Wendy Smith

Israel January 2015

There is so much to say about the trip. It was so much more than just the 9, nine (9? seemed like more) amazing days on the ground. The Israeli “trip package” started with that November 2013 meeting where Rabbi Mo, Sharon and Kari first shared their vision of a Temple Micah trip to Israel. Rabbi Mo opened his remarks with a poem that spoke to the longing of Jews to return to the homeland. At the meeting we all looked around and saw that we weren’t the only ones interested, we floated questions about safety, why couldn’t we fly ElAl?, we wondered about costs. The “trip package” started with Rabbi’s poem and his vision and continued with bi-weekly meetings to meet and greet and learn. We greeted familiar people and met new ones; we discovered who could be counted on for humor and who for history and who to us keep moving along; we were introduced to Jerry and came to appreciate Sharon and Kari so much; and then the extended plane ride and the lost items (speaking personally!); and dealing with things out of our control - the weather that changed the location of our early morning service and most importantly the way the vulnerability of the human body left us worried about and missing two of our treasured colleagues for much of the trip; and then, by today’s date, the return home of all of us!, and now a period of processing the experience in continuing community.

The “so much to say” is beyond the confines of a blog contribution..so how to narrow this down..it was a trip with so much happening so rich so well guided and led and experienced with such a great group of people...I think back about the people I came to know better, the beauty of the country...the way we laughed together in the bus...Yossi driving down the narrow streets, the art, the ocean..oh, and the food...how to narrow the “so much” at this early stage of digesting and sorting through the trip...Rabbi said to write from the heart and that anything goes...to maybe choose one thing to focus on...I’ve focused here on the unexpected, the things that happened to me in IsraeI that I didn’t expect, responses to the trip that surprised me. Narrowing the focus makes sense but I want it known for sure that I am addressing here just aspects of an amazing “so much to say” experience.

From the start I could tell that my not being Jewish was going to play a role in how I experienced Israel. As Rabbi Mo read the poem at that November meeting I could sense how he resonated with the words, sense how personally the poem of centuries of Jewish longing for Israel spoke to him, and started to imagine my fellow Micah travelers arriving in Israel. I pictured a rush of emotion, perhaps at the first aerial view of Israel or perhaps when touching the sacred stones of the Kotel; for each person a moment at which ancestral soil and ancestral ghosts would come flooding in. I felt somewhat sad, that next to those emotions, mine, whatever they turned out to be, would be pale.

For years now I have described myself as “Christian by birth and Jewish by marriage.”
I was born into and raised in a Christian family. My father saw to it that we went to Sunday school weekly and church often. I was cast as Mary in one advent production, a role I totally enjoyed as I got to wear a long gown and to put on lipstick and because I decided I had been chosen because I was so pretty (?). But when at age 12 it was my time to join the church, specifically to join the Mill Valley Community Church, I said “no.”

I became “Jewish by marriage” 37 years ago when, by just happening to be an interfaith couple wanting to be married by a rabbi at a time when there was in fact a rabbi in Denver who would perform such a ceremony, Marty and I were married in a Jewish ceremony without a requirement that I convert.

I do have solid Jewish “creds.” I do, for a start, have those proverbial “Jewish friends,” such as my husband, my two best girlfriends, everyone I ever dated, my rabbi, and my dear Micah colleages. And there is the following: I was not only married by a rabbi in a Jewish ceremony but had the complete deal - chuppah, broken glass, and a hora; over the past 30 years have attended give or take 500 Friday night/Saturday morning services, most every high holiday service – and this in contrast to the 2 Christian services (Quaker to be specific) that I attended over this same period ; raised two Jewish identifying daughters, spoke at their bat mitzvahs; witnessed the signing their ketubahs, and every Friday night, light candles, say blessings, break challah, do have some wine, and, even don a scarf! I have had “true Jews” tell me that I am more observant than they. And, besides, I don’t, maybe never did, believe in the divinity of Jesus, which in itself shifts me out or at least to the far left edge of the Christian camp. I may not be a Jew but I am very Jewish.

It appears to me that people range along an inclusion continuum from those for whom belonging to the group is pretty unimportant to those for whom belonging to the group is very important. I fall pretty high up on the continuum, I really like to feel I belong. I really value inclusion. If I am one of 10 people at a table meant for 8 and another friend comes along I will go get another chair. I attribute the stength of this tug to growing up in a step-family.

Why then, given how much I love inclusion haven’t I after 30 some years of membership at Micah and feeling “more Jewish” than anything else, why haven’t I converted?

As a child growing up in the fifties in Mill Valley, California, which was then (no longer) a small sleepy town I had no awareness that there was such a thing as a Jew. However, after moving across the Bay to eye-poppingly diverse and progressive Berkeley, I was surprised to learn that my new friend Sylvia was Jewish, and my new friend Arden was Jewish, and my new friend Edie was Jewish, and indeed that all the peers in my new group of high school friends were Jewish. And so, of course, I wanted to be Jewish too. In my understanding at that time I couldn’t be Jewish if I weren’t born Jewish and so it was a longing to belong to a club that I couldn’t get into, the worst kind of longing.

As an adult I know in my head that one can be Jewish without being born Jewish, and that converted Jews are considered the cream of the crop as they have made a “choice to be Jewish” but for me, maybe it’s an all or none issue, or wanting black or white no grey, but for some reason to me full Jewishness requires not just Jewish life style (which I have) and acceptance of Jewish doctrine but also ethnic history - those thousands of years of roots. And in some ways my religious beliefs - that there is a force, an answer, an order, an unknowable power behind this amazingly beautiful world - that all men are equal in the eyes of this amorphous being - that love feels good and is good - that all men belong to the same universe - that peace and the unity of the world are the goals - don’t require a specific religious affiliation. And although I understand the phrase is not a face value phrase, I, nevertheless have always strugged with the “chosen people,”... perhaps, because I don’t qualify.

Probably, however, it’s my grandmother “Gaga,” that stands between me and conversion.
To become Jewish feels like walking away from her. Somewhere way back, sitting next to Gaga in our Easter best at her Methodist Church, or as an adult visiting the austere windswept Connecticut cemetery with the weathered barely ledgible names of my ancestors my soul was at home in a setting very different from the Russian shtetl where Marty’s forebears lie, and where, no matter what, I don’t belong.

But to get back to the trip...fast forward to winter 2014. It is time to sign on the dotted line for the Micah Israel trip which has now moved from vision to reality. I am 99% sure we are going to sign up but I tell Marty I have a couple of things I want to run by Rabbi Mo before we do. Marty feels no need for a meeting but agrees to come along with me.


My first concern is about safety. The world isn’t looking very good, (not that it’s looking any better now). I anticipate that Rabbi Mo will be both realistic and thoughtful as to the safety of being on the ground in Israel and that I will, as I do, leave our meeting feeling reassured.

My second concern is about my not being Jewish. It isn’t that this will be news to Rabbi Mo.

Marty isn’t sure what my goal is. He wonders if for some reason I think I need permission to go on the trip. This had never crossed my mind, but maybe I am asking for a different kind of permission. Permission to be open during the trip about my responses which would be coming in a sense from someone “outside the Jewish family.” Will there be room on the trip for all types of responses from all types of starting places.

Rabbi Mo picks up on my unaffiliated status. He suggests that observations from an unaffiliated perspective - neither Christian nor Jewish - could add to the conversation. I leave not only feeling heard but like I could have something unique to contribute. In retrospect I think I also leave feeling accepted and that this is more important to me than I realized.

Having expressed my concerns to Rabbi Mo, I, in a contradictory way, find that as the trip gets closer I begin feeling that I just may come back from Israel having shifted farther towards the “yes, I will convert” pole. Perhaps the trip will so immerse me in Jewish culture and bring me so close into the fold with this remarkable group of Micah congregants that whatever is standing in the way of converting will melt as desire to jump more fully into the Jewish family gets even stronger. Marty has never pressured me to convert but I know that he would love it if we were go walk together in this aspect of our life. I tell several trip colleagues that I’m feeling I may return more interested than before in conversion and when Jerry cautions that no one can predict how Israel will affect them I think to myself that I do know.

Jerry, of course, is right, you can expect that Israel will have an effect on you but you can’t be sure ahead of time just what that will be.

Here’s what I didn’t expect, or at least, some of the things I didn’t expect:

I didn’t expect that my Christian beginnings would send up sprouts, but they did. The first inkling that this might happen came on Monday, Day Two, towards the end of the day when energy was flagging. I wasn’t very interested in eyeballing the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but went along as Marty said he would like to see it. I was surprised by a sense of “he (Harley) doesn’t know what he is talking about” in response to Harley’s declaration that not even Catholics would feel a sense of familiarity with the Church as the Coptic Christians and other denominations represented in the Church are so far from western practice. “What does he know about that,” I thought. I knew Diana, our daughter’s mother-in-law and a fiercely religious Catholic would find lots to relate to and even I with early Christian but very liberal Christian exposure found to my surprise a sense of familiarity. The comfort of those early, early words, experiences, music. After all I still recite the Lord’s Prayer when the plane is about, for sure, to be tossed to the ground, or someone dear to me is seriously ill.

I did not expect that at the Sea of Galilee my mind’s eye would bring up as it did the image of Jesus standing on the surface of the lake, beneficently smiling his arms stretched out to the innocent and not so innocent. Pictures from Sunday School. Nor did I expect that there would be others on the trip for whom images of Jesus on the water would also come to mind. I was surprised at how much I valued kinship with tour members who weren’t Jewish by birth, those who had some relationship with Christianity or to alternative spiritual identities and how I instinctivly scanned for others who might who belong to that category.

In 2001, our daughter, Caitlin, traveled to Israel as a member of Hebrew High. She was well aware that in Israel she would not be considered Jewish because I am not and she was open to undergoing a ritual mikvah while in Israel as one of the required steps to gain official Israeli sanction as Jewish. At a distance this felt to her like a reasonable option but when in Israel it didn’t. When confronted first-hand with the requirement, Caitlin had a reaction. She decided, in her words, that she didn’t want to go through a series of steps to “appease” those who considered her not Jewish as she was satisfied in herself that she was Jewish.

I similarly didn’t expect to respond to words that excluded me, after all this was Israel and I’m not Jewish, but then I did respond, not a lot, but it was there. I didn’t expect to respond when our gracious Efrat hostess without missing a beat said that if congregants knew I weren’t Jewish I would not be allowed to join their synagogue. Of course, I wouldn’t be allowed, I knew that, but still l responded, not much, but a little. And when in the Old City a native and a visitor passed each other, the native said to the visitor, “are you Jewish?” and the visitor, “yes,” and the native brust forth in loud welcome, and handshakes and the hearty greeting of brothers, I responded a little; and when the check point officer was assured that everyone on the bus was Jewish, I responded a litte.

Back in Denver I realized that I had had a tiny taste, in a completely benign way, of what it’s like to be a minority...not a bad experience to have..and how in the United States, even were I to convert, I would probably never truly know what being a minority is like. It was interesting to experience how even tiny inconsequential incidents could trigger twinges of being left out or unseen.

This next thing on my list of “things I hadn’t expected” is more difficult to write about. It was uncomfortable at the time and still is. Many of the feelings I experienced during the trip were ones I had expected: awe at the beauty of the country; pride in what Israel has accomplished; outrage and sadness at the Holocaust Memorial; compassion for the uncertainty Israelis must live with. What I hadn’t expected, however, was the anger.

I had expected I might disagree with Israeli foreign policy and be angry about aspects of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians but this was a more global anger. Anger at all the peoples of the Middle East - the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Jordanians, all of them. Anger that bubbled up as we toured, a finger-pointing anger as in why can’t the peoples of the Middle East, all of them, move on. Why can’t they extract themselves from this endlesss cycle of revenge.

I thought back about my conversation with Rabbi Mo before the trip. It’s one thing to have permission to speak to one’s truth, but it’s another to be angry at people in a family you love, but don’t quite belong to. Anger coming from someone a little outside the family risks alienating the very people you care about.

But the anger was there.

I was angered at my sense of helplessness, my premonition that it was going to be the intractible Middle East violence, the seemingly endless cycles of retaliation that was going to lead to the nuclear meltdown that I as a child of the fifties had trembled in fear of. Anger that the lives of my children and their children were in the hands of this region, where comments I heard such as “if so and so does this...as in if a Jew were to pray on the Temple

Mount...it’s the third world war,” came too easily and to me suggested resignation and too great an acceptance of the possibiity of nuclear conflagration.

