From here, from there, from everywhere Yael

Yael Pless

Some say home is where the heart is, others may define home on a more factual, less emotional level, perhaps based on the house they go to for Christmas every year - begrudgingly or excitedly. One may also feel that home is strictly ancestral, where parents or grandparents are from… But how about those who don’t associate a particular place or country with being their “home”, those whose roots have, in recent generations, been scattered across many areas, wandering, adrift and unsure of where to make their landing? When I glance at my right hand, I see a ring, engraved with three letters. It is proof resting heavy on my hand, reminding me of a history lesson not too far in the past, the story representative of many who lost their homes to tyrannical rule, the ones who forcefully suspended the classic idea of where and what a home is, and never returned to it as it was.

On the index finger of my right hand, I wear a ring that previously belonged to my grandfather’s uncle. Sadly, he did not leave Nazi Germany in time to be spared the horrors of being deported to a concentration camp, while his brother, my great-grandfather, did. The owner of the ring, unlike his wife and daughter, miraculously made it out of the camps alive and went on to attempt to rebuild his life, as best as he could, having endured what he did. On the other hand, my great grandfather decided, like a number of other people who feared for their lives, to flee to Peru shortly after the war began. Therefore, my mom was later born in Latin America, despite being of German descent and having no connections to South America. After growing up in Western Europe, spending some years in the United States, and ultimately raising her children back in Europe, this left me and my siblings with the contemplation: Where are we really from? Where is “home”?

Trying to pinpoint our home has become like watching a particularly electrifying game of tennis, where you whip your head back and forth, attempting to make sense of the game - it ends up being rather amusing. Every time we became aware of yet another family member that lived in an unlikely place, more pieces were added to the puzzle. I never really had concrete answers for people who would ask where I am from, why we kids have American passports, were raised in Europe and have parents who speak Spanish like Latinos yet have few other connections to the country they were born in. When I began studying at university and we were asked to introduce ourselves in the first classes, people confidently said their name and where they were from. I always went with the last country I had lived in, seeing as I spent a great deal of time there and identified it as my home in many respects, but it was never a key part of my identity. While this dilemma didn’t keep me up at night, it made me more curious, and led me to do an at-home DNA testing kit for fun - it turned out that ethnically I am mainly Eastern European, and have an Italian and Scandinavian background, too. Nevertheless, this did not hold much significance because I have no connection to those places either, so they may be my roots, but definitely not my home. There are countless other stories that may not start with the relatively tragic baseline I just outlined, but have other origins that result in equally head-scratching results. Undoubtedly, the kid who grew up living in a different country every two years because of their parents’ work or the quadrilingual one whose mom and dad lived in different countries and therefore spent their semesters ping-ponging back and forth between them have been confronted with a similar dilemma and leads back to the same question - where is home?

When one thinks of the loss of home, in any sense, many would presumably think of the war in Ukraine. By the time the war hits its one-year mark, it will have caused the displacement of roughly eight million Ukrainians. Presumably, a great deal of them will not return to what was initially home for them. The Holocaust, and its inextricable link to World War II, is far from being the only catalyst that has caused countless people to drop everything that was known to them and resulted in a loss of identity, home and safety. The immediate consequences are visible in death, hunger, grief… the longer-term consequences may appear less severe, yet the ghost of the suffering borne by those before us manifests itself in other ways. Decades from now, when the fire of the war in Ukraine hopes to be extinguished, there will be new generations who question their heritage, their origin and where home truly is. Although this leads to new horizons and new opportunities, and does not need to be taken as wholly bad, it is worth considering the consequences, as everyone interprets things in a way that is personal to them.

“The true feeling of home cannot be erased - its form is adaptable.”

If someone feels physically removed from where home is to them, they may choose to keep that connection alive through music, culture, traditions or religion, to name a few. Or, maybe home really is where the heart is, like said in the beginning. More often than not, joyful company can provide a more profound feeling of home than a place. Others may be primarily focused on the literal sense of a home because in any case the fundamental practice of gratitude can begin with appreciation for our livelihood and having a roof over our heads. Ultimately, I look at the ring on my right index finger and see wisps of history that remind me of where home could have been, where it was for someone else, and inspires me to keep searching for mine, too.