Receiving Clil

How a Hebrew verb is shaping my life in the Galilee

View from above Clil toward the Mediterranean Sea

Not long before I made aliya, I encountered a small but striking difference between English and Hebrew.

In English, people “make” decisions.

But in Hebrew, the verb is lekabel — we actively receive a decision.

The difference is subtle but suggests an entirely different posture toward life.

In English, agency is expressed as production.

In Hebrew, agency is responsiveness. It’s almost as if the decision is already made, and our job is to be quiet enough to receive it.

This idea has stayed with me. It describes not only my experience of deciding to make aliya, but also the posture I’m trying to live into now.

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Since I last wrote here, I moved into my new home in Clil, a truly unique community in the Upper Western Galilee foothills.

Unlike most of Israel, where housing is dense and vertical, Clil’s roughly 200 households are spread across an area roughly the size of downtown Minneapolis. Instead of skyscrapers, olive groves dominate the landscape. Or as one local said: “Clil has an excellent earth-to-asphalt ratio.”

Clil is filled with artists, musicians, educators, and practitioners of a diverse array of therapies. People here are warm and creative, and most of all, authentically living as themselves.

My colleague Rabbi Jill Avrin recently reminded me of a teaching from Rabbi Zusya of Anipoli, an 18th-century Hasidic master. As he lay on his deathbed, his students tried to comfort him, telling him he was as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham.

Reb Zusha replied:

When I appear before the Heavenly Court, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’

They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusha?’

I keep thinking about that teaching as I meet my neighbors here, who share an overriding willingness to live as their truest selves, receiving their path, and creatively bringing it to life.

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More than halfway through counting the Omer, we are well on our way to Shavuot, often called Zman Matan Torah, the time of the giving of the Torah. But the Hasidic masters argued: Torah is not only something that was given once. It is something we are to receive, again and again, every day.

In my first month here, this yin-yang of giving and receiving feels alive.

The Clil community WhatsApp group, some 380 members strong, is lively stream of requests and invitations. Many of my most meaningful moments here have come from this flow: accepting offers to join thoughtfully planned gatherings and saying yes to people requesting help.

Receiving Clil, receiving Israel, doesn’t mean understanding. Receiving means staying open to life as it unfolds, listening for the still, small voice that’s there to guide me toward tshuva, to return, closer to me.

If, that is, I’m quiet enough to hear it.