I hadn’t expected to come back more hopeless about reconciliation among the peoples of the Middle East, more hopeless, more worried and more angry. Our Efrat hostess, a lovely person, told us that she and her Palestinian housekeeper are civil but that at bottom the housekeeper hates the hostess and would not hesitate to kill her; and the thing about this that angered me most was the hostess’s sigh and resignation, there is nothing that can be done, no way to even begin to think about how to work together.

I didn’t expect to experience a “get over it” edge, as if I know what it’s like to live with the loss and trauma and seething anger of the people of the Middle East. It’s easy for me to say,” stop holding onto the past,” when my home is full of things I can’t bear to give away, but loosening the hold on the past would help us all. I was angered by the sign posted by settlers in Hebron’s nonfunctional bus station, the sign that reminded all of the murder of Jews in 1929, clearly a horrific act but does it justify fueling the cycle of revenge. Not good, but let’s move on.

I was surprised by how big and pivotal a role history as determined via biblical sources and interpretations plays in the ongoing Middle East conflict. To me, fair or unfair, the focus seemed to be on recapturing land based on claims set out in ancient stories, stories passed down and shaped by generations and generations. Stories that some would consider in the realm of “creative nonfiction.” From the arrogance and presumption of an outsider’s soap box, why value a piece of land above a peace among peoples.

I didn’t expect to start thinking of Israel and the peoples of the Middle East as stuck in the Old Testament’s “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” or to feel that the region could use a breath of New Testament, a good dose of “God is love.”

I have long known that Marty knows his Bible stories backwards and forwards and I know only a few fragments. In contrast I emerged from Sunday school with the message that “God is Love.”

Not a bad message.

But even as the anger was bubbling up I knew that I wasn’t taking into consideration the complexities of this part of the world and as much as I value the message that “God is Love,” and felt good about stumbling onto something from my Christian heritage that I’m proud of, the message in itself doesn’t solve anything.

Back in Denver my anger, although still present, has ebbed and the underlying frustration, struckness and sadness come forward. The anger has been tempered by a processing of all the many, and diverse experiences of our trip. I remember coming up and out of the Holocaust Museum into the sun and experiencing the unfolding hope of safety represented by today’s Jerusalem. I remember the terror of our Efrat host and hostess who feel only slightly removed from being pushed into the sea. I can understand Israeli’s recent support for Netanyahu. Who knows I might even have joined the groundswell myself were I an Israeli citizen.

Nevertheless I still stand by let’s “move on,” we don’t have that much time, lets get on with finding a way forward peacefully. Dang, guess that means I’ll have to figure out some baby steps for myself.

Finally, three “unexpected gifts”

The first unexpected gift was the discovery of Naomi Shihab Nye a poet who is the daughter of a Palestian Arab father and an American mother, a poet who captures the Palestinian voice, celebrates “half and half” identities; and wants to believe that peace is possible. I read and savored her poems during our trip. She dedicated one of her books to her father and included a quote from him that spoke to me: “If you look at the Muslim, Christian and Jewish religions, their first commandments are the same: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ It’s not taken seriously.”

Second, my “discovery” of the Baha’i faith. It wasn’t the gold domed temple that did it but my brief Google perusal. Looking for inclusion, I found it here! Actually, some of what I read fit well with my beliefs and I liked that the Baha’i headquarters are in Israel, this would be a way of belonging more to Israel than I might otherwise. The main tenets include the unity of God and the unity of religion (religious history is seen to have unfolded through a series of divine messagers, each of whom established a religion that was suited to the needs of the time and the capacity of the people...included here, Moses, Jesus, Muhammed...). Per my internet sources Baha’i holds that “humanity is understood to be in a process of collective evolution, and the need of the present time is for the gradual establishment of peace, justice and unity on a global scale,” and believes “the unification of humanity is the paramount issue in the religious and political conditions of the present world.” Needless to say I haven’t delved deeply enough into the Baha’i faith to have discovered its quirks and problematic parts but the focus on inclusion sits well with me.

And third. Although I have not returned with an intention to convert to Judaism, a sadness for Marty and for me, I did come back with a greater sense of religious grounding - a greater awareness and appreciation of my several religious “parts” and a greater commitment to and appreciation of Micah. Micah is an inclusive religious community and I am more aware of how rare and how precious that is. I realize that I find spiritual sustenance at Micah regardless of what label I give myself and that I feel accepted by and valued by the community regardless of what label I give myself. I belong at Micah. I feel respected by Rabbi Mo. I am welcome to participate in the Temple’s secular life and even in its religious life as is appropriate. I don’t feel pressured to convert or to practice in ways I’m not comfortable. I have the gift of being free to be my own brand of “Jewish.”

As a foodie I had to sneak in a comment about just that, the food. In terms of the “expected” and “unexpected,” I expected Israeli food to be spectacular and it was. The breakfasts surpassed the advertisement. OMG! and I am giving a shout out for the salads - a cacophony of vegetables, spices, fruits, grain, elevating the vegetable way beyond American cuisine and, can you believe, salad for breakfast! Yum. I knew ahead of time (yes Jerry, this one I was correct about) that I would love street vendor shawarma, which I did, but my expectation that I would love Israeli bagels did not pan out. Okay, basically the food in Israel is spectacular but the bagels, not so much, I looked but found no firm, chewy bagels anywhere. I had to rush to Zabar’s during our post-Israel New York stop-over. Could be my Jewishness is of the New York variety.

Brad Segal

Ruth and I are currently in Istanbul, after winding up a study tour of Israel – our first visit to both places. The Israel study tour, coordinated by our Denver synagogue, included a variety of tours, speakers and experiences designed to provide a look at the country’s past, present and future. In addition to getting a crash course on Israel’s complexities, I had several impressions that are relevant to those of us involved in downtown and community development.

In most places, we take boundaries for granted. In the States, city boundaries are determined by a number of fairly innocuous factors – land forms, major roads, the occasional grab for a revenue-producing development. Some boundaries have deeper meanings, such as the boundary limits placed on many cities (including Denver) during the school desegregation era to stop the expansion of forced busing.

In Israel, boundaries are about faith. It starts in Jerusalem’s Old City, a square mile that houses some of the planet’s most sacred sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Old City has four quarters (Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian) with distinctly different characteristics.

This pattern of faith has been replicated within the West Bank, the disputed lands west of the Jordan River that Israel occupied after the 1967 war. When we read about the challenges of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, this is where most of the action is. Palestinians seek a self-governing Arab State, while Israel has added Jewish settlements in the area, an action receiving condemnation from much of the world.

An Israeli map of the West Bank does not reveal neat or concise boundaries, but rather a patchwork that is the result of a conflict management strategy that has been in place since the end of the Second Infatada about 15 years ago. About one-fifth of the West Bank is under Palestinian rule in several disconnected clusters of cities and towns. Another fifth offers a hybrid where Palestinians rule Arabs and Israelis rule Jews. The remaining 60% of the West Bank is under Israel. A Palestinian map would offer a different interpretation, providing emphasis on the 1967 boundaries or perhaps prior to the U.N. partition back in 1947.

Both sides are looking at faith to be the end game of political boundaries. Just as we see Denver and Aurora on a map, Israelis and Palestinians see Jews and Arabs on a map of the West Bank; however, the context is very different. In Israel, the boundaries are about centuries of heritage and destiny. The whole boundary issue creates an ongoing tension that permeates everyday life. This is visible in the several hundred miles of retaining walls that Israel has constructed to separate the Palestinian-controlled lands and the checkpoints that allow limited access between both sides. But there is also a palpable tension in the air – the whole place seems to be on edge 24/7, and it left me wondering how much the geography of faith plays into this.

Our study group had a chance to experience the most extreme case of faith-based boundary separation in Israel – in the heart of the city of Hebron. Home to a religious site revered by both Arabs and Jews, Hebron is a divided city populated by about 200,000 Arabs with the majority governed by the Palestinians. However, the sacred site and several hundred Jewish settlers are located right in the city’s core. This is different from most Israeli settlements which are found on open land or the periphery of cities, looking much like garden variety California suburbs. But in Hebron, the geography of faith creates a gaping no-mans-land right in the core of the city. The result is a peninsula of blight – where a vibrant Arab market with hundreds of businesses once operated, the real estate is now completely vacant.

Hebron, an extreme case of the Israeli separation policy, was fascinating to me. It’s Israel’s Detroit by design. It’s been purposely emptied to create a separation between Arab and Jew, and then enforced by a military infrastructure where Israeli soldiers nearly outnumber the settlers within. Our tour of Hebron was led by Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli soldiers that once served in the area and are now aiming to educate the country on what they perceive to be a dysfunctional policy.

Ironically, there are similarities to American cities that endured decades of blight through another type of social separation – racial and now income segregation. In the States, we have been working for decades to improve these areas and have developed a variety of reconstructive initiatives and tools.

In Hebron, urban blight is an acceptable by-product to enforce the geography of faith.

Brad's Blog: http://www.pumaworldhq.com/blog/

Jo Ann Zvares

Walls

Israel has many walls literally and figuratively. There is a real wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians – a wall that goes beyond borders. There are check points and a ghost town and hatred between some groups of people who, at one time, co-existed peacefully.

I am not a political person and would probably have been quite comfortable not having been exposed to all these walls. And yet, I chose to go on a trip where I knew, ahead of time, that we would see many aspects of Israel that would leave me feeling very uncomfortable. And it did -- I felt ashamed of the treatment Palestinians have received, and continue to receive, at the hands of Israel. I was especially affected by listening to a young Palestinian man speak about the humiliation and abuse he has experienced from Israelis in Hebron.

After our visit to Yad Vashem I felt that we were doing to the Palestinians what was done to us by the Nazis. Yet, when I stated this to a fellow traveler recently, he reminded me that the Jews never did anything to warrant the treatment they received by the Nazis and that the Palestinians have been, and continue to be, a threat. So, now I am simply confused.

Despite my mixed emotions regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians and Israeli politics in general, I am somewhat able to wall my own feelings and remember the positive – the one wall that was an extraordinary spiritual experience for me -- praying at the Western (“Wailing”) Wall.

I touched the ancient stone wall, embraced it, kissed it. I felt the spirit of thousands of years of ancestors as I prayed. I slipped pieces of paper with written prayers into a crevice in the stones. I found myself silently saying the Serenity Prayer and the Shma, an odd combination but one that has served me well. I didn’t want to leave and had to force myself away so others might also share in the sweetness of the Wailing Wall.

It is my hope that the walls between people will come down in time, but that the Western Wall will remain a spiritual retreat for all who come to worship there.

Karen Roberts

Arriving in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning, Jan.11, 2015, our adrenaline seemed to be keeping us awake and alert as we boarded the bus. Our first stop was Mt. Scopus, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It's difficult to find words to describe my feelings as I overlooked the city. It felt surreal. In some ways it looked exactly how I had imagined it, the light sandstone, the rolling topography, the antiquity. I had envisioned more dust than puddles, but it had recently rained (and snowed). I had seen images of Jerusalem all my life. It wasn't a disappointment. It was larger and more spread out perhaps. Cluttered looking from afar. Busy. Domes and steeples dotting the skyline. Laundry hanging from clotheslines. I spent the next few days reconciling the Jerusalem in my head, the setting of childhood Bible stories, the ancient city of Jews, Romans, Christians, with this lively Middle Eastern cosmopolitan city of honking horns that mixed the modern and the ancient.

The entire week was a mix of contrasts and discovery. Whenever you travel you learn things about yourself. I loved Israel. I loved having everything planned out for us. I loved learning, thinking, challenging, drinking, walking, running, being with my husband, spending time with long-time friends and making new Micah friends. Not having to cook.

Visiting Israel gave me a greater sense of what it means to be Jewish. The complexity and many dimensions of Jewish identity. I am not Jewish – I married into the faith and culture. It gave me a greater appreciation for being American, for the progress we have made regarding tough issues in the 238 years that we've been a nation. It made the state of Israel look like a teenager, a newbie. We aren't there yet; how can Israel be?

Did I feel a spiritual connection to the Holy Land? I was actually somewhat surprised to find that, no, I didn't. I thought it was very cool to be on the same cobblestones that ancient peoples walked...to sit on benches in a theater dating back 2,000 years. To think that John the Baptist baptized Jesus in that river alongside our bus, that Abraham and Sarah were buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs...but I didn't feel a greater spiritual connection to God. I appreciated the historical significance of where we were, but the spiritual significance didn't deeply resonate with me. Only when I crammed my prayer list into a crevice of the Western Wall did I feel spiritually moved, but I think that had to do with my personal emotions combined with the religious devoutness surrounding me.

