But I realized, too, that if I walk around with balled fists, I will not be able to grasp anything new either

I

just threw out my last Israeli bag. It was blue and white, and it proclaimed: “Over 100 years of Clalit!” Although as far as I know, there was no medical insurance then, just a small hospital somewhere on Yaffo. The bag was from the pharmacy in Shefa, and it held a Hebrew-lettered box of medication that had long expired.

For a while after moving back to the States, I preserved every bag like a forensic scientist. I could not let go. I would not.

Bags in Israel are precious — the thick ones, that is. They carry teaching papers and sippy cups and passports and can even serve as evening bags. It’s normal to see a bearded man holding a purple bag from the hosiery store, and it’s normal to shake out the Photo Geula bag your son used as a lunch box and fold it away for tomorrow.

After I moved, the Israeli bags meant something else entirely. It wasn’t about function. It was about holding on. There was so much I had to keep in my desperate grip.

It was the culture, the people, and the mentality I vowed not to forget. It was the scrawl of my nine-year-old son’s friend in his autograph book, right next to the picture of an airplane, warning him not to become influenced by the secular culture around him. It was the way Hashem was woven in to everyday conversation, the normalcy of sobbing like a baby at the Kosel, the way every neighborhood sparkled with luminaries who walked with shoulders bent in humility.

But it was also the things that comprised the fabric of my life, the things that filled my daily planner for so many years.