At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of that pairing, but then I realized it perfectly mirrors the threshold I’m crossing.
Card 35, Desolation, may reflect my recognition that it was time to leave Israel. I had the chance to go a few years ago, but the thought of giving up on making a life there made me cry. I stayed. I struggled. I nearly didn’t make it through. After surviving a "dark night of the soul," I managed to pull myself together, but eventually, the signs became too clear to ignore. It was time to go.
Now I’ve been back in the United States for ten days. Despite the difficulties I anticipate lie ahead of me, I feel something stirring again, something I didn’t expect to find so soon: hope. That soft flame links directly to the second card I pulled, card 17, The Star. I sense that I’ve come back stronger, with a clearer view of the world. I’m more confident than I used to be. Less afraid of people. Less afraid of life. Nelise Carbonare Vieira connects Desolation with the Rider-Waite-Smith Nine of Wands, a figure who’s survived battles and still stands strong. My own keywords for the Nine of Wands are: stamina, prepared, firmly established, knowing whom to trust. That rings true. I’ve landed in a place where people care about me and have already done so much to help me begin again.
My keywords for The Star are gentler: hope, gratitude, clarity, grace, finding joy in the present, healing, inspiration, guiding others. It’s astonishing that hope is still part of my vocabulary, but it is. Visually, the card Desolation shows a woman mourning. Her blue and white dress and bowed posture mirror the figure in card 67, Veneration. She covers her eyes with one hand while reaching forward with the other. Kaplan says she is mourning the death of her husband. In the upper part of the cartouche are the hieroglyph for “gate” and the Hebrew letter peh (פ). Saturn, the planet of boundaries and discipline, marks the title field. Below is the Eye of Horus, symbol of protection, vision, and renewal. The gate may symbolize a threshold between what was and what could be. The letter peh, meaning “mouth,” suggests speaking one's truth after recognizing it through silence and sorrow. And Saturn, the planet of time, limits, and maturity, indicates growth through discipline and endurance.
The lower part of the cartouche shows the Eye of Horus, symbol of protection, vision, and renewal.
The Star includes some of the same symbols: the gate, peh, and Saturn. But the feeling is entirely different. The woman in this image is naked, kneeling on calm waters. Her black wig echoes the mourning figure in Desolation, but her posture is more open; she is vulnerable, yet grounded. (For me, water is grounding. Even sitting beside a quiet swimming pool can calm my emotions and clear my thoughts. Life began in water—being near it returns us to our source.) She pours water from two small vessels into the pool beneath her. Behind her, the waters are rough; before her, they are still. In 17 The Star, the gate hieroglyph does not suggeste grief, but possibility. Peh becomes not the silence of sorrow but the beginning of authentic speech. And Saturn is not just a burden, but a guide, marking the slow, steady path of hope earned through experience.
An eight-pointed star glows above, perhaps Sirius, whose heliacal rising signaled the flooding of the Nile and the renewal of life. In the lower cartouche, a diamond half-yellow and half-black evokes harmony, wholeness, and the balance of opposites—like Yin and Yang or the Star of David.
Both women suggest ritual. Both suggest devotion. But one mourns what has passed, while the other opens herself to what may come.
In Kaplan’s brief descriptions, the contrast sharpens:
- Desolation: ruin, pain, sadness, mental anguish, disappointment, sorrow.
- The Star: hope, faith, inspiration, insight, bright prospects, fulfillment, and the balance of hope with effort.
Together, these two cards seem to say: one way of life is ending, and a gate is opening to the unfolding of something new.
Being back in the U.S., I find myself in a familiar environment where I speak the language, understand the social cues, and don’t have to constantly prove that I belong. That competence alone has given me a quiet confidence I haven’t felt in many years.
I once thought that leaving Israel would make me want to become more observant again-- that, like many Jews in the diaspora, I would feel the need to cling more tightly to ritual and practice in order to stay connected. But that hasn’t happened. Perhaps it’s because something in me has changed. I no longer feel that need because I’ve already absorbed an Israeli sense of what it means to be Jewish, something lived, something internal, something not measured by observance alone. It’s as though I’ve carried the Land with me, and now I’m learning how to stand on that foundation in a new way.
I hadn’t realized I was building a foundation during those difficult years, but somehow, I was. And now it remains steady beneath my feet. I left the Land, but I didn’t leave behind what I learned there.
I don’t need to return to strict observance to feel connected. My Jewishness a deeper part of me now, the people, the rhythm, the struggle to stay human in a harsh world. And something else, too:
faith.
Not always religious, but real.
Since October 7, I’ve seen secular Israelis carry themselves and each other with quiet spiritual courage, a trust in life, in God, in community, and in the meaning of what they endure. That kind of faith has left its mark on me.
It’s what gives shape to my voice now. Like the Hebrew letter peh, I’m learning to speak again, not just with words, but with the way I live, love, and return to myself.
This isn’t exile. It’s integration.