The Watershed

This week I went with our 9th graders to Jerusalem. We came up from the east, coming into the city through the Judean desert.

This is Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, on the city limits of East Jerusalem.

Only two weeks ago we had climbed the hills up to Hadassah Medical Center on the western edge of the city.

We hiked in the shade of forests,

up dry beds of green wadis.

The contrast between east and west in Jerusalem is so striking because the city sits on a watershed.

Clouds come in from the sea and water the forests as they assend the mountains, and then at some point they hit hot air from the desert and dissipate.

My conversion to Judaism was the watershed of my life; what was before vaporized and what came after is a totally different landscape. But it wasn't a spiritual watershed. It was only the logical conclusion of a lifelong struggle with God, against God. Only much later came a time when I stopped and looked around, only to find myself in a spiritual wilderness.

.

Becoming a Jew was no doubt the turning point of my my life, but the wind changed and I came to a place where I turned around. That was the watershed of my soul.