Jeff and I waited in line to visit the Temple Mount, wanting to see for ourselves this real estate that was so sacred and controversial. Non-Muslims were allowed to visit from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. No religious items or practicing was allowed by non-Muslims. As we walked through the security point I could be thankful I wasn't an overtly practicing religious person, my prayers are all in my head so no buzzers were set off. I appreciated the beauty of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque and we took many pictures. The grounds were littered and patchy and it was difficult to imagine this as the site of the First and Second temples, and the cause of so much bloodshed. Is there any other place in the world that is the cause of so much anguish? It certainly looked beautiful but benign on this Monday.

To be so close to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan impressed me. Closer than I will ever be again. Our evening meal with Leah and Menachem and the Brunos in the settlement of Efrat was one of the nicest evenings of the trip. As Jeff said, we could have been having dinner with Jews in New York City. It was an evening of intelligent conversation with warm and caring people. Leah and I have e-mailed. We don't discuss the legality of settlements; we do joke about introducing her young friend Harry to our daughter Alyssa in D.C., as Leah says, "Anything to distract Washington from the Hullabaloo over Bibi's upcoming visit!!!​"

Whether or not that distraction happens, I can say that this trip was a once in a lifetime for me. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to learn, explore and enjoy. It deepened my understanding of myself and of the Middle East. Both are complicated, one's a little more violent than the other (and older), neither are easy to figure out.

Marty Smith

The richness of the tapestry of this trip, for me, has as much to do with the wonderful group of people I was with and the people I met in Israel as it does with the stunning imagery and history of the places we visited. Therefore, integral to my recollections about this trip are both the places we visited and anecdotes about and interactions I had with the people who were such a part of this trip. As I write these comments, I do so with great respect for the failings of memory in my 69-year-old brain for the specifics of events yesterday, let alone the specifics of events of a trip that I am writing about several weeks after their occurrence. Therefore, my recollections, including the anecdotes I recount and those involved in these anecdotes, must be taken, like Lot’s wife, with several grains of salt. If I misremember, I certainly and most sincerely apologize, though I take some consolation that given the voluminous length of this written recollection, I can’t imagine any will want to read it, so any inadvertent misinformation it may contain will vanish into the dusty closet of time without notice or a whimper.

My wife Wendy and I for at least 20 years had planned a trip to Israel as a first priority whenever we would retire, which we finally did this past year. The proposed Micah trip was like a wonderful gift dropped in our lap and we jumped at the chance. The trip was catalyzed by Sharon and Kari, it was their idea, and their yeoman work and heavy lifting when it came down to the dirty detail work of the trip was a critical piece in the formulation and execution of the trip. Without them, it is clear this extraordinary trip would not have been initiated and would not have happened.

Because the trip came in my first year of retirement, it became part of a very complex phase in my life journey. I had completed the most wonderful, fascinating, uplifting, and affirming career as a clinical psychologist that had exceeded beyond my wildest dreams everything I could have imagined a calling to be. But along with building a marriage and raising a wonderful family, the demands of this extraordinary work had taken essentially all my energy and focus. Now retired, though having had a very helpful and productive psychoanalysis as a young professional, unresolved internal psychological issues and demons that I had mostly put on the shelf the last 30 years of work and raising my family, again bubbled up in my retirement, finally getting the attention they merited if I am to live the rest of my life with satisfaction and gratification and using all my resources and abilities the best I can. In a nutshell (no pun intended), these demons in large part stem from my early developmental years in which, as a toddler and a young boy, I experienced two marked medical traumas that resulted in severe physical compromise at the time though I had no idea what was going on, and also resulted in my being isolated from all family and any familiar face for about two weeks on each occasion, without knowing, especially as a toddler, if and when I would ever see these loved ones again. When I was eighteen months old, I had major surgery that not only involved complete isolation from even any glimpsing of my family for about two weeks, but also being placed in restraints because my surgeon felt that if I had movement or was excited by seeing my family, my stitches from the surgery would not heal properly. When I was 9, I came down with a case of meningitis, though nobody told me what it was. All I knew is that I had a horrific headache, couldn’t bend my neck or sit up, and was taken to the hospital, given a spinal tap, and without explanation placed on an isolation ward, had my arm taped to a board so that an IV drip could be started which ran for several days, did not see my family, and listened kids in rooms down the hall cry themselves to sleep at night. Thus, though I have been fit and healthy as an adult, underneath the surface, I have been left with a nagging terror that my body will unexpectedly fall apart, leaving me in mortal danger, and that I will be completely and unexpectedly alone in this process, with family and friends mysteriously disappearing. Needless to say, every time I leave the safety of home and familiar surroundings, this sea monster of fear is swimming beneath the surface of my psyche. Thus, this gave the trip to Israel an interesting coloring for me. In addition to the wonderful opportunities posed on the face of it by the many parts of the trip itself, I saw the trip as an opportunity to teach myself about the joys of exploration and that my fears of illness, physical collapse, and abandonment by loved ones are archaic—residents of my past with no realistic place in the life I have built for myself and with my loved ones.

Preparation for the trip—I find myself daunted by the logistics of the trip; it will be winter in Jerusalem, what clothes are necessary? How can I keep myself warm and dry but still pack light? On top of it, we decide to spend two weeks in Manhattan and Boston to see kids and grandkids after arriving from Israel—what clothes will be needed in New England winter and what emergency rooms to ferret out because no doubt I will be critically ill after returning from this demanding trip to Israel. Before the trip, weeks to months of percolating about what clothing to get, making purchases of quick drying underwear and clothing equally suitable for the arctic and the Sahara, deciding which of these to pack in my new Ultimate Explorer Suitcase that costs as much as a small car, and deciding what travel medicines to take culminate in last minute decisions mercifully catalyzed by the deadline of the trip. I am up all night packing the night before we leave, putting the house in order minutes before the cab to the airport arrives.

Saturday—We arrive in plenty of time at the airport and meet our group, with whom we have been studying for several months. I feel a sense of reassurance and camaraderie when I hear that many of our group haven’t slept a whole lot either. We check in at United Airlines, the subject of recent articles about setting records for baggage loss. I wait to see that our tagged bags are placed on the conveyer belt, hoping to see them again and wondering how it would be to spend 10 days in Israel nude. The air trip is uneventful and the trip to Israel in Economy-Plus is commodious and pleasant. I don’t sleep at all but am elated to be successfully out the door and on the way to a wonderful adventure, so I feel surprisingly energetic.

Sunday—We arrive in Israel and have a joyful reunion with our baggage. We meet our guide, Harley, a man with vast and varied knowledge, who, along with our wonderful travel (travelling) agent, Jerry, will watch over us like a mother hen and make sure we are always present and accounted for. We pile onto our bus with Yossi, our intrepid driver who could take a bus ten times the size of ours down Lombard Street in San Francisco, and we head to Jerusalem. We go up to Mt. Scopus, overlooking the city, for a breathtaking and humbling view at once backward, present, and forward in time. The Dome of the Rock shines golden before us and the city is breathtaking and its feeling of timeless engagement with me is compelling and almost overwhelming. I had had no pre-formed notions of how this trip would be for me and what I would feel, but I am taken and a bit nonplussed by the powerful and strange feeling of love and attachment I am feeling for this city. We check into the hotel and after dinner retire to our rooms. The hotel is amazingly commodious. I find myself completely unable to sleep that night. I lie awake thinking about my fears and demons that I don’t pack and check through on the trip but always take with me inside myself—my fears of a body that fails me and loved ones who disappear. I then realize that I have a wonderful sense that I am finally at home. I start to cry and say something like, Sweet God, I am home, I am finally home. And by this, I do not mean that I am geographically home, though I do amazingly feel a deep love for this country. But I have a wonderful feeling, having committed to this trip, prepared for it, and, for me, courageously arrived here, that in fact I am safely home in my body, in myself, that I can count on my body to work and function well, and on me to take care of me, to love and nurture me, and to take care of whatever needs taking care of. And that if I can’t, it has nothing to do with any flaws in me or disappearance of loved ones, it’s just the way life can be and can end—that I have and have had a wonderful and accomplished life which I hope will flourish longer, but if it doesn’t I’m more than blessed and happy with the life I have and have had. Experiencing all this is a wonderful and tremendously powerful thing for me. It’s now about a quarter to five in the morning and I start hearing the Muslim morning call to prayer. I am tremendously moved by this (in subsequent mornings I will be less moved by this), and feel a great kinship with these people going to pray and feel the wonder and majesty of our existence. I then hear the loud beeping and racket of the garbage trucks doing their early morning work under my window, which I find much less moving. I do not even try to go to sleep, but get up to get ready for our Monday, in which our tour leaves at 7:50 for the Old City.

Monday—We eat the first of many giant salad/fish/humus/yogurt/egg/pastry/halvah laden breakfasts that we will have in Israel. At 7:50 we pile in the bus. We go to the Old City and start at the Damascus Gate. We enter the Arab quarter as the stalls begin to open. We pass through security, Harley, our guide, clearing our way with the security police, and we enter underground passages. These, we learn are the foundations of Herod’s walls that have been cleared of the ages of dirt that buried them with the result that they now appear as underground passageways along the foundation of Herod’s walls. We get a guide for this, a pleasant young man named Pinny, which he tells us is short for Pinchas. He explains the construction and formation of the walls and takes us to a model of Herod’s temple which shows how it appeared, how it was laid out, and where the Ark of the Covenant was located. As we then walk alongside the stones of the wall foundations, each stone a stunning multi-ton, meticulously hand-hewn and hand-laid behemoth, we see women individually entering the passageway and fervently praying next to the wall at different locations, some touching the wall, some kissing it. We learn that we are at the foundation of the Kotel, the Wailing Wall. The women, we are told, cannot pray at the Kotel above, where only the men are allowed, but have permission to pray down here at its foundation. Ironically, we are told, they actually are closer to the site of where the Ark of the Covenant was than if they were praying at the men’s section of the wall above. The quietly fervent energy of the praying women is touching and humbling. They vary in age and appearance from middle-age matron to well-groomed young professional on the way to work. Though it is chilly above, it is warm, humid (with subterranean dripping water left over from the recent rains) and a bit stifling down here, but with a sense of the awesome and sacred. As Pinny gives us invaluable information about the wall here and its history and location within the temple structure, a jack-hammer starts up near us, with archeologists doing never-ending excavation. I have a chronic ear injury caused by traumatic noise damage, and any loud noises can leave me with maddeningly worsened ringing for months. I am concerned about such harm from the jack-hammer noise but at the same time don’t want to miss any of the precious information being imparted by Pinny. I decide to stay and listen to Pinny, thinking that if any of this possibly sacred information causes me ongoing physical damage, that’s what happens when one has encounters with the holy, like Jacob’s limp from his encounter with the angel. Fortunately, I leave the site with no worsened ringing and no limp.

