Next year in Jerusalem

I’ve been sitting here for at least an hour staring at a flashing cursor an a blank word document trying to work out what on earth to write about. This definitely isn’t because I have nothing to say. It's because ’here’ is Jerusalem and Im not sure I’m ready to decipher everything that that is making me feel. 

The easiest feeling to identify is one of dejavu. The last time I was in Israel (last September) I was sat in the exact same chair in the exact same cafe writing an application blog for this student blogger role. If I’m being honest it was kind of a joke. Not because I didn’t take it seriously but because I’d never considered myself a journalist. A writer maybe, in ways, but not a journalist - I wasn’t looking for publication experience or anything like that. And it has turned out to basically be me publicly processing my life as a Jew and as a student (and also just generally). And that’s not to play down the fact that I really believe I have an important perspective that ought to be shared, just that it has been a much more reflective writing process than I ever expected.

So maybe its a good thing that I have to sit here forcing myself to somehow verbalise what I’m feeling.

Jerusalem feels the same, in the sense that it constantly feels like an evolving city whilst also being stuck in a stalemate in so many ways. Always moving but always still. The streets are moving and the stones are still. The skyline is expanding but the cranes always seem still. (I could go on and on, but I think that would be an easy way to avoid actually writing about how I feel).