by Petra Herceg

Created on: January 16, 2007   Last Updated: April 17, 2007

When I graduated from Ridgefield High School in June of 2003, I made a risky decision to move to Brooklyn, NYto go out on my own in the world instead of going off to college like everybody else I knew. I moved into a small cramped apartment on Kings Highway, one of the busiest commercial areas in the city, and also home to one of the world's largest Jewish communities. I had found a room for rent from an Israeli who I had met in Manhattan on a trip with a friend. Not being Jewish, I had never really consciously met anyone from Israel, let alone live with them, and the idea of this completely new experience left me craving to learn all about the culture, language and people who were raised in what I thought for the longest time was a war zone.

Growing up, I had always had a fascination with Israel...I remember going to bookstores with my father and flipping through the pages of picture books, looking at Jerusalem, the religious Jews praying at the Kotel (The Americans know it as the Western Wall), the desert mountains and the endless stretches of beach that run for hundreds of miles along the Mediterranean and Red Seas. I could never really pinpoint where my interest in the Holy Land began, and during my time in New York, it became a joke amongst me and the 4 other Israelis who shared our apartment, that I must have been an Israeli in a past life.
Growing up with a natural talent for languages (I grew up speaking Hungarian at home with my parents and studied Spanish for 7 years) I immediately began to pick up Hebrew when I moved into the apartment. The Israelis I lived with all spoke perfect English, like almost all Israelis do nowadays, something I didn't really expect when I was introduced to them. However, they were thrilled at my enthusiasm to learn their language, although they joked that they couldn't talk about me behind my back anymore because I understood too much. Within 3 or 4 months, I could read, write and speak Hebrew on a basic level, but still well enough to astound the myriad of Israelis whom I worked with and met, especially in Greenwich Village.
On my 19th birthday on April 1, I received the greatest, most eye opening and valuable gift I have ever and probably will ever receive. My boyfriend (who was one of my roommates) and another member of our small international family decided that since I had worked so hard learning the language and showed such a profound interest in their native country they would buy me a ticket to Israel so that I

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