We then leave the subterranean foundation and go up to the courtyard in front of the Kotel. I have brought my yarmulke and a piece of paper on which is the Torah portion I have been given the repeated privilege of chanting at Temple Micah’s morning Rosh Hashanah service. It is about the binding of Isaac, which reportedly occurred near the spot at which I now stand. I cherish this particular piece of paper with my Torah portion printed on it, for it was given to me by Rabbi Sandy Cohen, a person of whom I am very fond and for whom I have a great deal of respect, and it has her handwritten comments on it. I have decided to go to the wall, chant my Torah portion, and leave this cherished piece of paper in a crack in the wall. As I head to the wall, I am accosted by two men, one younger and one older. The younger one asks me if I’m Jewish. My instinct is to genuflect, cross myself, and thus get rid of these interlopers. However, as is always the case, when I’m asked this question, I always say (and in some circumstances, defiantly) yes. Once they hear the yes, the young man tells me I must put on tefillin. He says it’s a mitzvah. I wonder to myself what his agenda is. I tell him that all I want to do is to say something at the wall, that this is important to me, and that’s my purpose in being here. He persists, telling me that it will be very quick and simple, that they have the tefillin, and begins to usher me over to a table. I have put on tefillin many times in my life and know that it isn’t that quick, that it requires a bare left arm over which I now have three layers of clothing, and takes some time to position the phylactery and wrap the strap. He first indicates that I don’t need to take off my sportcoat, and then changes his mind and starts to remove the coat. At this point I tell him that this is an important moment for me, I thank him for his interest in me, and firmly tell him that I am going to the wall and not spend any more time with his endeavor. He petulantly tells me that it’s my loss, and I leave him and go to the wall. I find a wonderful spot at the wall, next to an ark with Torahs that has been set up there, and also next to a large crack in which I can leave my Torah portion. I start chanting the portion, then back up and chant the blessings first. I chant the portion standing next to a Hasid who is doing his own chanting. I chant the portion with emotion and with a volume befitting the emotion. The Hasid continues his chanting next to me. Both of us give our own chanting the respect, volume, and fervency we feel, yet each of us also gives the other a sense of respect and space for the other’s praying and its genuineness and earnestness. It is a moving moment and I feel blessed to have it and grateful for the Hasid’s respect and graciousness. I finish chanting and the blessings. I press my forehead and my hand to the wall, feeling its connection to me and mine to it for several seconds, kiss it, and leave my Torah portion in the space in the wall. As I head back to our group after this emotional time, I run into Larry and I am grateful for this because Larry is a man with whom I am very comfortable and for whom I feel a great deal of fondness and respect. I tell Larry about my encounter with the young tefillin-pusher, wondering aloud what that was all about. Larry says that there are some sects that believe that when every Jewish man puts on tefellin then the Messiah will come, and he thinks that this was the man’s agenda. I share with Larry the emotionality of my time at the wall and it is a warm and centering moment. The next day, Larry will fall ill and he and his wife Liz, a wonderful woman, will leave the trip for the duration, and my wife Wendy and I will feel a loss of them throughout the trip. As I start back to join our group, I walk next to two young Hassidic men. Each has the beard, earlocks, broad black hat, the starched white shirt, the black outer coat, and the tsitsis characteristic of many Hassidic men. However, I notice that one seems a bit of a dandy, seemingly relishing his attire and strutting his appearance. He adjusts his outer coat several times. He then pulls out a smartphone and, oozing sacred cool, beseeches his friend to take his picture. Come on, he tells his friend, take a picture of me at the wall, maybe with my collar up. I watch the two go to the wall, near the ark with the Torahs, and the Hassidic fashion-plate leans one hand against the wall, rakishly turning his coat collar up with the other, and his friend takes his picture. They look like any two young strutting cocks. If they were in Jersey, their names would be Frankie and Vinny. Before we return to the hotel that day, we visit the Tower of David, with its magnificent views of the city, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I have read much about this church in Simon Montefiore’s book about Jerusalem, and know of its sacred and bloody history. I am taken with the awe and beauty that its structure and history give it, and watch Christians at different sacred locations in the church embrace these places that seem to be both outside of and within them with the same reverence, emotion, and awe that I had seen earlier in the Jewish women praying at the subterranean portion of the temple wall. I photograph for my son-in-law’s mother, a devout Catholic, the place where Jesus was reportedly crucified and the rock on which his body was reportedly placed.

I also witness the courage of my fellow travelers, which would typify the trip, throughout that day. Mary Ann, a fine porcelain beautifully delicate woman healing from a recent bad orthopedic fracture keeping pace, treading with her trekking poles over the wet, uneven, ancient stones and steps at the sites of our journey with courage and fortitude; Sharon, a powerful leader and engine of our group, going out to arduous sites with enthusiasm and uncomplaining energy even though she grapples with physical pain and respiratory challenges. I later learn that Jo spends the trip walking on a bone-to-bone joint yet I hear no complaint as she keeps up the pace. On our trip Steve, the consummate doctor, volunteers to assess and minister to a stranger who is taken ill on the flight over, gives of his expertise in assessing Larry and accompanies him to the hospital when Larry falls ill, and at times during our outings I see him keeping an eye on our scattering group in an effort to see that people don’t get lost or left behind. Our group is replete with examples of resilience and generosity of which these are just a few. In the months in which our group met preparing for this trip, the rabbi told us that given such a large group of people, each of us is sure to have at least someone in the group who will drive us nuts. This, of course, is a given when you have any group of 40 people. On the trip, I am waiting to find out who it is in our group whose presence, whose comments, will drive me up a wall. Throughout the trip I am waiting to find out who this will be. I finally realize, in a contradiction to well-established sociometric principles which rather amazes me, that I like and respect virtually everyone in our travel group.

We return to the hotel after an indescribably spectacular day.

Tuesday—I continue not to sleep. Anticipating the 4:45 beeping and roaring greeting of the morning garbage truck does not help, nor does the fervent Muslim calling me to prayer around the same time. I wonder if getting a different room away from the garbage truck route would help. My wife Wendy feels that my wish to pack up and shlep us to a different room reflects my over-anxious and non-adventurous nature and that the move would be burdensome and unnecessary. However, she is swayed by the question from the much more credible Liz upon hearing my garbage truck dilemma, “Why don’t you just get a different room?” We get a different room away from the siren call of the morning garbage truck and beckoning to prayer, which blissfully mitigates my nocturnal anticipation of these early morning greetings. I am eternally grateful to Liz for her role in adding to my morning comfort and in saving my marriage. However, with grudging credit (though only partial!) to my wife’s understanding of me, I find that this insomnia continues throughout the entire trip. I eventually realize that much of it is caused by my concern, being a person who deals with anxieties of new situations by very slow, compulsive, and methodical attempts at ordering my life, that such a behavior pattern could make me late for the early daily departures to our sites, so I don’t sleep in anticipation of what I will need to do to be ready on time in the mornings. I also realize that much of the insomnia is caused by the excitement of the trip and trying to process all the things I see and all the emotions that are stirred within me by the trip.

After breakfast, we depart for Tel Aviv/Jaffa and the art market there. On the bus, Wendy has the stomach-turning realization that she left her money belt including credit cards and passport on the bureau in the hotel room. Knowing that not having immediate possession of this belt and its precious contents will expose us to the foul deeds of villains, assassins, and other terrorists who will instantly take possession of this treasure in our hotel room and cause us untold misery and premature death, we panic. I nobly step up to the situation and in essence tell Wendy, You caused the problem, you fix it. She talks to Jerry and Harley and Sam Spade and we spend the morning working on the case of the missing money belt. It is located but there appear to be missing cash and credit cards. We finally brilliantly discover that the missing cash and credit cards are with us, and all is well in the universe. However, this drama takes up the morning and lunch. Interspersed with this, however, we are moved by a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv, and find ourselves in Jaffa on a wonderful street with a vista which to our delight we discover is the scene of a watercolor in our home over our mantel that was painted for us by a Jaffa artist. We buy some delightful things for our children and grandchildren at the craft market in Tel Aviv and depart to the Palmach Museum. The Palmach Museum has video presentations and historical footage related to Israel’s fledgling years and the fight for her independence. As we enter the museum, it appears powerful and compelling. I see pictures of a very young Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan amid pictures of attractive, vibrant, committed young men and women soldiers, sailors, and airmen during the War of Independence. From the video viewing rooms I hear loud tracks of explosions and military actions. I have two reactions: Although blessedly never deployed, and never serving on Active Duty , I was trained at the height of the conflict to fight in Vietnam and that training with its live ammunition, errant bullets fired by inept trainees, explosions, and continual warnings about risk and death, left a lasting impression on me, so visual presentations, or even presentations in print having to do with war have powerful effects on me usually leaving me sad, often tearful, and at times angry; additionally because of my ear damage and ringing, I avoid loud noises, including movies, whenever possible. When at the museum, I hear the soundtrack of war and its concomitant aural assaults, I get out the earplugs I always carry with me and hope for the best. Maybe not coincidentally, at this moment I notice I have dog poop all over my trail shoe from a walk through a Tel Aviv seaside park. The group at this time starts to enter the rooms for the audiovisual presentations and I make an instantaneous decision, with some sense of relief, to instead head to the bathroom and clean the mess from my trail shoe. By the time I clean up the mess and leave the bathroom facilities as I found them which not surprisingly also reminds me of when I used to barehandedly clean the latrine in the Army, it’s too late for me to join the group for the Palmach presentation. Since in a futile attempt to catch up on sleep I missed the previous night’s discussion with an Israeli security officer and now I miss the Palmach presentation, I end up missing two very important pieces of perspective on past and current threats to Israel and where many in the country are coming from in their concerns about the security of Israel and attempts to protect it. While the rest of the group is in the museum presentations, I have a nice talk with Harley about his background and history while waiting for the group to come out. When the group comes out, we decide that rather than remaining in Tel Aviv for supper, we are pretty spent and we return to the hotel in Jerusalem.

That night, Dalia Landau comes to speak to our group. She is one of the protagonists of The Lemon Tree, a book our group read dealing with the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives in the birth and development of the State of Israel and the effect of this on Palestinians. She is an extraordinary figure in the book, reaching beyond herself with stunningly compassionate, humane efforts to build a bridge of common humanity with a Palestinian family that built, lived in, and was forced to leave the house in which she grew up. In reading the book, I experienced an effort on the surface by its author, Sandy Tolan, to equally present both the Palestinian and Jewish/Israeli perspectives, yet the language, verbs and verb tenses used, and presentation of family history and character development struck me as clearly favoring and taken with the Palestinian perspective. I felt the book was an informative and worthwhile read, richly describing the plight of Palestinians and the extraordinary humanity of Dalia, but I was very upset with what I perceived as an unstated clear bias toward the Palestinian perspective that was obscured by what I felt was the implicit message of the author that this was a balanced treatment of both sides. Dalia in person is a wonderfully energetic, youthful, enthusiastic woman, passionate in her words and actions about respect and understanding by Jews, Palestinians, and indeed all humans, for the positions, perspectives, and indeed the humanity of the other, to the point that someday there will be no “other.” She asks for the impressions the group has of the book. After a brief discussion of some responses, Dalia rockets off to a cascade of topics, all wonderful in their humanity, passion, and compassion. After the discussion, she generously remains to talk to people who may have additional questions or comments. I stand in line and get my chance to talk with her. I tell her that I want to comment on my impression of the book. She laughs at herself and says, I guess I left that topic too quickly and got off onto other things. I tell her that I felt that the book is not a balanced view of the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. She says, It isn’t. She says that when Sandy Tolan wrote the book, he was married to a Palestinian woman, and he felt that the Palestinian perspective had not been presented and needed to be. She even notes that when the book was being written, she had concerns that she would be used as a vehicle for this message. She does not indicate any discomfort now, however, with her place in the book nor how she is portrayed in the book. I am grateful to her for her availability, her genuineness, her honesty and her candor. I also feel some affirmation for how I perceived the book, which gives me some comfort and confidence in my perception and assessment of things, and I am grateful for this.

Wednesday—Today is the day I have been anticipating for months with a mixture of excitement and dread. We go to Masada and the Dead Sea. An avid cyclist and exerciser, I am fit and think nothing of a hike up Masada. I dread, however, the Dead Sea. I feel compelled to swim in it but why? Because I’m a Jew? Because it’s a completely unique experience—the lowest point on earth at which you ironically can’t sink? The thrill of not being able to sink? I’ve never felt compelled to float in the Great Salt Lake. To my knowledge, Mormons don’t feel compelled to float in the Great Salt Lake. Why should Jews feel compelled to float in the Dead Sea? It’s the middle of January. Who in their right mind would get in a bathing suit while in the middle of a winter bus trip, wade into a frigid body of water, get out soaking wet, and then have to suffer in this state all the way back to Jerusalem? I am convinced I will get hypothermic, contract pneumonia, and die in this foreign land or while trying to make my way back to America. Nonetheless, in addition to the light, wick-away clothing I take for the Masada hike, I put a bathing suit in my backpack in the off-chance that I lose all reason and do death-defying things like I did in my adolescence and decide to go into the Dead Sea.

We pile into the bus and arrive at Masada. It is an absolutely stunning place. Many of us elect to climb the Snake Path to the top of Masada, while others take the tram up. The Snake Path is essentially a series of switchbacks that pretty much go straight up a thousand feet to the top of Masada. The path is well-maintained and at its steepest points often has steps and guard railings. It is generally fairly wide. However, at some points it is narrow and there are places toward the top where there are no guard railings and the drop-offs are impressive. Hal, a sociable, accomplished, and self-effacing man, who is refreshingly candid about himself, has told members of our group that he is terrified of heights. Nonetheless, he elects to go up the steep trail of the Snake Path. The path is indeed steep and its vistas are breathtaking. The land we overlook is gorgeous. Jon, a geologist, points out the formation of geometric berms below that he notes were built by the Roman soldiers as perimeters for their encampments as they staged their long assault on Jewish rebels and their families taking refuge on Masada. Every turn we take on the path treats us to an absolutely breathtaking view. The land formations evoke in me the awesome, humbling and sacred sense of the formations in New Mexico and Utah. As we go through narrow areas with drop-offs and no rails, Wendy feels a little weak-kneed so I walk on the outside next to her doing my best impersonation of a guard-rail. I wonder how Hal is doing. By the time we get to the top, maybe 40 minutes after we started, my wick-away jersey is soaked with sweat. Fortunately, the sun is out with a pleasant breeze, so it quickly dries. I see Hal, who has already reached the top, and commend him on his very notable courage. He boisterously tells me and others in the group that he made it up the final steep part with its drop-offs by focusing on his wife’s “tush,” which he indicates he found riveting and reassuring. Standing next to him, she rolls her eyes in loving and patient acceptance. Once all of us reach the top, Harley takes us to various sites on Masada. We go through Herod’s palace, view another one he had built on an outcropping, and go through other structures he had built. I am amazed to see neat piles of nearly round stones that look like primitive cannon balls; these are the actual missiles that were hurled at those on top of Masada by the catapults manned by the Roman soldiers below. We gather at a spot where Harley reads us the touching and humbling words, as recounted by a survivor, spoken to the rebels and their families by their leader before their mass suicide the night before the Romans were to breach their encampment.

