Dear Seminary Girl,

They're going to tell you to drink.

Because of the heat, they'll say.

Because the sun here is different.

It’s true.

The sun here is different. You should drink.

There are other truths. Truths that won’t be elucidated as clearly. Like the fact that soon, or at the end, or at some odd moment in the middle, you’ll find yourself all alone, far from the sun and the friends and the infinite talking, in thick velvety darkness. You’ll grope through that aloneness searching the night for answers to questions you don't know you have.

With moist eyes, you’ll find the stars. Stars that do not stay stagnant in the sky, stars that hang low, so that you may touch them. And there, where heaven and earth collide, you'll understand that it’s not just the sun — all the light here is different.

Dear seminary girl, you will walk. The length and breadth of this holy city, steps that will thunder through the upper realms for eternity. And you’ll find, while you walk, that the light that’s so different does not come only from above, but from below, as well. Beneath crumbling sidewalks and thatched rooftops, pockmarked buildings with old wrinkled faces, porches that boast flapping shirts and people you can't understand.

Dear seminary girl, as you walk, you will find brokenness. Or that which looks broken. Or that which you feel must be broken from the way it looks. But there will be light there, too. And maybe you’ll peel back the layers of rust to find it. And maybe you won’t.

You’ll miss home, seminary girl. Perhaps just once, on a drippy winter night, when you can't remember the rhythm of your father’s Kiddush, or maybe every morning as your feet smack the speckled tiles beside your bed. It will hurt. An ache felt in the back of the eyes, not easily blinked away.

The problem is, you'll miss home when you leave, too. You will wonder, at some point, while driving that car you so yearned for, how your feet ever left those tiles. You will find the very same ache pulsing behind your eyes, and sigh at the unfairness of being homesick while at home. The truth is, seminary girl, you may never feel fully home again, one leg on each continent, forever. A sobering thought, is it not? Welcome to the Diaspora you never realized you were part of.

They (you know... them) might tell you you're in a cloud. Because with all that light, and all that drinking, naturally you’ll grow. And you may grow so tall, so fast, that those small in stature won't be able distinguish where you end and the clouds begin. Ignore them. Smile. Then ignore them some more. Nicely though.

I'm going to tell you about the last day of seminary though it’s September, and you don't want to hear about it. It is cataclysmic. Tears flow in a river wholly disproportionate to the actual event, a salty ceaseless stream that only endings can produce. But there’s a disparity between the tears, you'll find.

The girls that drank in the light that is so different, who deeply inhaled the air that makes one wise, the ones who joined hands with the people they couldn’t understand, the ones who dug their fingers into the precious earth — their eyes will drip in a slow, steady beat.

But the girls who stood behind Plexiglas, snapped on white rubber gloves before getting close, the ones who craved the comforts of elsewhere, who made it their goal to stay exactly the same, those who eschewed experience for that which is less different — on the last day of seminary, they weep. Because for one moment, standing on the sidewalk parched and dry, blinking against the sun, they will understand that there are worse places to be than in a cloud.

It's a bitter thing to watch the weeping of someone who didn't drink enough.

I wanted to give you advice, seminary girl. But there’s too much to say and it’s all so individual and I don't know you... although I was you, once upon a time.

You'll have to figure it out for yourself, for all I can tell you with certainty is the same thing everyone else is going to tell you all year long.

Drink.

Deeply and constantly. Fill yourselves with this gift until it overflows for a lifetime.

Drink, dear seminary girl.

Because the sun here is different.

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 507)