Marcia Kashdan Ofri

When I review my life, I see the undirected person I was when I left high school and find it difficult to see in that girl the person I am today.  Curly hair and the love of simplicity are the attributes that carry over from that person, but not much else.  Before going to NYU, my beloved  friend, Stephen Nassau, introduced me to an Israeli person who took me under his wing, guiding me, in this bustling university, to a table in the large cafeteria where Israeli  students banded together once during the day to take comfort in speaking the language for which  they didn't need their dictionaries.  It was here that I found friends in an instant bonding that happens to me until this day, and it was here that I met my future husband who would usher me though the next stages of my life that included two children, two mortgages, and finally the decision to leave the States to live in Israel in 1983.

I skim over the fact that I taught first grade for many years and learned to work in clay while raising two spectacular children though these were important events in my life.  In Israel I entered a program for teachers with the goal of teaching English as a second language.  I finally became the focused person I see myself as today and I invested heavily in learning the language enough so that when I get a job in a large city museum in Tel Aviv as a potter, I could explain to groups of children  in Hebrew the wonders of making pots on the wheel.  When finally I had enough synonyms  in Hebrew to finish people's sentences and to make jokes, I knew that I was ready to be a full fledged Israeli: I was in love with the Israeli self I had become.

Rather sadly, I am back in the States, divorced, living with an adorable ferret who patiently listens to me play Bach on the piano and Teleman  on the recorder with my ensemble group. Life goes on.