We then get on the bus to go to the Dead Sea, my moment of reckoning. Since the weather has been reasonably warm and pleasant and I’m feeling resilient because my wick-away jersey has dried and I haven’t as yet contracted pneumonia, I make the decision to immerse myself in the Dead Sea. Before our trip, a group member forwarded to us an internet account by a purportedly seasoned Dead Sea swimmer giving tips on swimming in the Dead Sea. Though this swimmer was enthusiastic, her tips were sobering. She spoke of the horrible corrosive effects of the sea on vulnerable skin areas. She vividly recounted the intense stinging of the mineral-laden water on eyes and any cuts. She cautioned men not to shave for two days before going in. She stated that the crystallized mineral deposits on the seabed made for a harsh and razor-sharp sea bottom that would cut your feet to ribbons unless they were protected by some sort of aquatic footwear. Thus warned and armed (or should I say footed) with ancient watershoes with rubber that was so fatigued it cut my feet to ribbons when I even tried to walk in them, I prepare to plunge myself into this flesh-eating body of water. As I wade into the water, I see floating about me cigarette butts and beverage cup lids. It crosses my mind that if I can’t sink in this morass, it will not be because of the density of the salts and minerals, but because I am lying down in a solid cesspool. As I wade out, I am joined in this endeavor by my wife, who shares my apprehensions about the swim, but is much more adventuresome (except when it comes to heights and skiing) than I, and wading out with us are Louis and Tim. Several feet ahead of us in this endeavor, forging out into the frozen wilderness like Admiral Byrd and, consistent with an Arctic expedition, screaming about the cold, is Karen, whose bravery is putting us all to shame. Harley had instructed us to wade out to our navels and then we will miraculously discover that ‘your feet will start floating to the surface’ at which point we will transition to a stage of buoyant bliss. Karen, who is in far deeper waters than we are and is immersed well beyond her navel is still yelling about the cold and her feet have not miraculously floated up and transported her to buoyant bliss. Louis, several feet behind me and about up to his thighs in water, ever the thinking-outside-the-box sage pioneer, yells, I’m just sitting down and seeing what happens. He then sits down and, bingo!, his feet come up and he floats away in a U-shaped buoyant bliss. Wendy and I sit down and the same thing happens with us. It is a delightful and freeing feeling. There is absolutely no sinking, no need to scull with one’s hands to stay afloat, you just…float! Furthermore, once submerged, the water is remarkably warm and comfortable. Tim does the same and is just delighted with the sensation. Wendy and I keep our heads completely out of the water, ever mindful of our internet instructor’s description of how the corrosive water will permanently cake us with salt residues and eat our flesh to the bone. Tim, however, delighted with his buoyancy, lays his head on, not in, the water and flattens his entire body out on the water. He is completely straight and flat in the water. He floats off, chortling in delight, like a perfectly flat human board. Tim becomes my hero. After about 10 minutes of this, my wife and I declare victory, right ourselves, and start to wade out of the water. At this point, my feet feel like they’re being cut to ribbons not by salt residue razors, but by the grit trapped in my watershoes. I take off my shoes, deciding nothing could abrade my feet more than this, and discover that the seabed and areas around the sea are quite benign and non-threatening to my feet. Furthermore, I do not experience any stinging while floating in the sea. Could it possibly be that I don’t need to be so fearful in life as I am? I go into the locker room, rinse off, return to the bus warm and dry, and arrive back in Jerusalem simply exhilarated.

Thursday—What I had anticipated as a very interesting day with unusual sites and experiences compared to what I imagined to be a typical Israel tour turns out to be one of the more emotion- and thought-provoking experiences in my life. Today we do not board the Israeli bus driven by our skilled, congenial driver, Yossi, but a Palestinian bus driven by an elegant, distinguished gray-mustachioed Palestinian driver who is gracious and throughout the day maneuvers the behemoth he is driving through daunting hilly and breathtakingly narrow and serpentine passageways as if he is driving a Smart Car. We are in this bus and with this driver because we are going into the area of the Palestinian Authority and visiting Hebron, a city within that territory. The policy requires a Palestinian bus and driver to take us there. While Harley accompanies us, looking out for us like a mother hen, our guide for this trip is Avner. He is a representative of Breaking the Silence, an organization comprised of Israelis who are veterans of the occupation of Hebron and have, per the name of the organization, decided to candidly, from their perspective, tell their experiences in the occupation of Hebron and to educate the public about realities of the occupation from the point of view of those who served there. As best as I can recall now several weeks after our trip, this is what Avner tells us at that time: Avner tells us a little about his family history. He describes a religiously orthodox upbringing and education, with respect for and adherence to the tenets of Torah. He notes that on his father’s side, he is something like a ninth generation Jerusalemite. Harley later tells us this is the equivalent of one descended from a Mayflower pilgrim. He is 29 years old, has pleasingly fair, evenly and finely chiseled features, and would be a typical very handsome young man except that he emanates a melancholy and wizened sense, and seems old beyond his years. He tells us that, following the examples of generations of men in his family, at age 18 he chose, in his Army service, to join an elite paratroop outfit and was consequently involved in Special Ops, assigned to Hebron. He notes that he eventually became the sergeant of a sniper squad. He describes his journey from an eager and fresh-faced young soldier, enthusiastically trying to meet, and do well in, the requirements of what he saw as critical work necessary for the welfare of his country, to a disillusioned, questioning, and guilt-ridden veteran. He talks about earnestly working to complete the missions he was assigned, such as entering and occupying Palestinian households and putting the occupants essentially under house arrest. He notes he later discovered that many of these missions were apparently not formulated to thwart the specific Palestinians, many of whom he describes as apparently innocent civilians, on whom these missions were focused, but to intimidate the general populace so that they would never lose their fear of Israeli military power and thus would never be a threat to the safety of Israel. He states that also there are indeed very real threats in Hebron, noting that Hamas and Hezbollah are there. He describes attempts to completely control the populace for fear that if they are not completely controlled they will be a danger to the safety of Israel. He states, as I recall, that soldiers were authorized to shoot anyone, men, women, or children, who were out and moving after curfew. And, he says, his eyes briefly welling with tears, we did. My heart goes out to him. I personally have only the slightest hint of what it’s like to fight counter-insurgency wars and what it does to you. At Ft. Benning and Ft. Riley, we practiced attacking villages and we learned to never feel safe, having, in our training maneuvers, black-pajama-clad men popping out of unseen spider-holes and throwing mock grenades at us, telling us we were now dead, and knowing that the real thing could happen to us just like that. As a result of this training, I also experienced the sobering, chilling, and very humbling awareness deep in my gut that I now could and would kill anyone if I had to. I still remember the exact moment at Benning in which that awareness hit me. But what sends my heart out to Avner much more than any of this is my work as a VA psychologist, having worked closely over many decades with literally hundreds of veterans of counter-insurgency combat, from Vietnam to Central America to Somalia to Iraq and Afghanistan. I see in his face and hear in his intelligent and articulate words at once fervent, compassionate, guilt-ridden, angry, melancholy, with hope for redemption and the future, those of the young and not so young veterans with whom I worked over the years who have candidly shared with me their experiences of war and the multifaceted impact this has had on their lives, on their loved ones, on their very sense of who they are, and their courageous efforts to have good, meaningful, and productive lives despite and perhaps also as a result of what they did in war. I find an opportunity to privately tell Avner that I have worked as a psychologist in a PTSD program with many combat veterans, that though the wars are different, his story of war and their stories are of a piece, that he has many brothers and sisters in his experience, and try to convey to him my deep respect and feeling for him and the veterans with whom I have worked as valued and valuable members of the human community who have had to undergo and perform horrific actions of which all of us in our humanity are completely capable, and I express my deep gratitude for his service. He appears both appreciative and a bit taken aback, and with modesty thanks me for my comments.

Even the route of the journey into the Palestinian Authority is an interesting one. It is an unwieldy and indirect route due to the confusingly constructed “borders” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Avner explains that some of this is due to Israel’s attempt to include in its territory sites valued by the Jews, such as Rachel’s tomb, which we pass next to (though cannot see due to the peculiarities of the route) so that the road and borders are often formed in a serpentine way to include valuable territory and sites such as this. At a security point, our bus is entered by heavily armed soldiers who apparently conclude we are benign and we continue onward toward our destination of Hebron. I get confused about who governs what here. There are areas in which the Palestinian Authority is sovereign, and areas in which Israel has sovereignty. At some places, if you have an accident outside a particular city boundary Israeli authorities have the final word, but within the city it is Palestinian sovereignty and Palestinians have the final word. In a city such as Jericho, Israelis are not even allowed to enter. I can’t grasp the details of governing here except to conclude that there seems to be a continuing state of flux and maneuvering between Israelis and Palestinians to maximize the territory and value of the territory that each will hold if an agreement between the two parties is ever achieved.

When we arrive at Hebron, both the weather and the tone of the place are absolutely chilling. As I write this a month following the trip, my memory is fuzzy about the exact sequence of events during our tour of Hebron. Before we depart the bus, we are given rough maps of Hebron, in which the zones H-1 and H-2 are delineated. We are told that H-2 is a bustling, vibrant, though still economically depressed section of the city in which there is a lot of life and a lot of commerce. H-1, the section we are in, is a section in which, at least where we are, there is a very strong, evident, almost intimidating Israeli military presence. My sense is that this is where Avner and his comrades in arms operated and are operating. Avner gives us a very tragic background story which recounts how all of Hebron had a robust and bustling presence and was a focus of international efforts at rebuilding and recovery following the destructive turmoil of the early nineties. He notes that in 1994, a man named Baruch Goldstein who was a doctor caring for the Jewish settlers in Hebron, for reasons known only to himself took a rifle and massacred Muslims praying in a mosque there and was then killed himself. Avner tells us that in response to this, Israel, in fear of violent retaliation by Palestinians, proactively shut down the area including the market, showing us pictures of what the market used to look like, a thriving bustling place of commerce crammed with vendors, stands, and shoppers, and established what was designed to be an a powerful military presence that would quash any incipient violence or uprising, though Avner tells us that no such uprisings had started at that point. We then, per my recollection, get off the bus in this heart of H-1, and get a bathroom break and the logistics of the somewhat limited facilities there are overseen by a thoughtful and gracious Palestinian gentleman, who makes sure that the men and women get appropriate privacy and discretion in the use of these limited facilities . We are then taken to what Avner tells us is the burial place of Baruch Goldstein, noting that those of us who do not want to see this can remain on the bus. I think all but one of us got out to walk up to this burial spot, I with a sense of apprehension and dread of seeing something chilling. As we are going up to the burial site, I see two men in black jackets and yarmulkes following us, one of them having picked up a map of Hebron that one of us dropped. I am puzzled by their presence and don’t know if they are passersby helpfully picking up a stray map, or what. About this time, Brenda, who is next to me, says in a very tense, measured, sotto voce, to ignore them, that they are trying to disrupt our tour. I then notice that there is a sense of aggression and hostility about them. They follow us up to the burial site. I am taken aback to see that Dr. Goldstein’s remains are apparently entombed in a crypt above ground and there are rocks of remembrance placed on the crypt in the traditional manner of Jewish indication of respect and remembrance. As Avner translates the Hebrew written on Dr. Goldstein’s crypt, which apparently says, in effect, that here lies a Jewish hero, one of the men angrily speaks to Avner in Hebrew, and also ceremoniously says what appears to be a blessing and places a rock on the crypt. Avner in an unflappable and measured way responds to this man in Hebrew and in English tells us some facts about Dr. Goldstein that this man apparently wanted us to know. As Avner speaks to us, the man continues to interrupt him in Hebrew, which Avner calmly ignores and finishes what he has to say to us. The men leave and I realize what a hostile and threatening presence they brought to the scene. Avner tells us that they are associated with the Jewish settlers in Hebron and that he is regularly harassed as he brings his Breaking the Silence tours here. He notes that these two men are “thugs, but harmless.” He says, with a bemused smile, that they were accusing him of being a traitor and leading these tours, selling out for, he says sarcastically, the huge amount of money he is being paid by Breaking the Silence. He notes that men such as these often wait for him as he arrives, and some are not so harmless. He notes in passing that he has been roughed up and also has been struck by thrown eggs on occasion.

