c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Adam Tilove grew up in suburban Philadelphia and graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in December 1994. He now lives in the Israeli town of Herzliyah, near Tel Aviv.)

HERZLIYAH, Israel (RNS)-My flight to Israel left Newark International Airport on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. I liked to say that I chose this date because Israel was “my girl,” but it was just a coincidence, if there is such a thing.

My relationship with my adopted homeland began to unfold in my teen-age years. I was bar mitzvahed, belatedly, at the age of 16 and first traveled to Israel in 1995, after earning a bachelor’s degree in religion from Emory University. This time, I was returning to become a citizen. Just why I had decided to become an Israeli was a bit of a mystery to my family, even before all that’s happened since I’ve arrived.

I would explain to my friends that I was in love with Israel. I knew she wasn’t perfect, but I loved her for her faults as well as her many virtues. I knew that as in any relationship, there would be highs and lows. What did I know?

During my first week in Israel, I rode a wave of pure joy. I traveled from Yavne to Jerusalem to Ashkelon to Tel Aviv to Herzliyah, bouncing from one friend to the next. I’d ride the bus to Jerusalem to spend the weekend with Shoshi, who, at 19, is in the Army. Then we’d hop another bus to Tel Aviv for a party at a bar on the beach. From there it was off to visit friends in Ashkelon, where I could take a look at the place I’d be spending the next five months studying Hebrew.

I felt as if I was making friends and spreading happiness everywhere. My phone list was growing exponentially.

But on Sunday, Feb. 25, I awoke in Herzliyah to a phone that started ringing and would not stop. Two attacks had occurred-one in Jerusalem, where I had just been, and one in Ashkelon, where I was headed.

I called Shoshi in Jerusalem to see if she was all right. No one was home. I couldn’t think of anyone else I knew who would have been on that bus so early in the morning. I wanted to call home, but it would be 1 a.m. and I didn’t want to wake my parents. So I called my brother, a senior at Oberlin College, to tell him I was OK. I cried with frustration and sorrow as I told him what was happening. He didn’t really know what to say. Neither did I.

A week later, I was staying in Jerusalem at the house of a friend, Michelle, who is from Chicago and works at a bagel cafe called Bonkers. She left for work, but 10 minutes later she was back. Once again, I woke to word of a bus being blown up. Michelle said she was afraid to ride her bus to work alone. I said I would go with her and began to pack my bag. I was confused, dazed.

“What the hell am I doing?” I said out loud, holding my boot in my left hand, and my forehead in my right. I started to cry. Michelle reminded me she was late for work. We boarded a nearly empty bus; it took an alternate route downtown. The few people on board eyed each other with suspicion.

At Bonkers, I ate a bagel and sipped a double espresso and at some point realized that the bus that had exploded just hours before was only a few blocks away. I wandered over and gazed at the scattered, mangled debris amid blocks of blown-out windows. Hundreds of people milled about, to catch a glimpse of something, or each other, to be together. A young man, in the black and white garb of a religious Jew, was aimlessly kicking a piece of metal as I tried to figure out what function it might have served when it was part of that bus.

For the first time I realized that a bus bomb is a bombed bus. Stupid, isn’t it?

For the first time, also, I thought about the difference between grief and misery. Grief is an emotion, something you feel, like happiness or pride or embarassment. Misery is a state of being that devours everything else. I was tired. I didn’t smile. I cried.

And then Monday, the very next day, another bomb exploded on a street corner in Tel Aviv that just about every Israeli has walked. A dozen dead, well more than 100 wounded. Those who survived may never walk or write or see again.

I went with two friends to donate blood, but the banks were full to overflowing. They could take no more blood.

On the way home, we talked politics. Three weeks ago I was innocent, fresh off the boat, arguing in the streets with both Jews and Arabs for moderation, to “give peace a chance.” Now I was filled with a fury I had never known. Like an animal, I just wanted to kill and be done with it. “Kill them all and let God sort them out,” I said to my friends, blurting out an expression I had heard, but never used or really understood before.

On this day I did not cry, not a single tear.

Now my anger is subsiding. But I am not who I was three weeks ago, three weeks of as much joy and sorrow as I had known in the 24 years I have lived so far.

“Are you still glad you came here?” people ask. I just answer, “I’m not sorry.” Nowhere else would I have felt and understood so much for the first time.

I now know that Israel is not my valentine. Israel is my wife and I am here, for better or worse, till death do us part.

MJP END TILOVE