Category: Opinion

A Definitely Cynical and All-Around Slightly Depressing Post About Adulthood
Emily Bernstein
January 8, 2019

What do you hope to be doing in 5 years?

I hate this question. I got asked it two years ago, and the year before that. I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer it considering that I don’t know what I want to be doing when I’m 26 or 27, let alone what I’m having for dinner tomorrow night.

If you had asked me 5 years ago what I thought I was going to be doing today, I wouldn’t have said living in Israel, studying for the LSAT before going to law school. I would have said I would be interning at a publishing house in New York City, working my way up to becoming an editor while working on my own manuscript. And so much has changed since. Life is funny that way.

And I still can’t answer that question. To be honest, I can’t tell you a lot of things.

When I graduated college, I think I assumed something magical was going to happen. That the tassel was going to move, and I was just going to know. Know without a doubt what I want to do professionally, know how to pay bills, know how to budget effectively, know what I’m already doing, know how to host a classy dinner party with friends, know who I’m going to be.

Yet, here we are, six months post-graduation and, once a day, I still think how am I allowed to be an adult?

I reach for my phone to call my mom every time I don’t feel well, I text my sister constantly about my friends and in dire need of advice, and my dad is my go-to guy on all my technology questions.

And let’s not forget about the internet.  If I have no idea how to do something, the whole world – or almost all of it – is at the tip of my fingers.

But still…

I have no idea what I’m doing.

Google is no help. Google gives me WikiHow articles. Google gives me advice columns about making my bed every morning, checking my ego, calling people back in a timely manner, being grateful. But that’s not how to be an adult, that’s just how to be a good human being.

I guess what I want to know is: when do I start knowing?

And I’d like to know. Just know. I’d go to school forever if I could – study literature, law, politics, teaching, history, art. I’d learn and study and then maybe I’d have the knowledge. But I doubt it.

See, school is really useful in that it gave me – and will continue to give me – critical thinking skills that are useful in the real world to an extent. But what’s going to give me the knowledge (maybe I should be referring to it with a capital K) is getting out into the world and working and acting like an adult.

But how am I supposed to know how to be an adult? High school and first year of university classes take so much care to introduce you to and ease you into what it is to be a college student. Then, you get to senior year, you have your graduation gown and you’ve decorated your cap, and what do you get?

An empty diploma booklet and a bag full of “goodies” containing an envelope asking for donations.

No helpful hints on how to actually be an adult – just a drawn-out graduation speech from some household name celebrity that has vague references on how to succeed as an adult. Not that I didn’t like my graduation speaker – he was actually quite funny – but his advice didn’t have a lot of weight. His speech was engaging and full of humorous anecdotes that, surrounded by the magic of graduation, really inspired me.

But here I am. And… I feel like I’m floundering.

As millennials, my peers and I face a lot of criticism about being lazy or spending too much money on avocado toast or feeling better than our jobs.

But it’s the opposite. We have to work twice as hard as other people to prove ourselves, to make our voices heard, to make our positions matter. Our toiling away in jobs we feel better than is because the job market demands experience in fields we don’t have experience in due to our toiling away in school for 17+ years. I’ve had a job since I was 15 and I still don’t have enough office experience to even interview to be someone’s assistant.

So how am I supposed to use my fancy degree from a fancy university to do anything other than something I feel might be slightly below me due to the lack of experience I have. (This statement does not apply to what I’m doing right now in Israel – it is obviously a feeling expressed in cynicism about the job market in America.) So yeah, we feel better than our jobs.

How could we not? We’ve been in school for 17+ years working our butts off for jobs we can’t get.

And, personally, all I see are other people my age floundering and putting on their work clothes every morning pretending they know what they’re doing – just like I do. None of us really know anything, so we eat our avocado toast with pride because at least we know that avocado is amazing.

I’m not trying to make excuses for my generation. Really, I’m not. I’m just trying to understand. And I’m sorry if you came to this blog post looking for some sort of conclusion. I don’t have one.

Yet.

So, I guess, for now, I’ll stick with the age-old adage of fake it ‘til you make it. After all, that’s what everyone else is doing…right?

שׁלום

On Feeling Safe in Israel
Emily Bernstein
December 22, 2018

When I got back from Birthright in June 2015, I couldn’t wait to talk about the experience with my family and friends. The problem was, when I told some of my friends I had just gotten back from Israel, they didn’t ask did you have fun? They didn’t ask how was it? They didn’t even really want to hear anything I had to say until they could ask:

But… Did you feel safe? 

I struggled – and still struggle – to answer that question because I have a gut, instinctive reaction to scoff, but I also completely appreciate the question and understand where it’s coming from. 

Due to the media, bias, and just what we hear about the region, people – and no, not everyone, but many – tend to assume the streets of Israel (Jerusalem especially) are filled with violence, soldiers walking around with fully loaded guns, sadness, displacement, and lots and lots of sand. Some of those observations aren’t entirely wrong, but still. 

