Last Friday, I returned from Israel with a small group of our congregants. During the trip, we took our time strolling throughout the land. It was a beautiful and intimate experience I am still savoring. Those who travel to Israel for the first time often are surprised to discover how hustling and bustling it is. Serious yet buoyant. The Biblical land is hidden under many layers of highways and new high-rise buildings popping up everywhere. The political landscape is also hectic and ever-changing, with elections looming every minute. This time, too, I arrived on the day of the election, and left with the group just a couple of days after the new Knesset was sworn in. Israel is like a cut diamond that can be seen from many angles, and the holiness is a natural resource to be mined. It’s under the surface. Everywhere.

I arrived back in the U.S. just a few days before taking my citizenship oath. Growing up in Israel, in our home, we had a tapestry wall rug of President John F. Kennedy that my mother had brought back with her after spending two years as a student in California. It was right at the time of his assassination. She also witnessed the discrimination of Blacks and Jews. Nevertheless, my mother always spoke favorably about America, holy in many ways. My experience was similar, from the moment I arrived at JFK airport 27 years ago, even through the loudness and commotion, I heard something in my heart that said I was home — something felt holy before I even knew what holy was. Over the years, I learned that this land is also a holy land that hides under many layers of apparent restlessness.  Serendipitously, I took the oath on November 22, the day of JFK’s assassination.

The Shabbat before the group arrived in Israel, I spent with my parents in Rehovot, my beloved hometown, where they still live. It was Shabbat Lech Lecha, when Abraham is commanded to leave his father’s home and journey to a new land that God will show him. Sitting with my father at the Yemenite synagogue and chanting the Torah portion from the scroll felt like home again but, at the same time, I realized that my journey brought me here to America, which is my home now. I linked my destiny with this land.

Yet, the citizenship oath I took here just a short while later, did not move me. The ceremony, in fact, was anticlimactic. It wasn’t just because no confetti was released from the ceiling, but mainly because for me, this rite of passage has been evolving for many years; finally, the rite caught up to me. Many people have told me how happy they are that I became a citizen. It gave them a sense of pride that I chose to live in their land. I can relate to it because when I travel with people to Israel, I’m happy to share with them the land of my birth. Some, even upon their first arrival to Israel, share the feeling they have arrived home.

In both Israel and America, the holiness lies under the surface — that under the busy, hectic, and pursuit of the everyday, we are fortunate to live in a land that ultimately seeks to elevate itself and its dwellers. And therefore, during this totally American celebration of Thanksgiving, I reiterate the words that remind us that under the hustle and bustle and the political debates, there is a holy cause and a holy land, and I say again, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

—Rabbi Gadi Capela

Fr. RTvrdik photo