After we see the crypt, we go to the location of the former market place. It is a forlorn, bleak, foreboding place. There are Palestinian signs and indications of Palestinian life in the area around this former market place. But, Avner notes, the market area itself has been what the military calls “sterilized.” That is, all Palestinians are forbidden to frequent or be present in this area—it is to be completely free of Palestinians and signs, literally and figuratively, of Palestinian inhabitants. As we stand in the intermittent rain, in the biting winter wind, in this area, it feels like a desolate no-man’s land, and many of us in the group label the area with the descriptor ‘no-man’s land’ whenever we refer to it. There is a small military garrison here and heavily armed soldiers with body armor stationed at certain points here. There are large, professionally made signs with bold letters in Hebrew and English with what feels like angry, defiant messages reminding viewers that this was Jewish property stolen from murdered Jews by the Arabs in 1929 and also that Jews were murdered here in the intifada following the Olso (sic) accords, so that these stores were shut down by the Israel Defense Force for security reasons. Avner tells us that these signs were written to be read by people touring the area, such as we. Avner points to an ‘illegal’ Jewish settlement that sits fortress-like high on a hill overlooking us, with a large metal menorah underscoring its presence. Avner describes different treatment of Palestinians and Jews by the soldiers, but also talks about anger expressed by some settlers when soldiers mete out justice against deserving settlers, with these settlers reportedly claiming the job of the IDF is to look after the settlers no matter what. I can never quite get straight what differentiates a legal settlement from an illegal settlement, since this designated illegal settlement appears extremely established and rooted in its own way into the life of the city. As Avner speaks, the Muslim call to prayer blares in deafening decibels through loud speakers located somewhere. Harley had told us that at some places, such summons to prayer is broadcast at defiantly loud volume, as if the Palestinians broadcasting the summons are saying, we are here, deal with us. The summons to prayer almost drowns out Avner’s words, and he indicates that the volume could be reflective of the enmity here between Palestinians and Jews. This no-man’s land of a former bustling street market is incredibly bleak and chilling. It seems that all doorways and store or building fronts have been painted over with an empty, bland paint. Doors leading onto the street have been welded shut, by the IDF Avner says, to prevent egress from and access to the street. Avner says that one schoolteacher living on the street had a doorway through which she could get to and from her job, but that after she received a peace delegation, the door was welded shut and she now needs to find a circuitous route, presumably through a fire escape or something, so that she can get down to the street from her second floor flat and get to work. Two young soldiers in body armor and carrying assault rifles survey the street and chat with each other. Another passes in a military vehicle and yells a greeting to them. Their equipment and uniforms to me are intimidating but their demeanor is of innocent young men, caught in a situation over which they have no control. I find the whole scene extraordinarily unsettling and afterward I try to figure out why. I am puzzled: in my life and certainly as a psychologist I have been in dangerous, even life-threatening situations. As a psychologist, I have on occasion needed to enter a room alone with a psychotic and terrified combat veteran, lethally capable and/or with access to a firearm, who felt his life was in immediate danger and responded accordingly, on one occasion with police outside having cordoned off the area. I was scared at these times, but I understood the sense of the situations, had an understanding of and feeling for the veterans involved, I knew what to do, and thankfully everything worked out well. While certainly scary, these situations were not deeply disturbing or unsettling to me. I understood them and the humanity involved. Somehow, this no-man’s land in Hebron feels completely different. It is unsettling and disturbing to me and I can’t find words for it. Then I think perhaps it is this: my previous encounters with violence and potential death felt anomalous—they were brief instances in which craziness, psychosis, took over but they did not typify the individuals involved nor the way they lived their lives. An understanding, caring, well-focused and on-target intervention could help the individual right himself and the situation, and return to a productive course of living. The chilling and unsettling thing for me about the no-man’s land and the situation in Hebron, including all the protagonists, is that this does not seem like a brief time of craziness, an anomalous episode of psychosis. This is a situation that seems planned and calculated; a situation in which the players methodically planned a long term strategy of which this chilling no-man’s land is an integral part. That there are people on both sides of this whose planned actions and strategies result in such a chilling, horrific, and humanly empty situation as that of this no-man’s land in Hebron and the greater situation surrounding it leaves me with a deep, lasting, and enormously unsettling feeling of disturbance.

After this very disturbing morning, we go to a lunch prepared by a Palestinian family which owns a gift shop and eating establishment of sorts. It doesn’t really feel like a restaurant, but part of their home. We are taken upstairs and squeezed into two rooms, each of which is bursting at the seams with our group members. In a kitchen across the hall from the rooms, the women of the family prepare the meal. The extremely genial patriarch of the family sees to it that all our group is fed, and he exudes an exuberance and hospitality that projects a beacon of light and warmth into the bleak pessimism that has been our morning. The meal is delicious and delightful and I think cheers us all. We get back on our bus and our driver masterfully navigates a tiny, serpentine, breathtakingly hilly road from which we walk on foot guided by Avner along a muddy path which wanders through a poor neighborhood until we get to a very modest house. This house, we are told, was the desired object of both settlers, who could expand their settlement to this house if they could purchase it, and Palestinians who wanted to use the house as a community center and a kindergarten. We are told that after many perhaps needlessly difficult hoops were navigated requiring much patience, time, and fortitude, the Palestinians were able to purchase the house. We again, due to lack of space, are divided into two very small rooms, and Palestinian staff discuss the programming of the center with us. Speaking to our group is an appealing and articulate young man in his early twenties. He speaks of his frustrations with the governing Israeli bureaucracy and his experience of tremendous constriction and oppression throughout his life. He states that nonetheless, he is a fervent believer in non-violence, and that the focus of this house and its programs is through non-violent means to gain freedom in the everyday lives of those in the Palestinian community and to end what he describes as the oppression of the Israeli governing presence. Going in and out of the room is a beautifully energetic but shyly self-conscious young girl. After the young man’s talk, we glimpse where the kindergarten is though it is not in session today. This young man’s courage, his commitment to non-violence, and the message of hope and future implicit in the young girl and the sense of young children in the kindergarten facility leaves me with a ray of hope for the future in the bleak darkness of the no-man’s land which we saw. This is reinforced when, after Avner, his tour done, says goodbye to us and Harley then takes us to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the site of what is believed to be the final resting place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah. This is a place venerated by both Jews and Muslims who are descendants of these forebears. What is heartening is that here, in the middle of Hebron, at this highly venerated site, Jews and Muslims have been able to fashion a cooperative system in which each religion, every day, has its special, exclusive time of prayer, and these times are respected by the other religion. On this note, we leave Hebron and head to Efrat, which is defined as a legal settlement, where our group will divide into small units of three or four people, each going to the home of a settlement family for supper.

At Efrat, we go into the local synagogue to wait for our respective host families to arrive to take us to their homes for supper. Efrat seems completely different than the settlement atop the hill at Hebron which we viewed from below, and which to me appeared like a harsh outpost thrusting itself with chin stuck out in hostile territory, commanding the hilltop on which it was perched like a citadel. Efrat is just outside Jerusalem, but apparently on the Palestinian side of the Green Line (which I still can’t figure out what that means—these rippling borders that seem to me to have a continuing sense of flux and movement) so it is a settlement but its status is legal. Efrat to me looks like Stapleton. There are neat, commodious houses in a groomed and attractive development. We are told that many people live here because the quality of housing here is much better for the money than one can get in Jerusalem, that is if housing would even be available in Jerusalem. At Efrat, we are assembled in the synagogue’s sanctuary, waiting for our respective host families. Artie, the Efrat resident who apparently developed and heads this program to acquaint tourists such as we with Efrat and thus to be hopefully sympathetic to the settlers’ perspective at Efrat, gives us some background about Efrat and the synagogue as we await our families. While it feels like we are in a pleasant suburb just like any back home, Artie, who seems like a genuinely nice guy, alternates by turns between delightfully humorous and jovial, and a fierce religious zeal. He is from Chicago and indicates that his zeal extends to the Cubs. He says he came to Israel because as he became more and more aware of and immersed in his Judaism, he realized that Israel is really the only place for a Jew to be. He conveys a conviction about the right of Jews to settle not only here but the whole of the Israel of biblical times, and adds an element of steel to the firmament of this pleasant suburb. This is reinforced by the mural over the bima of the synagogue, which he tell us was done by a resident of Efrat who is both an artist and a dentist, and which consists of a progression of three tableaus which he tells us depict the Israel of biblical times, modern Israel, and the last being the Third Temple which he notes he believes will be built in the future.

Our host arrives for us, a pleasant, bearded man casually but nattily dressed in a neat striped shirt, sweater vest, and slacks, and wearing a peasant’s cap. He tells us his name is Yehuda Berman. He takes us a few doors down to his home, a neat and very commodious townhouse, and introduces us to his wife, Shula. There are three of us guests, Wendy and me and Louis. We are in our late sixties/early seventies and find that Yehuda and Shula are of our generation. They are warm, welcoming, intelligent, articulate, absolutely charming people. They talk about how Efrat is warm and close-knit, how they love the sense of support and community here, and we note it reminds us of our own community of Park Hill. Over an absolutely sumptuous meal, we talk about our histories and our families. Yehuda, who works as a librarian at Hebrew University, has a background as a scholar and academic. Shula is a highly skilled and experienced translator of Hebrew and writes these translations from her home. Yehuda talks about the importance of his being an observant Jew and what he values about their synagogue here. Shula, with a twinkle in her eye, indicates that her formal Jewish practice is a bit less stringent than Yehuda’s, and each prays in respectively different services and locations in their synagogue. Shula notes that she is a daughter of Holocaust survivors who lived in England for awhile after the war and then moved to South Africa. She tells us how she came to Israel on a whim, felt at home here, and decided to stay. She tells us that Yehuda, who reminds me of my great grandfather who was a Ba’al Tefillah in a Ukrainian village and whose scholarly, yarmulked, white-bearded visage peers at me from an ancient black-and-white photograph in our hallway at home, actually started out as Ed Berman from Detroit. Yehuda describes a much more planful path to Israel than Shula’s, to more fully embrace his Judaism. Our meal and interactions unfold with great conversation, warmth, and mirth. We talk at length about our respective children and their situations and work, and show each other pictures of our children and their families. Shula and Yehuda appreciate my dry humor and sarcasm and I feel completely at home. The conversation turns to how it feels to live in Israel, to live in Efrat. While Shula and Yehuda seem to me to feel completely comfortable and secure in their home and community, I am naively surprised as they describe their almost palpable sense of danger and insecurity. They note that, while they have very cordial relationships with Palestinians who do work in their development and in their community, they are very clear that when it comes down to it these Palestinians’ basic loyalty is to their people and community and would kill Yehuda and Shula if hostilities broke out. They describe a Palestinian man who worked in their community and was well-known to them who puzzlingly was in the community at an unusual time for him, went into a busy grocery store, and, strapped with explosives, was about to blow up himself and surrounding shoppers when he was killed by an alert member of their community before he could detonate himself. They note, which gives me goose bumps, that the kidnapping of the Jewish teenagers who were murdered last summer occurred “just around the corner” from where we are. They tell us with sobering earnestness and credibility that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war, because it will be the end of them all. As our time grows short—we must meet our bus at 8:30 to return to Jerusalem—we have a wonderful dessert and give our hosts gifts in gratitude for their hospitality. Louis, with his characteristic thoughtfulness and generosity, gives them a book of John Fielder photographs of Colorado. We warmly say goodbye and exchange e-mail addresses. When we leave I am amazed to feel how absolutely credible and compelling the words and perspectives are of both the Palestinians we met in Hebron and Yehuda and Shula in Efrat. Dalia Landau had told us how fully and genuinely engaging in life and the human community entails simultaneously holding and appreciating seemingly diametrically opposing and conflicting truths and perspectives, and I have tangibly experienced this on this truly remarkable day. We board our bus and return to Jerusalem.