Here’s the thing: Jerusalem is a vibrant city. There’s traffic, concrete everywhere, and people are always in a hurry. At 8:30-9 am, people are rushing to school and to work. There are coffee shops, and shawarma restaurants, on every corner. At night, people go to dinner, drink at bars, go to movies, go to bed. Sound familiar? It should, because I just described every city ever. 

Is there more tension here based on a more than 70 year old conflict? Yes. Is the media always 100% wrong when reporting on what’s happening in Israel? No. Is there constant violence and are there attacks going on all the time in Jerusalem or Israel as a whole? Not necessarily (but we’ll get back to that). 

Is it safe? I’d say yes. 

I was raised to not walk places alone at night, not go to places that felt not right, and just generally look out for things that seem fishy.

And I went to university in a relatively large city. I rarely walked anywhere alone at night. I avoided certain parts of the city. I would turn my music down when walking alone – even during the day – to be sure I could hear my surroundings. I locked my car doors obsessively. 

Am I any less aware here than I was at home? Absolutely not. Do I feel less safe here than I did at home? Not at all.

When I walk to work, weekly seminars, shul on Fridays, dinner with friends, the bar that plays American football games on Sundays, I don’t look behind my shoulder at every footstep passing. I smile at people who pass me. I’m honestly more comfortable walking places than getting in a taxi (which might have way more to do with the crippling anxiety I have getting into a car with any stranger where they could turn into an alley or empty parking lot at any point and murder me violently which is an anxiety I have in the States, and everywhere, in Ubers and Lyfts too, but I digress). 

It’d be naive to say that I feel completely safe and secure here. Just these past two weeks, Masa restricted travel for Masa participants for safety concerns. This was due to a wave of – and I really hesitate to use this phrase here due to its violent and exceedingly negative connotations – terrorist attacks that were coming out of specific parts of Israel. 

Masa has since reversed the restrictions. The restrictions were in place solely for the safety and security of people like me – on a Masa program – because, while we’re here, they’re responsible for us. It’s a little bit like your parents telling you not to cross the street without an adult when you’re a little kid. 

And, since I’ve been here, there have been a number of rocket attacks from Gaza in the south. Living in Jerusalem gives me the advantage of feeling pretty okay when that happens since people would be pretty stupid to set fire to Jerusalem – a city coveted by all involved parties. But living in Jerusalem doesn’t alleviate any of the tension that permeates the air when rockets are falling just three hours south of here and a pregnant mother is shot in a drive-by shooting. 

I’m not saying this is okay. The Arab/Israeli conflict is complicated and longstanding, and definitely needs a solution so that Israelis and Palestinians don’t have to go through another 70+ years of this.*

I’m just trying to explain – as an American temporarily living in Israel – the situation from my point of view. (And if you don’t want my point of view, you’ve come to the wrong blog.)

What upsets me more than anything – more than if I feel safe, if I’m worried about something happening to me or my friends, if it’s worth it to have this incredible experience – is that Israelis – most of whom were simply born into this circumstance and now have to live in fear for those family members and friends in the army – live this for their whole lives. 

I’ll say it again: it’s not okay. But just because there is violence in Israel doesn’t mean I feel unsafe. 

I mean, look at the US where people are facing awful, marginalizing, violent situations which I will not get into in this blog post because that’s a whole other story. 

Look, Israel and Palestine are at war. And war means violence. War means people are going to get hurt. War is painful, it is gruesome, and it is heartbreaking. But war doesn’t mean living in fear. It doesn’t mean people are living their lives any differently than people are in the states. Like I said, they go to work, they eat, they hang out with friends, they go to bed. Life in Israel is not a constant wait for something to happen, for something to go wrong. 

So yes, I feel safe here. And thank you, truly, for asking. 

*This blog post was entirely in response to the subject of feeling safe here in Israel. In no way was this a post that intended to address the Arab/Israeli conflict. Perhaps I will write a blog about that one day, perhaps not. Should you wish to ask me about my opinions regarding safety or the conflict, feel free to contact me. 

שׁלום

“How Much Is Easy Going To Get You?”
Emily Bernstein
November 17, 2018

“But easy’s like, who cares? Easy’s like, how much is easy going to get you?”
-Anne Lamott

I’m a self-declared homebody. I’m also an unashamed introvert. I need time to myself to recharge and feel fully human again – to brush off the morning I woke up feeling depressed and had to drink three cups of water in quick succession to get my body going, to stop dwelling on that one thing I said on Tuesday about something so unimportant that I’m the only one still thinking about it, to start again. And I love having my own space. After a long day at work, I like coming home to a space I inherently know is my own – a place that feels like, and is, a home. And yeah, I like curling up in my free time with a book or with Netflix. All of this soothes my very heavy and needy anxiety. It calms me.

