Yom Yerushalayim

To be honest, I don't know that I've ever given Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Reunification Day) all that much thought in the past. Possibly last year, because that was the first Yom Yerushalayim since I'd left Israel, which made it the first Yom Yerushalayim where I had a personal, experience-based connection. Strangely, even though I haven't been back in a year and half, this Yom Yerushalayim is on my mind far more.

I've never known a world in which Yerushalayim was not wholly ours. I cannot imagine an Israel in which Yerushalayim is divided. I cannot imagine a world without Israel, for that matter. So I find myself wondering why Yom Yerushalayim should mean so much more to me today than it ever has before.

Maybe it's because I'm planning my VFI trip for this August, and can therefore envision being in Yerushalayim again in only a few months. Maybe it's because only yesterday I called the local shaliach, and asked them to send me materials on graduate school programs for olim. Maybe it's because I sat down with my parental units last night, to talk about the possibility of me getting my MSW from Hebrew U, and found that they're completely willing to research and plan this possibility with me.

I've known for a while now that after next summer, I'll go back to school for my Master's. It's a stirring thought that, in only a couple of years, I could be going back to school in Yerushalayim, as an Israeli.