And now, the end is near; And so I face the final curtain...

This is it; tomorrow begins my last week as Hillel’s Communications Associate. I understand that my final day at Hillel is Friday, however, really starting this past week, I’ve been having a hard time grasping the fact that in five days I will no longer be employed by Hillel and six days after that, I will no longer be living in DC; It seems too surreal, almost as if part of me thinks something like this can’t possibly happen.

I’ve started to explain this strange and frustrating emotional state as my brain protecting itself from severe emotional distress. That theory is not entirely impossible. The body does a lot of weird things to protect itself from psychological harm: shock, suppression of memories, temporary blindness. Of course, there all occur in extreme situations and I wouldn’t consider my termination of employment at Hillel all that severe. But, I have become quite attached to my office and the people I work with and so it will be difficult to part with.

Hillel has been more than a job, it’s been my first internship and my first job out of college. It brought me to Israel three times, with a fourth one coming up next month. It stood me next to Josh Malina and Gideon Yago and brought me to the White House and the Pentagon. It turned me into a conference planner, bridge builder and public relations guru. But most importantly it took me on a wonderful exploration of who I am as a Jew and helped me discover that I wanted to be a Jewish educator.

There actually is an exact moment when I had this realization. As I described in one of my essays written in an attempt to become a prestigious Wexner Fellow:

“Ideas about graduate school started to gel for me while I was a first-time staff member for Hillel with Taglit-Birthright Israel. I was one of the youngest staff members, younger than many participants, but I volunteered, knowing this was a continuation of what I started at Hillel and in USY.

When my group arrived in Jerusalem, I explained the Shehechiyanu ceremony we were about to conduct. I stood on a chair in the middle of a Jerusalem restaurant, which behind panes of snow covered glass, overlooked the Old City, and peered down at 50 pairs of eyes gazing back at me. We were wet, we were cold, but we were sharing a powerful moment together, a moment I was creating.

As we reflected, I thought back to my days in Hagalil USY and in Hillel, where I was surrounded by individuals who shaped moments that brought meaning to the ways I practice Judaism and live my life and who inspired and challenged me to explore my Jewishness in ways that formal avenues of Jewish education did not. As an educator I get to do that, an amazing gift.”

I think what really throws me [about leaving Hillel] is how I convinced myself that my tenure there was going to last longer than the average two-year tenure. But things change, you never know where life is going to take you even if you have some sort of plan in your head. You don’t know what bumps or closed roads or detours you will encounter along the way that will force you or entice you to change course. Like my students on my Birthright trip, I had a life-changing experience and ran with it. Let’s hope it’s in the right direction.