Now, pack all of this into two suitcases and a backpack and move it all across the world to a foreign country for 10 months. I know, sounds impossible, right?

It’s safe to say that (after almost three months) I’m finally starting to feel settled. My apartment is becoming home. My roommates have adjusted to the fact that, sometimes, I’m too overwhelmed to communicate beyond hellos. I’ve started to feel comfortable in a city that, for a long time – even before I decided to move here – was little more than a line in a prayer, a place to visit next Pesach.

And now that Jerusalem is home (a phrase I never thought I’d have the privilege to write), now that I’m starting to feel comfortable, I’ve realized this:

It’s not supposed to be easy.

This probably sounds silly. Duh, Emily, why did you ever think moving across the world to a place where there will be a language barrier, a cultural barrier, and the like would ever be easy?

But that’s not what I mean. Because no one in their right minds would think any of that would be easy. I don’t mean easy in terms of simplicity of logistics. I mean easy in terms of emotionally, intellectually, and ideologically.

What I mean is that an opportunity like this – to live in Jerusalem, have a fellowship, work within the government is supposed to be challenging. It’s supposed to have felt odd and difficult at first.

Because if we don’t push ourselves out of these comfort zones, if we don’t search for anything beyond our satisfying little boxes, if we don’t move beyond our lane, we will never grow. 

A program like this forces you to look at the world, and all its inhabitants, more intensely, and in a new light. We are all looking at our own views and opinions more closely – whether that is spurred on by each other, our internship placements, or our speakers – and whether or not our views change is irrelevant because at least we’re listening.

I find myself looking more critically at the world. My friends and I have conversations that shift from Israeli politics, to US politics, to what’s new in American football, to religion, and back again – something that simultaneously makes my head spin and impresses me. I wake up every day with a new conviction to change something.

So, okay. I’m ready for more challenges. I’m ready to push myself. I’m ready to step even further outside of my box.

Bring it on.

.שׁלום

This Too Really Shall Pass: In Response to Pittsburgh
Emily Bernstein
October 29, 2018

Dad was here over the weekend (blog on this to follow later), and because it was Shabbat, and I was doing my regular Shabbat things – going to shul, cooking dinner, not doing much on Saturday – I was terribly worried he would be bored. When I expressed this to him, he said, “Are you kidding? I’m in Jerusalem, on Shabbat. That’s so cool!”

And he’s right. I’ve been taking living here, getting to actually observe Shabbat, and my religion for granted. Here I am – saying my daily prayers, celebrating the high holidays, going to shul on Shabbat – in the Holy City. Yet I’ve been treating it like every other day.

That was shattered on Saturday morning in Pittsburgh. 

An ignorant, hateful man walked into a synagogue on a Saturday morning shouting unspeakably anti-Semitic things and killed 11 people, wounding more. All these people were doing was praying. All these people wanted was to have a peaceful Shabbat. All these people were doing was living their lives. 

And I wish I was shocked.

I wish my first question was why? I wish I was asking how? I wish I was surprised that someone could do something so horrible to people innocently praying in synagogue.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened. Countless people have been targeted for their religion in just the last 10 years – not just Jews. So many people have been punished for going about their day, following their beliefs, simply living their lives and hurting no one – targeted for little more than the color of their skin, where they choose to pray, what they believe in. And of course we need change – new laws, less hate, more overwhelming love for a fellow human being. But today, it’s just horrific. And it’s heartbreaking.

I debated all day about whether or not I wanted to write this. My mind was all over the place at work. I didn’t know if I was angry or sad or in disbelief. It wasn’t until I was crying that I realized I was honestly just mourning. Mourning for what, I can’t really say. But my heart is aching. And I can’t stop it.

But when I sat down last night to say my nightly prayers, and opened my Siddur to see the first prayer of the night: “I hereby forgive anyone who has angered me, provoked me, or sinned against me,” I knew I would be remiss not to say something. 

Today and yesterday, like so many other days, people were saying “my thoughts and prayers are with Pittsburgh.” And today and yesterday, like so many other days, other people said, “Your thoughts and prayers aren’t enough.”

But in this case, my thoughts and my prayers are literally with the Pittsburgh community. They haven’t been more than one thought away these past few days. They have been in every move I’ve made, every prayer I’ve said, every thing I’ve done.

And I know, I know, that my thoughts and prayers aren’t going to reform laws. I know my thoughts and prayers aren’t going to remove any hate from this world. I know my thoughts and prayers go no further than where I direct them.

Today though, and until next Shabbat when I hope so many Jews pile into their synagogues to show that we are resilient and that hate doesn’t get to win this time, I hope my thoughts and my prayers and my will to beat these ignorant people is enough to make a slight difference for Pittsburgh.

Because we – as a world, a country, a people, a religion – are stronger than this. We are better than this.

And we won’t let hate win.