Everyone knows that when Israel faces a crisis, the country unites as the deep divisions evaporate and the toxic rhetoric disappears. All of a sudden, we come together – at least for a few days or weeks. At least until the next crisis.
Something else happens every time there’s a crisis: I hear from friends and acquaintances I haven’t heard from in years, sometimes decades.
“Herb,” wrote a friend from college I haven’t seen since 1980, “Thinking about you and praying for you and your family. I don’t know how or what I could ever do beyond that, but I hope if you think of something, you’ll let me know.”
Another friend, this one from elementary school, wrote: “Herbie, we are concerned by the events of the last two days, and I’m praying you and your family are okay. Please reach out if you’re able when you have time and just let me know you’re all right.”
And this, from a good friend from graduate school – a kindred spirit from South Dakota whom I unfortunately simply lost contact with: “Herbacious, long time, no write… Can’t imagine what life is like in the Holiest of your basic Holy Lands right now. People here lose their minds if the cable goes out for five minutes.”
These messages – some coming via Facebook, others through email – are oddly comforting.
Odd, because why do the good wishes of someone I haven’t seen in 40 years and may never see again mean anything? And comforting, precisely because they do mean something.
It's nice to know that someone out there is thinking about you and wishing you well. Goodness knows, and as the Iranians remind us daily, there are plenty of folks not wishing us well. In fact, wishing us dead.
And secondly, there’s something nice about making contact with someone from the distant past.
As immigrants, many of us – especially those not from large Jewish communities like New York, Los Angeles, or London, which have substantial contingents of olim – leave behind not only family but also a whole universe of old friends. Childhood friends, high school buddies, college roommates… people who knew you when.
We tend to stay in touch with family, at least the nuclear family. After all, they’re family. But old friends? Less so, except perhaps for those one or two exceptionally good ones. But the rest? They often fade from our lives, not because of any rupture but simply because time and distance have a way of doing that.
I envy this about my sister, who still lives in Denver. The friends she has in her late 60s are the same ones she had in her early teens. Her best friends today are the same ones who went to her bat mitzvah and danced at her wedding.
That’s not the case for many olim, who make good friends after moving here but often lose touch with the people they grew up with – the ones who shared their formative years in elementary school, high school, and college; who knew where they lived and who their parents were. The kind of friends who remember the make of your first car, who you first dated, and what stroke you swam on the swim team.
There’s only one person in Israel who danced at my wedding – besides The Wife – and I’m not in touch with him because he lives in another community.
So, that soft cushion of long-ago friendships is no longer there. Which is why I enjoy getting these “I was thinking of you” emails during a crisis. They jog the memories, trigger a brief email exchange, and quench the curiosity about “whatever happened to…?” at least for a little while.
Goodwill messages make you feel less alone
Besides the nostalgia – and that is a big part of it, a part that gets bigger as I grow older – there’s something else, too: These messages of goodwill make you feel less alone.
As a nation, these last couple of years, and especially the past few weeks, have been trying and isolating. Let’s face it: We’re not exactly the world’s flavor of the month. I get these messages, especially when they’re from non-Jews, and think (perhaps reading more into them than intended): “Whoa, we do have some support out there.”
The Wife, who, naturally, gets more of these messages from old friends than I do, often uses the opportunity to write back and engage in some serious public diplomacy. It gives her an outlet to comment on what’s really happening in Israel and the Middle East.
I have an outlet; it’s called writing for The Jerusalem Post. So I generally write emails back with an odd reminiscence or a question about whether my old friend is still a Chicago Cubs fan. We’ll exchange one or two more emails, and then the correspondence tapers off… until the next crisis, which, unfortunately, has meant we’ve been in some pretty constant contact lately.
But there's also a dark side to these messages, or a dark side in me that these messages expose. If I get a message from X, I’ll be pleased and run to tell The Wife, “Honey, you’ll never believe who wrote me today.”
But instead of just pocketing that and saying, “Wow, it was really nice of Jordan to be thinking about me and my family,” I’ll also be thinking, “Hmm, if Jordan reached out, how come Jeff didn’t?”
And the more I think about it, the more I’ll start getting really worked up about Jeff. “What a jerk,” I’ll think, somewhat irrationally, given that I haven’t seen the guy in almost half a century.
Strangely, however, even that moment of annoyance brings a kind of comfort. Not because I like being irritated – I genuinely don’t – but because it means those old friendships are still deeply ingrained in my psyche. That some part of me still expects something from them.
And that’s the heart of it: These messages, however brief, remind me that those old connections aren’t entirely gone. Just tucked away. It’s always nice to hear from some old friends. The others? Well, maybe during the next crisis.