Personal Narrative: My New American Culture

My love of cultures didn’t blossom overnight; instead, on a thirteen-hour plane ride, I began, unknowingly, the longest journey of my life. At the age of eight, my large eyes darted back and forth across the aisles, trying to find comfort among the sea of peculiarity. As the plane flew over the vast Atlantic Ocean, farther and farther away from home, I felt lost and vulnerable. Most kids dream of flying 30,000 feet over land, but for me, this flight was a nightmare. I had left everything I had known; my friends, family, and identity, thousands of miles behind. Standing barely four feet tall, my eyes sagged, and my shoulders shrugged. Not because of the newly acquired jet-lag, but because of the hollowness within. My Israeli name carried no weight anymore, rather it floated like the plane, high above the sea, in the middle of nowhere.
The leaves transformed from a
dark green to fiery orange, marking the beginning of the year, and more importantly, the start of school. School had loomed over my mind the entire summer, bringing with it my deepest fears and anxieties. All my friends had started school, but they were in Israel. Here, in America, I had no friends. I wanted to scream for help, to beg for an identity, but I was mute. I couldn’t speak English.
For weeks and months, life was undeniably difficult.
I had to learn a new language, make new friends, and become accustomed to a different culture. As I began assimilating and made more friends, I started to appreciate my new American identity and became more comfortable in my new home. Unfortunately, as I undertook my new identity, I threw any last remnants of my old, Israeli identity behind. My Hebrew, being surpassed in usage by English, deteriorated, alongside my connections with friends and family in Israel. The eight-year-old who stepped off the plane many years ago no longer existed, rather, a thirteen-year-old American through and through took his place.
On my thirteenth birthday, for my Bar-Mitzvah, an honorary celebration of manhood in the Jewish community I barely belonged to, I returned home for the first time. As we pulled up in front of the old apartment building I lived in for eight years, a single tear rolled down my cheek. I cried not because I had finally returned home, but because “home” was unrecognizable. My true home was thousands of miles back, across the vast
ocean.
As the trip concluded, the lures of the Middle East grasped onto me, leaving my feet bolted to the ground, unable to leave. The hollowness I felt years ago was the result of the suppression of my Israeli identity, my own doing. As I boarded the plane to leave Israel, like I had done on the dark night eight years ago, I realized I could live with my hybrid identity. I could be both Israeli and American. That moment marked my transition from a lost boy, clinging from one identity to another, to a young adult, proud of his hybridity. After years of learning about myself through the different cultures I experienced, I now seek more cultures to experience, so I can learn about others, while learning about myself as well.