I go out in hopes of forgetting, thinking about something else, anything. Music, poetry, who got wasted last Saturday night. No such luck. Going out for hookah can never be just that. All encounters result in talks of Moshiach (messiah), do rabbis believe in aliens, angels, devils, prophecies, evolution.

I should want to talk about this. I should get off on this discussion. But I can’t, because 10 years later I just accept that which I have accepted. My desire to question and debate is less innate. I just want to talk about the mundane. That which is not holy. But I am denied this. I can’t run away from it.

And I find myself just wanting to get away. To be somewhere else. Israel, where I don’t have to wear my Judaism on my sleeve because it’s a given. Where it’s an afterthought. And I can be something else: a poet, an activist, a free-thinker, a music-lover, a creator, who in all of this – despite all of this – is Jewish.

My physical needs tug on me, and I leave our outdoor bubble back indoors to a different reality. With a diverse people, with secular music playing, and I wonder which reality is truth. Which would make me happy. Which is the way my life is supposed to be.