The leaves transformed from a …show more content…
I had to learn a new language, make new friends, and become accustomed to a different culture. As I began assimilating and made more friends, I started to appreciate my new American identity and became more comfortable in my new home. Unfortunately, as I undertook my new identity, I threw any last remnants of my old, Israeli identity behind. My Hebrew, being surpassed in usage by English, deteriorated, alongside my connections with friends and family in Israel. The eight-year-old who stepped off the plane many years ago no longer existed, rather, a thirteen-year-old American through and through took his place.
On my thirteenth birthday, for my Bar-Mitzvah, an honorary celebration of manhood in the Jewish community I barely belonged to, I returned home for the first time. As we pulled up in front of the old apartment building I lived in for eight years, a single tear rolled down my cheek. I cried not because I had finally returned home, but because “home” was unrecognizable. My true home was thousands of miles back, across the vast