maybe months, maybe years, who knows. But all of a sudden, I was there, living in my 16-year-old body, all be it, feeling my almost 50-year-old existence on this planet—on mother earth, as I am walking the path here in the present of spring on the mountain.

Those days, the days before moving to America, leaving everything I knew behind, were awful days. Our house emptying out by the day, the velvet pink couch my mom had designed—gone. The white dining room table of my childhood—gone. My own bedroom furniture—those ones that have carried me for years, held me at night—gone. My clothes—options shrinking by the day. These terrible reminders of the end coming. The suitcases piling up. My mom was packing for so long… I don’t know, because time moves weirdly when you are in that space, where you are trying to hold on to something slipping from your clench. You are in a daze, in a fight with an inevitable truth that is coming your way. Did I help my mother pack? I don’t even know. It was not me. I was hardly in my body, fear and sadness took over me.

I just remember those packed suitcases becoming the furniture of my otherwise emptying house. The magic of gravity, that after you pack where even a needle can’t fit, a few days later, everything settles, and all of a sudden you can shove some more stuff, stretching the amount of things that your past and present self can gift your future self as a consolation prize. Some item that might make you feel, well, what? At home? Yourself? How stupid. Might as well leave all the suitcases behind. You are about to disappear inside yourself, and no amount of materials coming out of the suitcase are going to revive you.

But that day, July 14th, 1992—my last day in Israel—it was a good one.

For months, I had been living with fear so deep it felt like a rising panic, intensifying with each second, consuming more and more of my mental energy just to suppress it. An inner fear, gripping and suffocating me from the inside, threatening to paralyze me. Each breath laborious, pulling me closer to the unknown. A deep well of sadness—the kind you feel in your shrinking heart with every inhale, the kind that lodges itself in your throat, reminding you of its presence with every swallow, the kind hiding behind dry eyes, because fuck, if that first tear escapes… you will turn to water, surely.

But not my last day.

My boyfriend at the time—that is, my 16-year-old self—and my best friend took me to Tverya for a fun day at the Kineret. I remember sitting in the car, both trying to enjoy and suffocating under the weight of fear, attempting that useless exercise of “don’t think about it,” trying to push my thoughts away just long enough to hold on to these last moments.

As I walk this narrow path on Mount Diablo, a stretch where the trail tightens and fresh green leaves create a canopy around me, my heart fills with gratitude for them—for my best friend, for my boyfriend. They were great. They took me out, saw me when I was too afraid to see myself, cheered me up, and gave me one of the best memories of my life.

When we got to the shore, we settled onto our towels, kicked off our shoes, and got ready to go in the water. That smell—the smell of the Kineret, of my childhood Shabbat day trips with my family—the sand, the joyful sounds that exist only in Israel, they brought me to life again. The fear—where did it go? I have no idea. But I was so in the moment, I forgot to think about anything else. They did that for me, my then-boyfriend and best friend. They gifted me peace of mind so I could be present with them. A fun time, my last day—a memory that would last a lifetime.

All we needed for a perfect time was a blow-up raft. But being teenagers, do you really think we thought ahead? Of course not. So I was chosen as the representative to go ask someone if we could borrow theirs. Somehow, even then, I carried this energy of, sure, what do I give a fuck?

The first asshole I asked said no. My friends and I looked at each other, thinking, Can you believe these old people, what do they think, we’ll eat their raft? (Mind you, that guy was much younger than I am today.) But that didn’t deter us. I tried again. I asked another guy, one with a little kid, maybe three years old.

“Can we please use your raft for a few minutes?”

He said, Sure, just bring it back in about 10 minutes, we’re planning to use it.

Ah—nice people still exist!

So we took the raft and went into the water.

Mid-July in the Kineret—the water was so refreshing, it laughed with us, sparkled and shined under the unrelenting sun. You are alive in a live body of water, and the world is happy and good. We were fighting over who would sit on the raft, laughing our heads off like only teenagers can—no worries, just the sun, the fresh water, and friends. What could be better?

