What I Want to Do in Israel

Many people have asked me why I'm so set on going to Israel. What exactly do I want to learn? How do I believe it will help me? In choosing specific programs, I have stated that I need flexibilty, because I have very specific goals. Here I will finally set them down in writing:

1) I want to learn halacha. More precisely, I want to better understand the halachot that I encounter in my daily life. I seem to have a basket of questions that flies open at every point when my certainty of what to do in a particular situation fails, or, even more often, when my comprehension of why I must do it falls short. I'm not only looking for the answer, but for an understanding of the context in which the answer was decided, including any alternative opinions and their rationales. By all rights I should have been keeping a list of all these over at least the past year, but I have no doubt that by simply living my life the questions will re-arise in partnership with their related situations. And, when I approach each one, I know full well that its answer(s) may likely raise a further web of perplexities, which is why I have been avoiding rather than addressing the initial questions for such a long time. I hope to have a year in which I need not cast aside my stated priorities for such trivialities as spiritual understanding...because that will be my stated priority.

2) I want to learn how to learn. Most likely, in a yeshiva atmosphere, when I ask my questions the responses will include directions to certain sources, certain texts. Right now I need that direction to be extremely specific, and I will also need assistance in deciphering the sources once I find them. I hope to learn the structure of codification and commentary so that I might have some idea of how to look something up on my own, and to gain enough practice in doing so that I'd have a chance at reaching an answer, or at least at perusing the conversation of the topic, independently.

3) I want to accomplish something purely for myself. Yes, I'd like to learn Torah l'shma -- for its own sake -- but to do that will inherently also be a reclamation of my own will and my ability to apply it. For so many years I have been a slave to an educational system that has been determined and required by external forces, and my psyche has devised innumerable tricks to loosen the chains. I now need to redevelop the ability to focus when the goal is of my own creation. I need to approach something that is hard for me and pursue it relentlessly, not because I must, for a change, but because I want to and therefore must prove to myself that I can.

Having stated these three main purposes, I must clarify that I do not want #1 to dominate all my learning time. I also want to learn Tanach and Talmud and Hashkafa, etc. I do plan to take some actual courses where the curriculum is predetermined. But even this will engage all the points above, as I know that my web of questions will be triggered just as readily by these areas of Torah as by practical halachic investigation, I want to gain skills for independent study in these topics as well, and I certainly include such study as equally worthy of the devotion-to-a-goal that I must learn to implement.

Having said all this, I must also admit that I am quite scared. Scared that my goals are too huge, that a year is nowhere near long enough to do one fiftieth of what I hope to do, that there is no yeshiva that will be able or willing to provide me (who has no spectacular background in learning nor lofty goals of becoming an educator/Jewish leader) with enough individual attention to accomplish what I hope to, that I don't actually have the internal strength to concentrate so intensely and extensively. Scared that I am laying too much self-redemption for all my years of intellectual laziness, religious shirking, inadequate self-improvement, on this one year.

And so here I hover, on the edge of a new era of my life, worrying about having enough money to support myself for a year, and eager, apprehensive, excited and anxious all at once about what the year will bring.