Leah Jones is a writer and occasional talker based in Chicago where she pens the blog Accidentally Jewish. The former stand-up comic is now the Digital-Culture Evangelist in Edelman Digital and she’s an active ROInik.

March 11, 2004

I’m working in London where I manage an international student residence. We have 24 hour security and the guys who work nights and weekends are all Israeli. The weekend after the bombings in Madrid, I walk with my Spanish students through the streets of London to the consulate. There we light candles, leave notes and walk back with the Spanish flag between. “Todos somos Madrilenos.”

One of my Israeli guys says to me, “Leah, if we stopped working every time a bomb went off in Israel, we wouldn’t get things done. This is life.”

July 2005

One of my closest friends is back from his annual family trip to Israel. We are in his car, driving to dinner and he gives me a souvenir. It’s is wrapped in that perfect way gifts are wrapped in Jerusalem shops and is a kiddush cup. I’d asked him for one, it was the only major item missing from my household Judaica that I started collecting when I decided to convert to Judaism.

Around the base was a Hebrew phrase and with my very beginning Hebrew skills, I sounded it out. I’m sure it was painful for him to listen to me butcher his first language, but I was triumphant at the end. “Ha… ga…. fen!”

March 2006

Just four months after my conversion and I was in Israel. I went with a group from the JUF in Chicago to TelAviv1. Two nights in Jerusalem for Shabbat at the David Citadel, then a mad dash to Tel Aviv for the conference, then a few days alone tacked onto the end.

Masada? Check.

Dead sea? Check

Kotel for kabbalat Shabbat? Check. Check.

Avocados, strawberry juice, cheese, Israeli salad, falafel, coffee, wine. Israel tasted great. Oh and I felt safe. I could safely go home and tell my mom that the, “When you die in Israel, what should I do with your body?” conversation hadn’t been needed after all.

On my way out of the country, I explained to El Al that I wasn’t visiting family. In fact, I don’t have family in Israel, because I converted. The agent pulled all of the stickers she’d put onto my luggage off and put a new color sticker on them. Then she sent me through extra security.

July 2007

I lie in a bed in my private room in a Tel Aviv hostel, wondering why I’d paid for a single room and not paid for air conditioning. I can’t tell if I am incapacitated from the heat or from jet lag, so I don’t move until the sun sets and then I go to the beach.

After a couple days, I go up to Jerusalem and drag my luggage up Ben Yehuda from Zion Square. I have a map, but more important I seem to have an inner magnet that helps me find my way around the city. I spend the next few days at the ROI120 conference, then finish the trip with a Chicago friend in Jerusalem and on my own in Haifa.

When I leave Israel I’m prepared. This time I have my beit din papers to prove I’m Jewish. I still have my luggage searched and all my gifts unwrapped. At 2:45 in the morning am sobbing while an El Al agent looks for a siddur for me to read from, to prove I can read Hebrew with vowels.

May 2008

I’m going to Israel again this summer for ROI120. I consider myself very lucky to have gone to Israel once a year since my conversion, but each trip makes me sad that the country I love so much doesn’t count me as a Jew because Reform rabbis supervised my beit din and mikvah.

Despite that twinge of not counting, I still love to laugh in Israel, walk in Israel, eat in Israel, listen in Israel, watch in Israel, smell in Israel, dream in Israel, and pray in Israel. I am beside myself that I get to do all of these things again, this summer that she turns 60, and hope I can again and again and again. I’d like to keep writing postcards to Israel.