Isolation and Engagement

Michael here -- Over the past number of weeks, I’ve been able to witness the shift Jennifer has made relative to living in NZ, so far away from friends, family, and people who really know her. Her feeling more known, being valued for her work and her engagement with people (versus assumptions and reputation) has been key to feeling like this is a place where she can live, a place that she can call home.

Through all of this, I’ve had to find ways to stay positive (not that hard) and remember what I came here for, which was a great deal. The flip side of that, however, was what I left behind. Last week were the Jewish Holidays, something that I have found both grounding and a little unsettling at the same time. I’ve complained for years that I feel a bit out of place with my family from time to time. It’s a familiar out of place-ness, which gets repeated two or three times a year, year in and year out. However, it has served as one of the anchor points for me. I know that I’ll see many of my blood relatives on both sides of my family, I’ll get to see my sister and niece & nephew, my parents, aunts, uncles, etc. It’s also a chance for my kids to be with the family, something that’s been important to me since their births.

This year’s Rosh Hashana was an interesting one for me. I drove with the kids into Wellington to a liberal, progressive congregation – one of only two synagogues in the capital city of the country! A couple I met at the service flew in from Nelson, a city in the north of the South Island (about a 35 min flight) because it’s the closest temple they can go to. The service was led by an American rabbi (a woman) who was actually born in Dupont Circle (where we lived in DC) and grew up in Howard County, where my sister lives in suburban DC. Familiar. The people there were of all ages – very old, very young, and everything in between. It was the most diverse congregation, agewise, that I’ve ever seen. Mostly Kiwis, and feeling a little unfamiliar. The synagogue was in what was clearly once a house in a neighbourhood, unfamiliar. There was an iron gate with an electric door and a video camera to see who’s trying to get in and to provide protection, all too familiar.

And when the service started and the blessings were sung, they were the same that I’ve heard in Silver Spring, MD, in Boston MA, in Augusta GA, and probably everywhere else. I was talking to a client of mine in the US talking about this service the other day, and he thinks about the millions of Jews living on the East Coast of the US, all in shul at Rosh Hashana morning service, singing the prayers at potentially the exact same time.

So here I was, feeling utterly alone in some ways, so far from things and people I’m used to seeing at this time of the year, but also feeling a strange connection that I carry around, the connection through blood and tradition. And we were all eating apples and honey, although my apples were the last of the season, holdovers from a Fall, nearly two seasons ago (it’s now Spring in NZ, after all!) and dipped in Manuka Honey, a specialty of NZ.

Not being with my sister and family is definitely hard sometimes. Not being around for the preparations for the retirement party my sister is pulling together for my dad, retiring from dentistry after 43 years, is hard. Not being around for this period of time that my 93 year old grandfather is facing some huge declines in his physical and mental states is really hard. All part of the choice of moving to NZ, part of the tradeoffs of the beauty and peace that we’ve found here. I’m quite certain that I made a good choice to come here, but I also know that every choice brings wonderful things and hard things. Feeling so comfortable and present. Feeling so alone and far away.