There are certain conversations that, as a seasoned traveler, I try to avoid. Topics best left untouched to avoid unnecessary conflict — gun rights in America, Judea and Samaria, gluten-free bread, Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. But then there’s one I avoid for a different reason. Not because it might start a fight, but because it might crack something open within me. Family.
It always starts off innocently enough:
“So, where do you live? What do you do?”
What I do is simple enough to explain: I teach Hebrew. Though, depending on the crowd, that sometimes raises more eyebrows than expected. “Hebrew? Why would people want to learn that?” And I’m usually not in the mood to launch into a lecture during brunch about ethno-religion, the intimacy of language, how now, in our moment of crisis, it becomes almost a connective tissue for us …Yada yada yada, not over avocado toast.
So the conversation shifts to where I live. And that’s where people really get baffled. “Wait, so like what’s your home base?” or “Don’t you get tired of skipping from place to place?” Oh, if they only knew — I really, really do get tired, I seem to exist in a state of constant exhaustion, always just a little sleep deprived, back aching, eyes heavy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’ve had these conversations on buses in Mexico and hostels in France, but most recently, I found myself answering them at a Shabbat lunch in New York’s Upper West Side. I was surrounded by high-powered finance bros, in pressed button-downs and sleek kippahs, and there I was, the slightly sunburned nomad with a wrinkled dress, the only one I currently own.
“So all your stuff is in a backpack?” one of them asked. And then, the one that always knocks the air out of me: “I could never live like that… What about your family?”
A nice little gut punch.
People mean well. And I honestly believe they have the best of intentions. Perhaps how I choose to live my life is very foreign and faraway in their eyes. Sometimes, the facts of my life feel equally baffling to me.
But their questions, innocent as they may seem, echo with guilt I already carry. The kind that simmers in the back of my head whilst having long-distance voice calls and unanswered texts from my mother. It’s been two and a half years since I last saw her, until I finally booked a short visit this Passover. Three days. That’s all I could manage.
It was overwhelming to say the least, not just seeing my family after so long, but having such a reunion in the shadow of an ongoing war, when I landed in Ben Gurion I felt such a weight on my chest as I walked through the airport seeing the now dwindling posters of the hostages I broke down.
Thank god for how jet lagged I was during these three short days in Israel, I think that it might have been too much if I were alert enough to fully grasp the weight of holding my family so long after the first frightful days of the war, experienced from far, far away.
Try explaining that to an Upper West Side hedge fund guy with a tie.
How do I explain how tethered I feel back home in Israel? How complicated it really is to leave and return? How much it is, and isn’t, a choice.
Because here’s the truth: most of the time, it isn’t hard. Leaving the nest is part of growing up. The distance gave me clarity. It gave me peace. I had to learn how to be alone. I needed to find a home within myself. And in most places I went, I found people to lean on. Whether it was a landlord in Costa Rica who made me some arroz con pollo when I was sick, an old woman in Spain who invited me to a meal in her home, strangers who became lifelong friends, or just a testament to the kindness of strangers.
But when October 7th happened, none of that helped. I felt truly alone, like I had no one to lean on.
That morning, I was thousands of kilometers from home in what became my home — San José, the capital of Costa Rica. I woke up in high spirits that day, which was unusual. It had been a rough few months, from August to October. On the Personal front, I had been through so much, but that morning something was different. I can’t shake that feeling, the lightness I felt when I first opened my eyes.
I don’t know why, but the contrast feels so bizarre now. Maybe it was just another morning, and because the transition was so extreme and sharp, I’m misremembering it. What I do vividly remember is opening my phone and seeing too many notifications; there was a sort of shiver that ran down my spine. What is this feeling? It was a familiar, yet brand new kind of feeling — this was raw fear. The type of fear that comes when you lose touch with something that was once firmly rooted in your heart. My sense of security was gone, my illusion of safety shattered. And with that, the world felt heavy again. Unbearable.
The truth is, I didn’t know how to grieve. How to process this new reality. The distance between me and home became even greater, And yet it was selfishly comforting. I wasn’t sure if I could find some way to bridge the space between the people I loved and this new terrifying unknown, to my seemingly idyllic life in the Central American capital.
