In the morning of August 1, 1989, I landed in JFK airport, New York. At first, I stayed with my sister who lived in New York, conducting a Jewish religious lifestyle with her converted husband.

I did not identify with the same emotions about Judaism as my sister and her spouse. This new path he chose for himself, the recognition of truth I viewed subjectively as simply an emotional reaction at that time. Therefore, even though I was impressed by his personality, I needed to explore the world myself.

In the following two weeks, my cousin, Gabriel, joined me from Israel and together we rented an apartment in Queens. This period of my life can be summed up as running from pubs to bars, from one cocktail party to the next, from Downtown to the Village, happenings in Central Park and museums in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I let myself be drawn into the vast, warm sea of a life with no meaning, specifically a purposeless existence. I was carried away by the pleasant, easy empty existence, until I recognized the change in myself with my own eyes.

The need to cut myself off led to the point of an intellectual rebellion until I was no longer sympathetic towards Zionism and traditional Judaism. I disgraced it all in my heart. My ties with my family in Israel, and even my sister and her husband, living on the other side of New York, began to weaken. Eventually, I stopped visiting altogether. I found myself in the company of a non-Jewish European woman. We even contemplated the idea of marriage. I befriended other former Israelis that were also looking to disengage.

One evening I went out to a party along with some friends. I realized in the pub that it was Yom Kippur. "I don't feel badly about this,” I told myself. From my point of view, my materialistic life was in and of itself a type of search. Suddenly, sitting in the pub by the bar, I couldn't stop the spontaneous flow of memories overpowering me. I had visions of nostalgia of my childhood, the holiness of the synagogue, of my grandfather, wrapped in a white tallit standing by the bimah crying Kol Nidrei and the congregation crying out loud as they answer him in prayer. I asked myself, Where am I going with my life? Three years of my life had flown by me… What have I learned in the school of life?


During the next following months, I came to a realization that I was tricking myself. It is impossible to live without any meaning in life.

I felt the bitterness of this rebellion and denial. I felt the need to get up and actively search, not allowing time to slip away. I began opening books. First I bought “Man in Search of Meaning” by Victor Frankel. Afterwards, I read books on meditation and yoga. I became a vegetarian, and even, with great difficulty, stopped smoking. All this while taking flying lessons on Long Island.

About the duration of my spiritual and physical journey I will tell to you in the next issue.