In 1997, I Planted A Tree

In 1997, during my gap year in Israel before it was called a gap year, I planted a tree in Israel.

We will circle back to this, I promise.

 

When I decided to start seriously looking for a job a few months ago, I really hoped for two things — I wanted to avoid a giant commute and I wanted to continue working within the Jewish community.

I have done the downtown commute before (and lasted an entire eight months), and even though I became quite adept at reading books on my iphone while standing, and even though I always had stories-from-the-subway blog material aplenty, I hated losing so many hours of my day to public transit, and I realized I just wasn’t made for the wearing comfortable shoes, carrying uncomfortable shoes lifestyle.

If you take a glance at my resume, you will see that my career trajectory has been somewhat atypical. I worked in educational book publishing — where one of the highlights of my work included reading The Hunger Games before anyone knew who Jennifer Lawrence was. I worked for several incredible online digital parenting magazines, some that had virtual offices, some that had downtown cubicle filled offices, and some that had no offices at all. I worked in garbage, making it sexy — where one of the highlights of my work included buying a sweet pair of steel-toed boots for my field trip to the dump. No, really. I worked for a Jewish Day School — where one of the highlights was that my clients were 900+ kids.

But the real highlight there was that not only was I using the marketing, publishing, editing, writing, social media, design, and communications skills that I learned a million years ago in school and that I picked up along the way while I was working at book publishers, parenting magazines, and garbage companies, but I was using these skills  within my own community.

And I knew I never wanted to do anything else.

I have had many interviews over the last few months — for synagogues, for schools, for amazing organizations that are doing great things.

And then a friend sent me a job posting.

And then another friend sent the same posting.

And then another friend.

And then my husband.

And I knew it was meant to be.

And now I am so excited (read: nervouscited h/t My Little Pony) to tell you that starting in January I will be the new Marketing Manager at JNF Canada.

So not only will I now be able to tell you about planting trees in Israel — and sharing embarrassing photos — but since that’s only a tiny fraction of the unbelievable things that JNF has done, is currently doing, and will do in Israel, I — and you too, I hope — will now get to be a part of building the foundations of Israel’s future.