Between Rehovot and the Mountains

There are moments when you don’t fully understand what happened until you’re already driving home.

Last Saturday morning we drove to Assaf’s bar mitzvah at the summer camp where he has spent every summer since he was seven. Uri and Itay grew up there too. They started when they were eight.

The drive to camp winds through forests, mountains, lakes, and little streams. Every year, somewhere along that road, I feel myself slow down.

Uri and Itay were waiting for us at the entrance. This was their first summer as counselors. Together with the camp director, they walked us to the large amphitheater overlooking the lake, where Shabbat morning services were about to begin.

If you’ve ever been to a Jewish summer camp, you probably know the feeling. Hundreds of kids, teenagers, counselors, and staff. Singing, dancing, arms around each other.

And there was Assaf, standing in the middle of it all, surrounded by his friends, his counselors, older campers, younger campers, people who had watched him grow up year after year. He stepped forward to read from the Torah.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

Suddenly I was twelve again.

My bat mitzvah was in my parents’ backyard in Rehovot. There was an avocado tree, a papaya tree, a clementine tree, and a willow. It was a simple dinner. My mother had taken me to one of the nicest clothing stores in town, a place we rarely shopped because it was expensive. She bought me a pair of jeans and a pink polo shirt.

I don’t remember what we ate. I don’t remember who came. I mostly remember how I felt.

I was barefoot. The grass was soft and cool under my feet.

I was the tallest girl in my class, and I hated it. I was embarrassed by my height, embarrassed by my body, embarrassed by almost everything about myself. I had no center yet. No place inside myself that felt steady enough to stand on.

That same year, every sixth grader had to prepare a bar or bat mitzvah project. No one told us what to write about. There was no assignment, no theme, no direction. We were simply told to choose a subject. I chose the only one I really knew.

The Yom Kippur War.

My father had been taken captive during the war. Our home was filled with that story, the memories, the silence, the things nobody really knew how to talk about.

I didn’t realize how unusual my choice was until the end of the year, when all of our projects were displayed together. I remember standing in front of that wall, reading everyone else’s work, then looking back at mine. For the first time, I could see how different my childhood had been. It took me years to understand that I had spent months writing about my father’s war because I didn’t yet know how to write about my own life.

I looked at Assaf again.

He is almost thirteen. Tall. Confident. Smiling. Standing in front of a community that had watched him grow up since he was seven. They weren’t simply marking his bar mitzvah. They were celebrating who he had become.

When the service ended, campers and counselors started walking toward us. One after another, they shook our hands, hugged us, and wished us, “Mazal tov.”

Watching Assaf that morning, I realized something I had never been able to put into words.

For so much of my life, I understood myself through where I came from.

That morning, I realized I also belonged to where I am.

Between Rehovot and the mountains, something had quietly shifted.