Changed Cultures, Changed Attitudes

The last time I came back to New York, I was checking out apartments to live in for the fall. It was a stressful visit and, even when I was spending time with family over Shabbat, I was thinking about how much I wanted to be back in Adamah- in the loving community when I could go off and talk to a peer for hours… where I could visit the chicken coop, the barnyard, the Cultural Center, just to see what was going on when work was not officially in session.

The last time I came to New York, the fast-paced lifestyle proved too much for me to handle after living in rural Connecticut for the last six weeks. I broke down in the parking lot of a fast-food take-out after being unable to properly communicate my needs to the employer. After five years of boasting how much I loved New York, how I was proud to have moved here after spending 18 years in California, I recognized that being outside the Big Apple gave me an outside, or perhaps realistic, perspective of the city. I didn’t want to be here- I wanted to be home, in the loving community of the Isabella Freedman.

I returned to New York this afternoon after 10 weeks of work and introspection- a stronger woman. The girl I had had intense challenges with at the beginning of Adamah and I had connected in a unique way- she drove me to the train station at 7:30 in the morning before her work session. How things change in a mere seven weeks.

During my trip back, I had five heavy bags with me- in the past, I felt weak with so much luggage, a reminder of how often I had moved from one place to the other. But this time, the strength I gained from my farming fellowship made the trip manageable, and even somewhat of an adventure. My shoulders ached from my laptop bag and tote bag carrying random miscellaneous items that would come back with me to Queens. But I was upbeat, excited to be returning to a place that was familiar to me, one where I knew that, as an accumulation of the positive and negative situations I’ve had with past roommates and among my cohort at Adamah, I would remain at this apartment, and it would work.

The train conductor barked at a couple of passengers, demanding we move our suitcases to create space for a handicapped fellow; people paced quickly and stressfully through Grand Central station, bumping against me, anxiously trying to make their trains; the taxi cab driver, who, by the way, clearly didn’t know his way around New York City, reminded me accusingly and impatiently to pay him his owed amount plus tip after dropping me off in Queens.

But like water rolling off a duck’s back, these typically frustrating scenarios bounced off me, and the negative psychological responses went somewhere else. I was the luckiest girl in the world- I’d experienced a summer like never before, a program that gave me skills for life, doing things people may never do in their lifetime- I witnessed a schechting, I harvested my own vegetables, I found a soul sister, I spoke deeply and articulately to my peers, something that frequently comes difficult in the fast-paced NYC. I collected eggs from the chicken coop, took out my own food compost, and watched it turn back into soil.

I would never see that taxi driver again- as for the Isabella Freedman, I plan to return for the High Holidays and frequent Shabbatot thereafter. It’s long-lasting, and those in New York will soon learn from the farming and sustainability measures, and attitudes of those in this mishpacha (family), and kehillah (community). I feel blessed to have gone, and to return and educate New York City on what life is really all about.