To Return

I'm sitting now at the table outside the Croft—the centuries old farmhouse that serves as the student dorm for the study abroad program at Brunnenburg I went on went on in the spring of 2009. The program is unlike any other study abroad offered at my college: instead of being immersed or semi-immersed at a university in a foreign city, students go to a castle outside the small village of Dorf Tirol in the Sudtirol (or Alto Adige) region of Italy, where the native language is German dialect. There they take classes in English with the daughter and grandson of the poet Ezra Pound, on Pound's Cantos, Medieval Saints and Heroes, and Agro-Archeology. Needless to say, it is a very unique program, with only three colleges from the US participating.

I left this region in the spring of my Junior year ready to return to the States, where Geoffrey and I would soon be engaged and living on his parent's farm in Wisconsin, building a cabin that is still unfinished. While I was at Brunnenburg I had struggled to get along with the other seven students on my course, and I had been profoundly unchallenged by the courses. I had dealt with my boredom by writing: I wrote about three hundred pages on my novel (one and a half drafts) in three months. Nonetheless, the isolation and social strain left me wounded by this time. I did not think I would return any time soon.

But when we planned our trip to Israel and decided—since we were so close, after all—that we ought to spend some time traveling in Europe together, I was excited to return. I wanted to show Geoffrey everything: the apple orchards that march up the rugged sides of the mountain, the distinct post-and-beam houses, and most of all Brunnenburg. This place, as well as being a "campus" for students from the states, is also an agricultural museum. Every wall and every available flat surface is covered with hand tools, baskets plows, wagons—an unimaginable wealth of local handiwork.

But what I found when I returned was that in the act of returning, I learned how deeply I loved this place. When I had been here before it had not been the right place for me at the time, but I had gone for my future self. And now, returning and seeing it all again, I felt a profound gratitude to that past self for that effort. I had grown into an understanding of the place I was not ready for at the time I had come to it, but could appreciate now, and which I imagine I will only grow to love more as time passes.

Wandering in the Desert

I'm living in a straw bale and mud plaster dome on Kibbutz Lotan in the Aravah valley in southern Israel. It's now the third week of the course, which includes permaculture, sustainable design, organic gardening and green building techniques.

I started this blog when I was at Koinonia Farm in Georgia. In a lot of ways this place is a counterpart to that one: an intentional collective community founded on a counter-cultural religious understanding and revived in part through a greater interest in permaculture, sustainability and environmental care. Here though, the religious tradition in question is Reform Judaism, a branch of Judaism which is widespread in the States, but not recognized by the state of Israel.

They are not all that similar, beyond these broad ways that I've mentioned. Here there are around fifty families, and as a Kibbutz, Lotan is aware of itself within a wider movement, and is surrounded by other Kibbutzim in this area who share the community's concerns and support it. For me, though, the two largest factors separating Kibbutz Lotan from Koinonia Farm are the facts that Judaism is the dominant religion here, and that we're in one of the most arid deserts in the world.

There's a long tradition of going to deserts to experience spiritual transformation. I can see why, in a way. Being in such a harsh and barren landscape makes all life stand out in stark relief, making each tree, each flower, each person seem like a small miracle, totally dependent on the grace of G-d. It is impossible to ignore the fragility of life in such a place, as all things seem caught between the possibility of life and the inevitability of death. Mostly, though, things just don't grow here. The ground is bare, just rock, with the occasional Rose of Jericho (or resurrection plant) curled into a tight ball and apparently dead sprouting from the clay-heavy soil. Personally, it's hard to bare such desolation. I was born to live in green places, places full of trees and running water.

And so I turn my attention mostly to the community: both the multinational community that has gathered to experience this course, and the community on the Kibbutz, for whom this landscape is home. Here, being Jewish is more than just an assuption: it is a requirement for membership. But this place is not my home in the world, and as much as I love living in community with Jews (and I do love it), I know that mine is a life to be spent in the wilderness. I am a child of the Diaspora, and I will continue to represent my people among the nations I dwell with as best as I am able. This wandering in the (metaphorical) desert is a part of my identity, and I carry it with me even here. Some deserts lie within.