Hurricane Sandy, From Afar

There are many challenges to being a dual citizen. For example: election season. For Israeli Americans, just as the American elections are winding down and we can stop the heated Obama vs. Romney debates, we have to gear up for Israeli elections, slated to take place in January. No breathers for us! We go straight from “I can’t believe you would vote for him!” to “I can’t believe you would vote for them!”

But last week, it was hard being an American living in Israel. As Hurricane Sandy churned up the East Coast, I was sitting here, in sunny Modiin, but my heart was there—with my family and friends, with our old shul, with our former neighbors and colleagues who live in Maryland, New Jersey and New York.

I struggled with a sense of helpless and impotence. I should be there! I thought. When friends wrote about being without power, about kids home from school all week, about cold and dark homes, I felt a strange but urgent desire to be with them. Instead of: “Phew, glad I’m over here, safe and warm!” I actually felt…guilty, like I should be there in the trenches, wondering how to keep my family warm and entertained, standing in line for hours to get gas, or maybe be one of the lucky, unscathed New Yorkers who could open my home to beleaguered friends and family.

The East Coast, for me, is not just a place I read about in the papers. It’s my old stomping grounds. It’s where I grew up, went to college, got married and started my family. It was a not-insignificant part of my life for many years. And no matter how much I love my new home, a piece of me will always be back in America.

The funny thing is, the feeling was reminiscent of a very similar emotion I used to experience when I lived in America. When I was there, and something happened here—a bus bombing, a hotel blown up, soldiers kidnapped, I felt the same lurch, the same visceral reaction. I should be there! I should be with my people, my nation! It was hard watching the suffering from afar. I longed to be there, physically, to experience the hard times and pull through, together.

In Psalms (91), God comforts His nation: Imo anochi b’tzarah. I am with you in your pain. I felt that, too, last week. Yes, I’m here, but my heart is with the people I know—and don’t know—on the East Coast.

The feeling is reminiscent of another verse. Judah HaLevi, the great medieval Jewish poet, laments: “Libi b’mizrach v’anochi b’sof ma’arav” (My heart is in the east, i.e. with Israel, and I am in the west.) In other words, no matter where I am physically located, my heart is always with Israel.

For dual citizens, the opposite is also true. It’s like having two children—you don’t forget the first when you have a second.

So I am in Israel, in (still) sunny Modiin. And I’ll do what I can, from afar, for the ravaged East Coast communities. But it won’t be enough.

This week, my heart is with America.