I, of course, made the argument, half kidding, half milking it… you know it’s my last day. So there I was, trying to lift my body out of the water onto this flimsy raft, which kept sinking as I leaned on it. Ach, couldn’t that man given it a few more breaths so it is a bit firmer as we try to climb? We came up with a method—the two of them gripped the sides tightly so I could climb. It took a few tries, but there I was… and then, just as I was feeling like the queen of the world, they conspired against me, flipping me off the raft.

In one of our struggles—the last one, as it turned out—over who would get to be on top… poof—the raft exploded.

And there we were, the three of us—nice kids, mostly—suddenly not knowing how to face the reality that we had just destroyed this kind man’s raft, leaving him and his son without one. This time, it wasn’t my job to tell him—I actually did give a fuck about taking something from someone so generous. About facing it.

So, we made the very wise decision to dump the raft somewhere to the side and get the hell out of there.

And now, still under the canopy of leaves, I wonder about this man. Did we make his heart less trusting? Less generous? I send him my apology and my gratitude, hoping my good energy travels through space and time and reaches this faceless man from my past.

I remember, as we tried to get out of the water, I saw him standing there, scanning the waves, probably looking for three kids with a raft. Not knowing to look for three kids with a sagging piece of plastic. We managed to drag the raft to the side and escape his gaze…

But there was a problem.

Our clothes and shoes were right next to him.

We decided to play it cool—walk up nonchalantly, grab our things, and leave. He wouldn’t recognize us. He was looking for three kids with a raft.

We timed it just right—he was busy with his kid, feeding him, maybe building in the sand. I don’t know. All I was focused on was getting my shoes. The sand was burning hot, so we had to walk fast—but not too fast—trying not to draw attention to ourselves. My friends walked beside me. The man was just a few feet away. I grabbed my shoes and noticed that my friend had forgotten her white Keds—the ones everyone had back then in Israel, with the blue tag on the back.

So I grabbed those too, burning my feet, just wanting to get the hell out of there.

I ran to meet my friends, all of us escaping somehow, miraculously.

Three good kids who almost never really got into trouble—doing the wrong thing and feeling so good.

As we stood there, shoes finally on our feet, I turned to my friend and handed her the Keds.

“Here, you forgot these,” I said.

And just as I did, I looked down at her feet.

She was already wearing them.

All three of us did this thing simultaneously—our eyes moving from her feet to the shoes in my hands. Identical.

It must have taken us ten full minutes of hysterical laughter before we could even come up with a plan to return the extra pair—so we wouldn’t end up doing two wrongs in one day.

I didn’t want to leave the beach. I didn’t want to go. I knew that once I got in the car, it would be the beginning of my eventual departure—leaving them behind. Just one more moment. But no, my best friend insisted—we had to go. She had plans.

I snapped at her.

Little did I know she had planned a surprise party for me that day.

Yes, I was on edge—pent-up fear and panic that, for the first time in months, I had been able to let go of. She didn’t deserve it. And any other day, she would have snapped back. But not that day. That day, she let it go. She saw me. She got me.

We got in the car, and a war started inside me. One moment, I was pulled into the sheer joy of sitting in my boyfriend’s little blue Fiat—windows open, summer wind blowing through our hair, music blasting. The next moment, I was staring down the road, trying not to think about tomorrow.

I had this friend, Karmit. She had lived in the U.S. for a year or two before me, and we used to talk on the phone—she’d tell me all about America so I wouldn’t step into the complete unknown.

“You know they only go to school five days a week,” she said.

Get the fuck out of here. You’re just making up stories—is what I said to myself, although back then I was much more polite in my inner dialogue.

There was no way these Americans were getting a two-day weekend every single week. I didn’t believe it, even when my mom and her husband (the reason we were all moving) confirmed it. I thought they were just trying to lift my heart, even if just for a moment.

