John Leonard currently lives in the Queen City - Charlotte, NC. You can read about his three years in Israel at Nun Bet.

My relationship with Israel began in a wooden church pew in a small North Carolina town. As a boy growing up in a conservative Baptist family, I was at church at least three times a week: twice Sunday and once on Wednesday night. My black, faux leather-bound, zip-up childhood Bible had pictures and maps of the Holy Land. Bored in the church services, I would flip through these images and imagine what that foreign land must be like. Little did I know that about twenty years later I would be able to see these place in person.

In 2002 I was hanging out with friends in a dance club in Chapel Hill, NC. I saw a cute guy on the dance floor and approached him. We shouted to each other over the loud music but mainly we communicated with our eyes and bodies. He asked me how old I was and not believing me, he asked to see my ID. I was 25. Later in the evening my friends and I were walking to my car. I was telling them about a boy I’d met that I though was cute. Just then I heard someone shouting and saw them running toward my car, “John! John!” It was Y, the guy I had met, and he had written his email address on a tiny slip of paper. I still have that paper - somewhere.

My relationship with Y bloomed. He was Israeli and studying at a local university. I lived in a nearby city. Eventually we moved in together and I had my first chance to visit Israel. When he returned to Israel for a school break, I traveled to visit him there. We didn’t travel together so I arrived in Israel all by myself and half asleep from the long flight but totally petrified. This was back when they used the old terminal at Ben Gurion airport and you got bused from the plane to the terminal. Y drove me from the airport to his family’s home in Pizgat Ze’ev. I was gobsmacked as we drove on the highway past beautiful scenery and checkpoints where people younger than me were armed with automatic guns.

When Y finished his Ph.D., he went on the job market both in the US and in Israel. He landed a job in Israel working for the Supreme Court. I decided to leave my life in the US and move with him to Israel. I sold just about everything and came to Israel with what would fit in two big suitcases.

We settled into Jerusalem life - Y went to work and I went to ulpan. It’s hard to find the words to describe how difficult this was for me. The first two weeks sort of felt like vacation. Everything was still novel. However as the weeks went on, I began to feel very isolated. More and more I realized the difficulties of starting over in a foreign land. Over time this changed however. There were benchmarks like when I was able to determine the value of something in shekels without having to convert it in my head to US dollars. Or the day I realized that I now knew how much it should cost to get just about everywhere in the city in a taxi - so I could tell when the driver was trying to screw me. Or when I would sing along to a song in Hebrew on the radio and I knew what the song was about. Or when something happened on the news and I understood most of the story.

One of the neatest things about my time in Israel is that I could actually live there. I am not Jewish. However, the State of Israel recognized my committed same-sex, unmarried relationship with Y as a legitimate one. There was a process (a long drawn-out one) for me to become a legal permanent resident in Israel - with health and social security benefits just like everyone else.

Y’s project at the Supreme Court ended and we moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I LOVE TEL AVIV! The glorious Mediterranean weather suited me well. I got a good job working in retail and used Hebrew every day with the customers. It wasn’t perfect, but going from zero to conversational Hebrew in two years was nothing short of miraculous.

Eventually my relationship with Y changed and we decided to go in separate directions. I decided to move back to the US. Now after almost a year back in the States, I look at my time in Israel as a life-changing blessing. Somehow even those times when I felt helpless and hopeless in Israel - like crying in the grocery store because I couldn’t tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner - have made me stronger and more open. I’ve learned to ask for help. I learned that the world isn’t always hard, cold, and out to get you. My time in Israel helped me to become flexible and to accept life on life’s terms. So for this gay, goy boy from the foothills of North Carolina, Israel really became holy land.