Friday—Today I have anticipated as one of the most powerful days of our trip. This morning we are to go to Yad Vashem, the world-renowned memorial of the Holocaust, so powerfully and poignantly erected in Jerusalem. I anticipate a somber, internally intense, tearful morning in this facility with my wife Wendy at my side for support. In my usual self-centered manner, I don’t communicate this expectation to Wendy, but of course expect her to know this because she should understand this about me without me having to tell her. Furthermore, since I am a Jew and she is not, it should be patently evident to her that Yad Vashem would be so much more powerful for me than for her, requiring her omnipresent support . So we head off to Yad Vashem with me preparing myself for a soul-touching morning that I will share with my wife. The rabbi has decided, of which I am very appreciative, that we should go through the memorial at our own individual paces, but, given our schedule today, we should meet at the exit of the memorial about two hours after we enter it. As we gather at the entrance of the facility, Harley speaks to our group about some exhibits in the memorial that we should pay attention to. Wendy says to Harley that she wants to experience the memorial without any preconceived ideas and hurriedly excuses herself from his comments so she won’t hear anything more until she experiences the memorial for herself, and disappears into the building. I stay to listen to what Harley has to say, not concerned that this information will unnecessarily influence my experience. I walk into the building. I hear Hal behind me saying to his wife Brenda, You know I like to dawdle, and she says with understanding, Yes, I know, but let’s start out together. I am touched by this communication, understanding, respect for one another’s way of doing things, and valuing of the relationship. I go in to find Wendy and cannot. I feel a time pressure, since two hours feels like such a small amount of time to me to take this in. I look around for Wendy for what seems to be an eternity but in reality is about five minutes, and then resign myself to going through the memorial alone. It stirs in me all my old hospital feelings of being a young child in a terrifying situation immersed in the fear of death and the unknown, and my family nowhere to be found. I finally see Wendy, who has been watching the footage at the beginning of the exhibits. I am relieved to find her and we spend time taking in the introductory silent footage depicting the European Jewish tapestry before the Holocaust. I silently absorb this hoping that these images of pre-Holocaust European Jewish life will assimilate and settle within me into a foundation that will provide me ballast for what I am about to see in this memorial. Wendy says that she wants to get an overview of the exhibits and rushes off. I decide we are in different places in how we are approaching this and I both resign and resolve myself to go through this in my way and at my pace. As I start into the exhibits, I am next to a young woman who is walking with her family and repeatedly taking flash photos of them, which bathe the exhibits in the periodic harsh glare of the flash, with the apparent purpose of documenting her family’s trip through the memorial. I find myself offended by this, angered by the harsh effects of the glares of the flashes on the dark and powerful ambience of the exhibits and by, in my interpretation, trivializing the experience by turning it into a photo-op. I had envisioned this whole experience to be completely quiet and contemplative, with the power and absolute pathos of this percolating and sinking in throughout the progression through the exhibits, and climaxing in the hope that I anticipate shining at the end of the memorial as the end of the Holocaust and life beyond it are depicted. I am rudely awakened from this expectation by the teeming crowds and attendant cacophony of countless people going through the memorial; the endless groups of ten or twenty people who cram into the exhibits gathering around their respective tour guides, the latter loudly talking, at times over one another, giving their prepared speeches about the specifics of the particular exhibits. All this makes the camera-toting lady seem like no distraction at all and completely shatters my expectation of a quiet, sober, and poignantly contemplative experience in this memorial. Instead, I find myself literally forcing my way into exhibits that I want to see. Being of complete Ukrainian heritage, I had hoped to experience an exhibit dealing with Babi Yar, to honor my family who may have fallen victim to that carnage. Because of the crowds and my increasingly feeling the pressure of time combined with all in the memorial that is left for me to see, I give up on trying to find a memorial to Babi Yar, not even knowing if one is there (I later find out there is a memorial to Babi Yar), and head off to exhibits that aren’t jammed with people. I find an exhibit about the murder of Jews in what appears to be Lithuania who were slaughtered like those in Babi Yar. I look at the pictures, listen to the words, and linger there, sending my heart out to family in the Ukraine I never knew and fates I never knew of. I find a break in the flow of the crowd, and am able to get some space to myself in the Auschwitz-Birkenau exhibit. I stand next to the crude wooden platforms on which those who were imprisoned in the camp slept, if ever they were able to. I am overwhelmed by the sense of the people, my people, who actually occupied those cruel “beds.” That these are the very “beds” they occupied. I have an intense feeling of closeness and connection to these people and to the tragic loss in this all. I place my hand on the hard wood of one of these beds, trying to offer a loving caress to those who occupied it. I start to cry. I say to them, You are not alone. You did not die in vain. I am here. We are here. We live. Your life has been passed on and we are living and flourishing. After this I feel more like I have been able to do at Yad Vashem what I came here to do. I go through the exhibits about the liberation of the camps and the end of the war. Even these are absolutely horrifying. As the rabbi has told us, the structure of the building rises from darkened depths and one exits into the light, with a view of the vitality of Jerusalem. I think that if there’s a suggestion box, I will request selected days at the memorial where silence is expected, including no lecturing guides, and one can spend one’s time in quiet contemplation. I see Wendy and we join up and leave the building together. Then and throughout the afternoon I tell her about my experience of the memorial and of my anger and disappointment that we did not go through the memorial together, and she tells me the importance and necessity of her going through it the way she did. I marvel anew at how we can talk with each other and am grateful yet again that we have each other.

The rabbi, as throughout the entire trip, has wonderfully planned and conceptualized this day. He told us that we would go through the heart-rending, humbling, and sobering experience of Yad Vashem, leaving the memorial and walking into the light of the present, and then go to the joyous crush of the vitality in the Shuk, the Jewish market place in Jerusalem, where thousands of Jews, this being Friday afternoon, will be immersed in the happy and frantic preparations for Shabbat. We arrive at the Shuk and go into its jammed passageways. I am absolutely stunned and overwhelmed at the crush of humanity here. I have never experienced anything even close to it. I have a daughter in Manhattan, and walking through Manhattan even at rush hour is like being in Death Valley compared to what it is now like in the Shuk. There is such a crush of humanity, that if you don’t actually push your way in the flow to where you want to go, you will be literally swept where the human current will take you. I am literally jammed body-to-body in this flow of humanity. Out of complete necessity, I throw out any semblance of civil locomotion and push, shove, and swim my way to wherever I need to go. Our group meets one of our members, Donna, at the Shuk. A woman of extraordinary generosity of spirit and actions, she has been in Tel Aviv to offer support and companionship to Liz and Larry in the stress and uncertainty of his having been admitted to the hospital there. Donna now rejoins us in the sea of humanity of the Shuk. Laughing with disbelief and amazement in the crush of people in which we are immersed she says, I’ve been here two hours and I think I’ve just had sex with a thousand people. As we flow along the currents of this sea, I see on the shores of this flow of humanity vendors of all sorts of foods holding up their wares at stalls, and people matter-of-factly in this torrent flowing to wherever they need to go to purchase whatever foodstuff or fruit or vegetable they want to purchase. The overwhelming intensity of this flow of humanity and activity is counterposed with the sense of the mundane and routine of this in the people for whom this is just another Friday afternoon in the Shuk. For a brief second, my Army training pops into my head. I am aware of the absolute density of humanity here, the consequent huge constraints to mobility and opportunity for quick escape, and I think this is the perfect place for an ambush or detonation of a bomb—lots of casualties, lots of bang for the buck here. I am surprised, however, at how easily I can push this fleeting thought out of my head and rejoin and be completely present in the compelling vitality and humanity of this place. Wendy, who is always on the lookout for good bread, notices a tiny place at which people are eating meals with bread that looks perfect to her. We swim cross-current over to it, and amazingly manage to get a table for two. The tiny place is filled with what appear to be mostly locals so we are optimistic about the quality. We order and are served a wonderful meal with grace and cordiality that I find amazing in the midst of all the activity that not only surrounds us in the Shuk, but also fills this eating place. We are delighted with our meal and reconnect, talking about our experiences and our feelings at Yad Vashem, including our feelings towards each other. Gastronomically, physically, and emotionally refreshed, we dive back into the flow of the Shuk. However, it’s getting later and it isn’t nearly as frenetic. We see that it’s raining and abandon our plans to walk back to our hotel, opting instead to meet Harley at a preset location and go back to our hotel in our bus. On the bus, Donna walks down the aisle passing out pastries from a large box she purchased at the Shuk. Leave it to Donna, when I am only thinking of my surviving the human tsunami of the Shuk, to transcend that and think about getting treats for us all while in the midst of all that. We get back to our hotel in time for a brief respite, and to prepare to go to a Friday evening Shabbat service which the rabbi has arranged at the synagogue of the only reform congregation in Jerusalem.

I am very much looking forward to the quiet and the spiritual recharging of the Friday evening service. I take my bag with my talis and yarmulke, which I have brought from the States. I love my talis. It was given to me by my father at my bar mitzvah when I was 13. It is of the small, classically narrow cut that I associate with American diaspora Jewish males of the early to mid-twentieth century. It looks almost exactly like my father’s talis that he got in 1920 when he was 13. I fashioned a chupa, tying talisim together with ribbons, for my youngest daughter’s wedding. My father’s talis was the front of the chupa, both my daughters’ larger and more colorful talisim they received on their bat mitzvahs made up the center of the chupah, and mine was on the back, guarding the rear. I love my talis. Even though I know it is traditional to wear a talis only in certain services, I wear it almost every time I am in synagogue, no matter what the service. I feel a spiritual warmth and security when I am wrapped in it. We get on our bus and arrive at the synagogue. We are greeted by the president of the congregation. He tells us that the congregation prides itself on being open and welcoming to all. He further notes that they are very active in supporting people who are gay, lesbian, or transgendered. He communicates his pleasure at our being at the service and cordially welcomes us. The service begins and I take out my talis, bless it, and wrap myself in it. I do not see anyone else wearing a talis except the man leading the service and this to my recollection is always the case when I attend Friday night services. The service flows out of the man leading the service, whom I assume is the rabbi, with fluidity. Most of it is in Hebrew and there are minimal cues as to what pages we are on in the service. The congregation is very familiar with the service and easily, harmoniously, and enthusiastically joins in and builds the service from the foundation and structure laid by the rabbi. It is a wonderful and joyously musical experience. Having had many hours each week of Hebrew school from age 8 to 13, I am a fluent reader of Hebrew and I am tickled that I can follow the progression of the service, even without page cues, and can catch onto the tunes and whole-heartedly immerse myself in the musicality. I have a great experience in the service and feel very much a part of it. At the end of the service, I fold my talis up, place it in its bag, return the prayer book, and stand near the foyer, waiting to leave. An older man approaches me and politely asks me in what sounds like a South African accent if I am the gentleman who wore the talis in the service. I say I am indeed, and in my pride about how I feel I understood and participated in the service, am anticipating some sort of pleasant, positive, and even complimentary conversation. The man, who appears to be a member of the congregation and is not the rabbi who led the service, tells me that he is Rabbi so-and-so, and that he never passes up an opportunity to educate. He says that he wants me to know that one never, and he emphasizes again, never, wears a talis at a Friday night service. I indicate that I am aware that people wear talisim when Torah reading is part of the service and am about to tell him what wearing a talis means to me and that my way of praying in schul is to wear a talis whenever I pray, even if it is not the standard practice. However, there is something about his approach, which appears well-intended and entwined in a gracious demeanor, but rigidly entrenched, from which I conclude that such a discussion with him would be neither understood nor productive. He tells me he can see that I love my talis, to which I give a heartfelt confirmation, but that I need to know that one never puts on a talis for Friday night services with the only exception, he emphasizes, the only exception, being Kol Nidre. I sense that his intentions are good, that he is working to be as gracious and gentle as he can be, and also sense that there are iron-fisted rules and convictions within this velvet glove with which he is treating me, so I thank him for his advice, and decide that further conversation would get nowhere for either of us. He tells me that he hopes his communication was gentle because he wanted to be gentle in educating me, and I note with sincerity that I can see this and appreciate his intentions and effort. He again notes that as a rabbi he likes to educate whenever he sees the opportunity and smilingly tells me that this education lesson will be free of charge. We then part ways with surface amicability. During and after this interchange, my self-image precipitously changes from a confident, competent knowledgeable Jewish senior with a seasoning and Jewish background that puts me at home even in a strange new congregation situated in the land of my forefathers, to a chastised, humiliated bar mitzvah boy who has failed his lessons. I think that rather than being free of charge, his lesson has cost me a lot. I also think, I am sure unfairly, that while this congregation may pride itself on being accepting of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, it certainly does not seem accepting of Jewish men who pray wrapped in a talis on Friday night. After this interchange, my first instinct is to take my bleeding ego and self-esteem to my rabbi, Rabbi Morris; to tell him about this interchange so that he can bandage my emotional wounds by telling me how Jewishly incorrect, narrow-minded, and wrong this rabbi’s words to me were. (Oh yeah, Rabbi so-and-so? Well MY rabbi’s bigger than you are, and I’m going to go get him and he’ll fix your clock!) I see Rabbi Morris and start to go over to him. I take two steps and then I think, This has nothing to do with Rabbi Morris. This has nothing to do with Rabbi so-and-so. This has to do with me, with what’s inside me, with what I think of myself. This is in my bailiwick, not in anybody else’s. This is mine to figure out and to come to terms with. And I turn on my heel and walk away from Rabbi Mo, never telling him about this. This turns out to be absolutely the right move. In the days and weeks and months following this I come to a very clear understanding of the part of me as a person, of me as a man, of me as a Jew, that pertains to this incident. I affirm that I feel good about me as a spiritual person, as a Jewish man, and about how I practice this. I affirm that I love wearing my talis when I pray, that there can never be anything wrong with this, and that I feel a deep sense of belonging in the spiritual human community and certainly in the religious Jewish community within this.