That morning, I made several urgent phone calls, trying to understand, but it was as if each conversation pulled me further away from clarity. So many conflicting reports in those first weeks made it hard to grasp or understand what was happening on the ground. All I could do was sit in the quiet of San José, feeling the weight of a distant reality pressing in on me.
When I eventually made it to the women’s section in the Chabad of San José, I walked toward my friend and gave her a hug. She looked at me with confused eyes, and I walked her out of the davening area. I told her what had happened. Many people there still had no idea, after all — it was still chag in the diaspora.
Later that morning, Rabbi Spalter, with his kind eyes and soft demeanor, stood before the congregation and wept. And all I could do was cry, too.
On the morning of Simchat Torah, all I could do was mourn with them. I was surrounded by Jewish souls, a world away from home. I prayed for my friends, unsure if I wanted them to be alive or dead. I wasn’t sure which was the worse fate. “We are all Israel,” he said in Yiddish-accented Spanish. And we wept together.
I wish I could say I leaned on the community around me, that I found comfort in ritual, people, and faith. But in those first days, I didn’t. I let myself feel truly alone. It was the only honest thing I could do. And yet even in that loneliness, something shifted.
Because after the numbness came something else. Messages from friends I hadn’t spoken to in months. A neighbor who brought me tea. My mother, who spoke to me from afar. My best friend in Tel Aviv who explained to me what transpired in Be’eri. The friend who took me in an Uber to get a Starbucks and listened to me cry. The people who held me didn’t always know they were doing it. But they did. That’s what I try to explain, clumsily, awkwardly, or am unable to put into words when people ask about my family or base. It’s not that I’m rootless — it’s that my roots spread in every direction.
Some are in the land I left, in the barren desert soil in southern Israel, in corners filled with personal history and memories I can’t escape. Some are in the people I’ve met along the way, in cafes where I journaled over cold, overpriced cappuccino. Mostly, they are in my own breath when I go to sleep alone in a new place, and know I’ll be okay as long as I have God walking me in this journey.
Family, for me, is not a neat answer over brunch. It’s a million little things. Clumsy things. It’s how I’m on FaceTime with my mother and sister for hours, laughing as I cook breakfast. How they are tired, and I’m wide awake. How the family cat always manages to disturb the call. It’s how I call my dad every other day because the Israeli bank, again, just rediscovered I’m not in the country for the millionth time and is making my life, and inevitably my (albeit wonderful with bureaucracy) father’s life, hell. The way I can only experience my grandma’s declining health from far away, and how shocking it is to experience up close when you didn’t get to process things gradually.
It’s “Mom, how do I cook these?” while showing her a simmering pot with my phone. It’s the way my brother’s voice changed so rapidly, how he appears so different, as if he’s not, nor ever was, the chubby round faced toddler I remember. It’s the Hebrew words I teach to a stranger in San José who’s never been to Israel but says it feels like home. It’s the hug I didn’t know I needed from someone I barely know on a random Tuesday. It’s on uncomfortable sofas of friends who welcome me into their home.
So no, I don’t have a base in the traditional sense. I don’t own a house. I don’t see my mother every weekend. I missed birthdays and weddings and memorials and milestones, my sister’s enlistment, three Passover Seders in a row. And yes, it hurts sometimes, but it also means I carry home with me. In laughter, in memory, in the longing for my mother’s fish pot, because no matter how carefully I follow her recipe, it never tastes the same.
Family, I suppose, means stability. It means putting down roots. And maybe I’ve been avoiding that for four years, and I’ll probably keep trying to avoid it in the next four. Maybe family is not just the ones who raised me, but the way they raised me. To be my own person. To search, doubt, and chase after things that don’t always make sense. To sit in discomfort and keep going. To feel deeply and still move forward.
Or perhaps family is the people you meet along the way. Who give you food when you’re down. Who remember how you take your coffee. Who hug you when they barely know you, but somehow understand. It’s the ones who make a place feel safe, familiar, even when it’s not home. Especially when it’s not home.
My roots don’t grow down. Sometimes they grow out and spread wide across borders, languages, and time zones. Across WhatsApp calls that glitch. Across recipes I fail to recreate. That’s the answer I wish I could give over lunch, when someone asks, “But what about your family?”
But that’s a bit too wordy for lunch. I usually just say I miss them. I don’t have a neat answer for the occasional acquaintance. But I know what family is. In my heart, I carry them with me. And I know I’m never really alone.
