On the Seam

The following was delivered as a Shabbat address at Congregation Ohel Avraham in Haifa, and was originally posted on Gateways and Tents.

I want to thank you all for welcoming us here tonight. This past week, we’ve been honored and humbled to be guests in your community, in your school, and in you homes. Thank you.

Our group has seen many interesting things on this trip. We’ve all learned a lot about Israel, about Haifa, about the connection between North American and Israeli Jews, and most importantly, about ourselves. Today, I asked many of the students to tell me: What was a highlight of the trip for you? Each student had a different answer, but there was one thing that almost every student said he or she liked best: the time we spent together on the bus. With all the places we visited, and all the things that we learned, and all the important conversations that we had, the most impactful experience was just to spend time together.

It isn’t easy being a host, and it isn’t easy to be a guest either. These aren’t everyday roles that we’re accustomed to playing. I know that it pushed many of the students to the edge of their comfort zone—and for this, I’m proud of them. I hope it was a growth experience.

During our trip to Jerusalem, we visited The Museum on the Seam—an art museum that focuses on contemporary social issues. (Their current exhibition is on loneliness.) (The museum gets its name because of its location on the pre-1967 border between Israel and Jordan.) I asked myself: What does it mean to be “on the seam?” What is a seam, anyway? A seam is a place where two different things meet. It’s a place of diversity, and also a place of unity. A seam is also a border, an edge—a place that defines the limits of ourselves, the dividing line between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the comfortable and the uncomfortable.

And I think that this is an appropriate metaphor for our trip. We’ve been “on the seam.” The past week had pushed each and every one of us—students and staff alike—to the edges of our comfort zones. It’s brought us right up to the border of the familiar, and asked us to take those first few intimating steps into the unknown. And what’s more, this trip has brought two diverse “materials” in contact with one another, and stitched them together. It’s created a seam, a bond, a point of unity—a realization that despite our differences, our two distinct communities are a part of one Jewish people.

Shabbat shalom.