Learning the Hard Way

Starting school after making aliyah is not for the weak. Something that I’m slowly learning through the process of moving is that it doesn’t really ever get easier. We tend to really look at the world through rose colored glasses when it comes to aliyah, but the truth of the matter is that it’s hard. As my roommate, a second-year Hebrew University student, likes to say, “everything is way harder all the time, and it doesn’t get easier, ever. We live life on hard mode”.

Growing up, we are made to believe certain things about ourselves. We are good at some things and we are bad at other things, and these things are out of our control. They are the cards that we have been dealt. When moving across the world, all of these preconceptions change immediately. I was always at the top of my class and, as much as I liked to pretend that it didn’t matter, this role of mine was a huge part of who I was. I was Sara, good at school and smart and full of potential. Now, all of these parts of me have changed. 

I’m no longer at the top of my class. In fact, every single day, I desperately try to even stay afloat. I’m behind everyone else all the time, and to make matters worse, none of them are surprised. “Of course you’re struggling!” they’d say, “you just made aliyah, give yourself time!” But I’m not a girl who struggles. Or at least, I wasn’t. Now I’m a girl who throws a party if my teacher tells me that I did my assignment “better than last time”, or calls my parents to celebrate if I understood 70% of my class.

All of this is a super hard pill to swallow. I went from the very top to the very bottom, which never feels nice. But it never made me feel upset. In fact, every time I sit in class and hold back tears because I haven’t understood a single word in the past 10 minutes, I feel a little bit prouder of myself. I know it sounds cheesy to say that I’m proud of myself for enduring and getting through the hard parts and not giving up and bla bla bla. But the truth is, that’s exactly how I feel.

Every single minute that I struggle through my homework and think about how much easier it would be if I were studying in English in a place that I’m familiar with, I feel more and more accomplished. I made the choice that almost nobody else has made, and it’s incredibly hard. Starting school has only made it harder by the day, but the fact of the matter is that I am pursuing something meaningful to me. 

I hold so much pride in the fact that things are hard. I try harder than everyone else around me, all the time, only to wind up doing much worse than them. But I never fail.

This is the beauty of being a Jew in Israel. In my experience, we don’t let each other fail. We are all connected by our ideals and our love for what we are doing, and so when things go wrong, it’s just another step in the long journey of building a life that we are proud of.

To anyone who is planning on moving to Israel and studying in Hebrew, it’s super important to realize that it will be the hardest thing you will ever do. Harder than actually making aliyah, at least for me. But it will be worth it, for the small moments of understanding and the bigger moments of success. The times that you realize that, in reality, you can do it. If you put your mind to it, you can do it all.