After the surprise party, my friends and boyfriend took me to the airport to say goodbye. I don’t remember much, but I do remember standing there, looking at them behind me—the escalators going up. The second I let it carry me upwards, the umbilical cord would sever, disconnecting me from everything that was my life—my country, my friends, my boyfriend, my language… myself as I knew it.

I was frozen, looking at them with that toddler-like gaze—Mommy, don’t leave me.

And they, too, didn’t want me to go.

“Promise to write,” they said.

How could I promise anything? I was stepping into a black hole. At least they had each other, now that I’d be gone… but me? Yes, I had my family, but that meant so little at sixteen, when you take their presence for granted.

On the plane, I sat with my two siblings and my mom, yet I was utterly alone with my pain. I opened one letter after another, each goodbye pulling me down memory lane. With every word, I felt the weight of what I was leaving behind, as if I needed reminders. And still…

I tried to read through the endless flow of tears—that quiet weeping, drowning in sorrow. The kind of crying that has been held in for so long, the tears escape from both sides of your eyes—streaming from the inner corners near the bridge of your nose and from the outer edges near your temples. Just a flow, a salty river of release.

There was no stopping it.

The tears blurred the ink, smudging the words I wanted to stay with me.

By the grace of God, the months of fear, panic, sadness, that unforgettable day in the sun, and the tears—finally—exhausted me. I couldn’t fight it anymore. I let go, and sleep took me instantly.

I woke up just in time to land in Newark, NJ—my mother’s husband waiting for us—on this long, long day of July 14, 1992.

I am back in the safety of my canopy of trees, next to the flowing river in my sanctuary—Mount Diablo—on Shabbat. And I realize: this entire story, with its vivid moments and emotions rising back to the surface, plays out in my mind in mere seconds as I walk the path. New emotions emerge too, ones that time has gifted me, like a deep gratitude for my friends. These lasting moments of my last day in Israel—my birth country, my original home—wake up inside me once more.

Over the past few months, on this spiritual journey toward myself, I’ve learned to listen to the echoes of what rises in my mind when I release a question into my universe. Why am I thinking of this now? Why did this memory come for a visit? I ask ever so gently. And then, I realize.

For months, I’ve been contemplating moving closer to work. I’ve been talking about it for two years—the theoretical move when my son goes off to college. Back then, those words felt so easy. But now, as he prepares to leave, I can feel the mountain shift beneath my feet.

As I walk these beautiful paths, looking out onto the meadows of green, inhaling the fresh, sweet scent of the earth and the blooming flowers, I can’t help but wonder—how many more times will I be here, in my sanctuary, in my place of peace?

Am I going to have to let go again? Lose this place too? Will I only come back for visits, knowing it will never feel truly mine again?

I have moved so many times in my life, and now I wonder…

On this narrowing path of Mount Diablo in the spring, I allow myself to wonder—what if…

I travel back and forth in time, between my memory of that last day in Israel and the wisdom that only comes with hindsight. What if I had let go of fear? What if I had known more about the life that awaited me here? If someone had shown me my future, would it have made me more or less comfortable? Would I have dared to open my mouth sooner, to let people hear my accent, my broken English—me, sounding incompetent, me, not knowing?

Had I known, would my 16-, 17-year-old self have let go of needing to be perfect? Would I have settled more easily? Would I have been able to enjoy not just that last day but the months leading up to this pivotal moment in my journey?

I have since moved so many times, learning with each move that these feelings are part of the process—a scared friend wanting to walk backward, to dig her feet in the ground and not move…. But as I have learned to keep walking forward, I find… as terrifying as it is, life on the other side is what you make of it.

And so, as the ground is starting to tremble below me, signaling the upcoming shift, I hold these moments in my heart, savoring the spring of Mount Diablo and dreaming of a future I cannot yet see in my mind’s eye.

Here, in the depths of my memories intertwining with my present self, I take a deep breath. The pinch of sadness loosens its grip. I cannot stop time from moving, but when I am fully present, the moments always last.

Hineni. Here I am.