Israel is on my mind. Again. I just got back (well, a few weeks ago) from another trip there, this time for a month (not long enough!) as a staff member for a B'nai B'rith Youth Organization teen tour. I am grateful to be able to experience Israel from a completely different perspective and in an entirely different role from one trip to the next.

Surprisingly (to myself, although I don't really know why, looking back at the trips I've been on), this trip included a lot that I've never before seen or done. It was really great on both a personal level and a community level to have so many new experiences myself and to see and participate in parts of Israel that were almost as new for me as they were for some of the others. (I say "almost" because I appreciate now how much of a difference is made by basic surroundings in how familiar or foreign an experience can feel; and now that I am familiar with Israel, the newness of the never-before-seen-or-done is much less jarring. From my own experience, I can appreciate and relate to the fact that, whereas this was cool new stuff for me, for some of them it was more like cool new stuff on Mars.)

I did have one slightly shocking new-for-me experience: leading Shacharit services during our first Shabbat for 45 kids, two other North American staffers and one Israeli tour guide, for most of whom (students) this was a weird, foreign practice ("I haven't been to temple since my bar mitzvah") and to several of whom every utterance of Hebrew was, "oh my gosh this is soooo Jewish."

Sitting in the blazing sun, without a plan, without a script, with only a hidden-until-exposed well of Jewish-services knowledge (kind of like that song on the radio you haven't heard in a decade that you couldn't state the words to if you tried, but all the right words seem to come out at just the right time as you sing along) and my (so-glad-to-have-acquired) comfort/lack of fear at being in front of a group of students having no real idea what I'm going to say.

Improv Shacharit. It was amazing.

And I don't mean, "Wow, this was, like, totally the best Shacharit ever; *damn* I'm good!"

I mean amazing as in, this is me, the one for whom services is, let's say, not a strong point -- I really don't know what comes in what order, when to sit or when to stand (I need stage directions!), what is repeated aloud and how many times, what is said silently and where to pick up communal verbally. I'm never the one leading services at home; I'm usually participating from afar (by a few feet) while taking care of last-minute Shabbat dinner preparations in the dining room.

And here we were, Shabbat morning, setting up the chairs, going, "What are we going to do about services? Should one of us lead? What's going on?" Next thing you know, I'm up, drawing from my exposure to the communal davening of three of the four Jewish communities in which I am most active: the two Jewish communities in which I teach -- my inclusion in both stemming from a connection made through Moishe House Silver Spring -- and our monthly Shabbat services there.

It's so interesting to me when I take notice of my own growth, when I recognize skill sets and behaviors, thought processes and areas of comfort and confidence previously undeveloped (or simply, obliviously, absent). Time and again, I find myself in a situation in which I recognize, very clearly, that my arrival to that place and time, that the connection, my experience, my ability to contribute can be credited to my involvement with Moishe House Silver Spring.

Rachael A. Freedman lives in Moishe House Silver Spring. Moishe Houses serve as residential community centers for young Jews, ages 21-30.