Summer was alright, but it’s time for a new season. 🍃…thank you to the magical, talented 📸 @cristinafisher_ for this first photo⚡️🔮

It’s cool to notice the flowers in bloom. 🌻

May your new year be filled with light. 💫🌟🌙 I’m both obsessed with change and terrified of it. I’d be lost without friendship. ☺️🙏

Not pictured: insomnia, coffee, intermittent numbness, more coffee, self-doubt, cutting back on caffeine, reaching for certainty, attempting to write my way through stuckness toward clarity, and of course, the moments in between.

Page one // a new direction.

The closest I’ve come to truth lately is in fiction. 🫶 @benningtonwritingseminars 🤗 What a ride the last two years have been. @ rachelelam.com

So I leaned over the edge of the cliff, waiting for the sea to catch me.

I remember the gumball machine and the plastic table where we’d eat freshly picked figs. Dod Nissim smoking a cigar and the raspy voice of Doda Evelyn. The memories aren’t only from the Summer of 1988, but from a shattered, once-colorful mosaic that I’m trying to piece back together. I remember the flour-coated table where we rolled out dough to bake pitot. Neighbors at the moshav coming over, unannounced, to play shesh besh. And over Passover, my Sephardic family tossed brown eggs across the table and sang a Seder of songs with laughter and percussion. A holiday that marks the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. A pursuit of freedom. A path toward redemption. Right now, it feels as if our world is enslaved by polarities: right vs. wrong, mine vs. yours, good vs. evil. In the Summer of 1988, I sat on this tractor with my brother, on a moshav where a close knit community anchored their livelihood on harmony and respect. My mind is overwrought with questions. My heart, aching for answers. Where did we go wrong as humanity? How can we explain prejudice and misunderstanding? How many more deaths will it take until this nightmare of a war will come to an end?

This is my Aunt Orly at the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa. For followers of the Bahá’í Faith, the place represents holy pilgrimage, but its magnificence and message extends to people of all faiths and backgrounds. During period of intense violence in Iran in 1819, the Báb announced Himself as a prophet to usher in peace. The Baha’i forbid holy war (jihad) and promote equality of women and education for all. The Báb was declared a heretic and his followers were tortured and killed. He was kidnapped and imprisoned for years before being publicly executed in the center of his town. As punishment for mobilizing people toward equanimity, his death was witnessed and reported on by western press and the world. Before and after we toured the Gardens, my Aunt Orly took us to her favourite Turkish coffee roaster. We popped in and out of some of the vintage shops she loves. We walked around the windy cobblestone roads of Haifa, a city where Arabs and Jews live the same apartment buildings as neighbors and friends without turmoil. We ate at the falafel shop across from a mosaic with doves, a universe voice of peace. My Aunt has three doves tattooed to keep her three children close to her heart. Her daughter, a social worker in the army who supports soldiers from troubled backgrounds; one son who left university last Saturday to head to the front lines of war and another who volunteers at hospitals while he stands by for a call. In the reality of irrevocable devastation, may we turn to the survivors of the Baha’i faith and their allied friends, who made sure the message of peace could be passed on. The Báb was never allowed a proper burial. His remains were dumped and guarded by soldiers to prevent reclaiming them. But somehow, his followers secretly rescued and then hid remains for another fifty years until they could be brought to the Holy Land and buried on Mount Carmel. What began as a simple stone headstone evolved into a stunning Shrine with immaculate, masterfully-tended Gardens, a destination of hope for communities, a UNESCO spot. In this face of tragedy, war, and fear, may we do our best to stand together. May we imagine the possibility of peace to come. 🕊️

These pomegranates are abundant in the Old City of Jerusalem. Last summer, when I had one and then another, I can’t tell you whether it was from the Armenian Quarter, Christian Quarter, Jewish Quarter or the Muslim Quarter, because they are all the same pomegranates from the same land in the same area that celebrates four different communities and their histories in Israel. The pomegranate has many meanings across religions. In Christianity, it’s a symbol of resurrection and life everlasting. In the Holy Quran, The Prophet states says that Whoever eats a pomegranate, Allah will light his heart forty nights. In Judaism, they are believed to have 613 seeds like the 613 commandments of the Torah; they symbolize good deeds, and we are encouraged to each one seed at a time to fulfill as many wishes as possible. I wish for peace. I wish for a world to come together with a shared honor of the living and a shared mourning of the innocent lives lost. I wish we could dismantle terrorist ideology and coexist in harmony. Today, on the Global Day of Jihad, many Jewish parents are not sending their children to school. Many people are afraid to leave their homes. Everyone has a right to speak up for their beliefs. The fear is not from a difference or opinions. It’s a fear of violence extending even further as protests rise around the world. Like many of you, I am at a loss for words. I hold your hearts in mine so that we can grieve and wish together.