When I started playing guitar in November, I feel like I unlocked a new source of joy. 

At age 30, It’s my first instrument. And even though I’ve been singing along, dancing, and incessantly sharing my favorite music for as long as I can remember, nothing can really compare to that first strum in a music store in Jaffa, feeling the sound resonate in my bones. Being the reason that beautiful sorcery happened and being in it all at once.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m not particularly coordinated. I’ve discovered that holding down fretboard strings with one hand *while* strumming with the other hand *while* singing is an evil form of multitasking. Then my hands are fairly small and it turns out my left pinkie has never worked a day in its life, which makes some attempts at chord shapes feel like a sinister game of Twister.

I’ve often been tempted to scream, exasperated, into the abyss. To rail against bad guitar playing everywhere, to bend my guitar skills to my will. To be good enough, right now.

It sounds, a bit, like “AGHHH.”

And yet. The chord I resent now is not the chord I resented two weeks ago. The brain is elastic in ways I never fully appreciated. So gradually, as I work through something like a new chord progression or song intro, I’m realizing (light as a thought bubble floating above my head):

Frustration doesn’t work.

Frustration shoves me forward, but only while throwing jacks in my path.

When “good enough” is my goal, it slows me down.

All the while, I’ve noticed what moves me forward instead: taking a deep breath, and laughing. Choosing to play songs that make me awe at the creativity and artistry of humans. I practice again, and again, and again. And magically, that song intro starts to flow. That song intro helps me zoom in in an overwhelming world.

Then I move on to the verse and start from 0 again. This time, knowing what it looks like to achieve that magic fluency, and what it takes to get there.

During my first lesson, my teacher watched my hands and said calmly, “Your brain moves really fast, but you don’t trust yourself.”

Of course he was right. He’s a very good teacher, by the way, if anyone needs one in Tel Aviv. And even though I knew I struggled with that brain/trust battle before, guitar has given me a whole new instrument to navigate it.

It’s not that I trust myself to play perfectly now. But I’ve gotten better at reminding myself to be playful when I’m tempted toward the aforementioned abyss, to take a breath and soften any frustration that only holds me back;

honing a sense of awe and joy that helps me let go of control;

and trusting myself to practice over and over again until I’ve gotten it right, laughing with myself until I’m proud of the chorus, until I’m proud of the bridge, until I’m gearing up to play the whole song together. 

Listen, to be honest, I’m still quite bad at guitar. I haven’t exactly reached Madison Square Garden (yet). But I do often call my friends to serenade them, and their completely unbiased opinion is that the joy is infectious.

I’m learning this is a life well played.

Through a window, behind cars zipping by, the clouds haze over the trees and paint the sky like a tea bag in water. Mountains almost disappear in the distance. One grain field appears, a muted yellow, everything beside me softened by the clouds. I sit on a beaten-up velour bus seat behind a curtain that I can’t manage to close. If I tried, I’d probably succeed. But I leave it slightly so that it gapes open even more when we turn, a half-open door reminding me as the vehicles brake and go and I pretend to care about wasted time: soak in all that’s out there waiting for you.

Hair not quite dry from the shower this morning, at the cusp of the afternoon, I live here now.

Today I have time for traffic.

My great grandfather arrived in America in the late 19th century. Likely as he took a sigh of escape from Polish pogroms, he started to hear explosions. He ran to the train ticket office, put all his money on the counter, and told the clerk in broken English to send him on the next train he could afford.

It was the Fourth of July, the explosions were celebratory fireworks, and he had arrived on Boston Harbor. The clerk gave him a ticket to Worcester, MA, where he was taken in by the local rabbi and met my great grandmother. Then came my grandfather, my mother, and then me. All of us experienced what it means to be Jewish and American.

My great grandfather became a baker and started a chain with his newfound freedom: Liberty Bakeries. My mom’s earliest memory is watching her grandfather braid challah for his American business, swiftly and deftly. Both of my maternal great grandfathers served in the American Army in World War I and my grandfather would grow up and serve in the American Navy in World War II, subsequently attending three American universities on the GI Bill then taking over the family business. He and my grandmother raised their family of six in a beautiful home in Springfield, MA, not far from Worcester. They returned to religious observance as their children came home with crafts and practices from their Jewish day school. Their lives were filled with Jewish discovery and nurturing communities.

When all of my grandparents’ children had moved out of Springfield, my grandfather announced that he wanted their next home to be in Israel. Plans changed, and with a vague hope that the grandchildren would move to Israel eventually, they moved to a warm Jewish community in Maryland instead. Recently, my grandfather’s health began to decline and the kids began whispering about the burial plots that my grandparents had bought in Springfield. My grandmother spoke up. He should be buried in Israel, she said. They both should. He always wanted his home to be in Israel, and now it will be. My grandfather is buried in Beit Shemesh, Israel, and has been visited many times by his two grandsons who have moved as he hoped.

My siblings, my cousins, and I grew up in a country of independence, with a remarkable, long lasting freedom as Jews to live meaningful and full Jewish lives. My great grandfather started his career in this country thinking he still needed to run away. Further generations’ America, though complicated and often rife with contradictions, gave us the option to stay. If we go, we go willingly. If we stay, we may join our country’s institutions, businesses, and culture without compromising our religious identities.

I don’t think I fully grasped how lucky I am to be a Jew in America right now until last year. Continue reading →