In the Diaspora, I’m playing two lies and a truth

On the last night of our adult Birthright volunteer trip in Israel, 20 of us gathered on the beach in Tel Aviv for dinner.

Our goal was to take a sunset dip, and then sit in the sand and drink. One last hurrah for our gaggle of 18 to 50-year-olds who had just survived a week of hard labour during Israel’s worst heat wave in two decades.

It was a perfect night — one of those evenings that shouldn’t exist, but somehow slip through the tangled web of the universe, demanding to be birthed into existence. And it was not the first time during the trip that a night like this had been laid into our waiting arms.

A few nights earlier, we’d sat out on the terrace of our hostel after Shabbat dinner. Just before midnight, someone asked how happy each person was, on a scale of one to 10.

We went around the table. “10,” one person said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open, but still 10,” another followed. “We’re drinking with friends on a summer night in Tel Aviv. There is nothing on this earth more perfect.” Tears came to my eyes as I had the gritty realisation that this was one of those pivotal memories around which our lives turn.

Then we played two truths and a lie. Of course the rules of the game preclude me from relaying any of our secrets, but we were in a bubble that night. We shared everything from unpopular political opinions to heartbreak, all while sitting next to a bomb shelter. We knew that if the sirens went off, we'd be a few feet away from safety, but there was no place more secure than the space we’d made together.