Saturday—Wendy and I pack our bags to check out of our hotel for a day, taking only small overnight backpacks for a stay tonight at a kibbutz up north. The original plan was to have a very early Saturday morning service at the Wall which would be extraordinary and then get picked up by the bus for the trip north. The inclement weather causes cancellation of the morning service at the Wall, so I opt out of our group service at the hotel, electing to try to get an extra half-hour’s sleep, at which of course I fail miserably. We arrive in the lobby to leave our bags secured here until we get back to the hotel on Sunday and I check with a desk clerk I have befriended to make sure that when we check back into the hotel on Sunday night, I will not have a room next to the garbage trucks, and am assured of this by my friend. Her name is Rothschild so I know she has huge pull in high places. We head north. The landscape, as it has been throughout the trip, is beautiful and engaging. On our way to Kinneret—the Sea of Galilee—we stop at Beit Shean. This is a stunning archeological site. Harley points out the topography. There is a very large mound that has what appear to be several hundred steps leading to its top, for those who wish to climb it. Harley notes that it is a tel, a large hill that in fact consists of stratum upon stratum of cities, one on top of the other as each new city was built upon the ruins of the one before it. The first settlement of this site was over five thousand years ago. The chronology is stunning. We have a daughter living in Boston, which I heretofore thought of as ancient. I now get it that Paul Revere was born yesterday. Parts of this site have been meticulously and breathtakingly excavated. An ancient Roman theater, one of the relatively newer structures in this ancient site, lies uncovered and is actually used for events here. Harley points out that it was here at Mount Gilboa that King Saul and his son Jonathan, to the heartbreak of the future King David, were killed by the Philistines. Some of us decide to climb the steps to the top of the tel. It is an invigorating climb and the vistas from the top are stunning. At the top, we explore what signs tell us was the ancient house of an Egyptian governor. We don’t have more time to spend at this wonderful site, because we need to get on to the Sea of Galilee, so we return to our bus. After going some distance, we begin to catch sight of the Sea of Galilee. It is a gorgeous blue body of water shimmering in the sun. The rabbi tells us that on a previous trip here, he ran the Tiberias marathon. The group oohs and aahs in appropriate appreciation of this feat. I, however, say, That’s nothing—Jesus did it ON the water. This gets a big laugh and this alone makes the entire trip to Israel worth it for me. I am a man of great depth and substance. As we go around the Sea of Galilee, Harley points out hallowed Christian sites—this is where Jesus fed the multitudes, this is where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount. I feel humbled by the spiritual history and power of these places. We arrive at a restaurant on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and go in for lunch. These waters are also known for their bounty of tilapia which have apparently thrived here at least since the time of Jesus. They are also known as St. Peter’s Fish, since that is apparently what this venerated fisherman caught. As we enter the restaurant, we see servers wheeling carts heaped with huge whole fish staring at us with blank, lifeless eyes. They are whole tilapia that have been quick fried in oil and are being served to diners. As we seat ourselves at a long table, we have a choice of ordering a filet of tilapia, a benign, boned serving of fish that we can eat in peace without having the victim of our luncheon order staring back at us as we dine, or we can order the whole fish, staring accusatory face and all. Helen, across from me, boldly says, I’m ordering the whole thing! I think, yes, while at St. Peter’s do as St. Peter did. I order a whole fish. The waitress nods approvingly. Soon she arrives with this formidable fish, which is indeed looking at me as if to say, Someday you should have somebody order you whole so you’ll know what it feels like. And the fish is indeed formidable. The tame tilapia filets I buy at King Soopers look nothing like this. This fish looks to be over a foot long with primitive, intimidating spiky dorsal and side fins and a big, spiky tail that makes it look like it was caught in Jurassic Park. Other than its haunting eyes, it is black, likely from its recent immersion in cooking oil. Despite its looks, that is to say, both its appearance and its staring at me, I dig in, trying to appear like I eat things like this all the time. The fish is delicious. Its meat is savory, moist, and tender, set off perfectly by the tasty crunch of the quick-fried skin. Like the prehistoric skeletons at a natural history museum, it is totally full of thick, immobile bones. I pick out what meat I can from this mass of bony structure, but despite my best efforts, I leave a lot of meat behind. I look across the table at Helen’s plate, on which remains what appears to be a perfectly meatless fish skeleton. Although I have always been impressed with Helen, my admiration for her goes up several notches.

After lunch, Wendy and I take a walk around the restaurant’s environs. It is situated on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is a beautiful setting. We find a way to get down to the water’s edge. We look out on the water. Wendy says that it’s amazing that Jesus was once here. She bends down and gathers two small stones and a shell from the water’s edge, and says she’s going to take them home. As we go back up to the restaurant, I see Jerry seated out on the patio, looking out at the water, an intensive meditative look on his face. Jerry is a big part of the soul of this trip. He has arranged it for us, and he has looked out for us everywhere we went. I have frequently lingered at sites, looking at the tableaus presented, absorbing the emotions and sense of the areas, taking it all in and trying to absorb it and metabolize it, using it to try to build my foundation and who I am as a person. In such reveries during the trip, I often have felt the gentle, respectful touch of Jerry’s hand on my shoulder, indicating to me that I am the last straggler, that everyone else is headed to the bus, and it is time to leave. This is done in such a respectful, thoughtful, and caring way, that I am always touched and appreciative of it, and my fondness for Jerry, who has been wonderful from the beginning, grows throughout the trip. Seeing him absorbed in his own thoughts looking out at the Sea of Galilee, I am glad he has the opportunity and time for such moments on this trip, and I silently wish him good things in his life.

We all then get back on our bus and head toward the kibbutz where we will spend the night. Throughout this journey north of Jerusalem, we see not-so-distant glimpses of neighboring countries. We see repeated views of Jordan. At one point, we drive next to the River Jordan, which appears to be a rivulet making Cherry Creek look like the Mississippi. I think that maybe the phrase, the banks of the mighty Jordan, may in fact be referring to the sites of the former basketball great’s money depositories. At different times on our journey today we will see glimpses of Jordan and Syria and even see the hills over which lies Lebanon, and tomorrow, from Safed, we will even be able to glimpse Lebanon itself. It gives me a gut level appreciation for Israel’s situation. It is like living in Denver, with Commerce City, Westminster, Aurora, and Castle Rock filled with mortal enemies sworn to kill you. As we travel to the kibbutz, we go up on the Golan Heights. I get goose bumps and am humbled beyond words to be here. Ever since I was a boy, I heard of the Golan Heights. My Hebrew school teacher, Mr. Pikarsky, was an Israeli foreign student at DU, a lieutenant on leave from the Israeli army. He gave us a blow-by-blow description of the 1956 Suez invasion as it was going on, and spoke in vivid terms about the shelling of the Israelis who lived in communities beneath the Golan Heights. I thrilled in 1967 when Israel took the Golan and I knew that the shelling of those below it would finally cease. And here I am, on the Golan Heights. We drive by the remains of Syrian bunkers and garrisons. I see white cars going by us on the highway, marked with the bold blue letters, “UN.” Our bus stops and we go out to an overlook on the Heights. I feel chilled and saddened standing in this place immersed in such recent history, a history I grew up with and vicariously felt, of killing and death. We look down on the Sea of Galilee below us, and on the fields by its shores in the shadow of the Golan. Harley tells us how the farmers were shelled from here, and how shells were even fired on fishermen in the sea. Wendy says she wants to take a picture of me on the overlook, with the view from the Golan behind me. I look at the camera and she tells me I look too somber. I tell her there is no other way I can look on this site. I feel such a sadness for the tragedy, death, and destruction of war, which ripples in circles out in time and place and progeny, and for some reason I feel all of this distilled in this place. I am saddened by and hate war and all that’s involved in it more than I can ever express. These feelings come bubbling up at times, like seeing POW-MIA flags on a sunny day in a park filled with families and children, like hearing the story of a wonderful young war veteran like Avner, like seeing the faces of the young servicemen and women in the pictures at the Palmach museum, like being here at this site. During a rough period in my work on the PTSD unit at the VA I told my boss, I can’t hear about death anymore, I can’t talk about death anymore, I’m done with death. But the knowledge that we transcend, that we get through and grow and transcend, the undying hope generated by this knowledge, and during my rough period at work knowing that I could help lance festering emotional wounds and help salve them with empathy, respect, and affirmation, which was also a balm to my pain and frustration and an affirmation of the good of humanity and my own humanity, all this helps to get through, to transcend, and gives me solace and more than this gives me hope. And sure enough, on the Golan, I look out and see the beautiful flowers and vegetation which have been planted and which grow on these heights, I look out at the beautiful body of water, and hear Harley talk about all the productive and peaceful development projects being done on these heights, and here again, on this site which was a locus of death and destruction, I see the signs of transcendence and feel hope.

We board our bus and travel to the kibbutz, and Harley tells us that the kibbutzim today no longer resemble the socialist communities of their forebears. Kibbutzim now, he notes, are privatized and even the cooperatives distribute their earnings in proportion to the respective economic contributions of the members. We arrive at the kibbutz at which we will be spending the night. True to Harley’s comments, we find that the product of Kibbutz Ginosar, where we will stay, is a tourist hotel, at which we will be staying. So instead of mingling with rugged sabras, sharing a rustic meal with them, helping them fix their tractors, and then sleeping in their Quonset huts, we will be sleeping in commodious rooms in the kibbutz-run hotel after we have a very refined dinner in the hotel dining room. We partake of a wonderful buffet including what we now consider the expected array of delicious Mediterranean salads. There is of course tilapia from the nearby Kinneret but I choose repeated helpings of wonderfully rich, melt-in-your-mouth fowl, which I am told as I devour it is goose. I feel a marked pang of guilt and regret, since one of my delights is to watch the flights of geese at City Park as I circle the lake on my bike. I tell myself that I probably don’t know any of the geese that I am eating and push these unpleasant thoughts out of my mind.

Sunday—Bright and early we head further north to Safed, a city noted for its beauty and art, and for being a birthplace of Jewish mysticism. As we head north to Safed, gaining in elevation, we are in a cloud bank nestling on the land. It adds to the sense of mystery and mysticism surrounding Safed. Just as Harley tells us we will, before we get to Safed we break through the cloud bank to see a sky of breathtaking blue. Harley tells us that colors of beautiful blue characterize Safed, which reflect the gorgeous sky around it. We reach Safed and get out of our bus. It is a stunning little city high in the hills, with timeless stone structures of soft beige set against a backdrop of the stunningly beautiful blue sky. Our first stop is a well-established art gallery, with gorgeous works inside. The owner tells us that Chagall, who painted in Safed, arranged for the gallery to sell original Chagall prints at bargain prices, with the proceeds to go to a fund for use by art students here, whom he wished to continue to support. We go to the back of the gallery and see wonderful Chagall prints with dazzling colors and delightful content. Some of our group confer with spouses, pull out credit cards, and purchase prints. Wendy, who is a dancer, and I who love dance and Wendy, see a simply delightful, whimsical, if balletically incorrect, brass sculpture of a leotarded ballerina that we both instantly love and would have purchased on the spot had it cost just a bit less than thousands. While our fellow travelers purchase Chagall, a bit later we settle for a Shlomo, a modest though wonderfully pleasing print of Hassidic musicians and dancing Hassids sold by an old, irascible man in a stall on the street. In response to our tentative questioning, Shlomo loudly and indignantly assures us that “It is MY work!” though an equally old and irascible man in a stall next to him selling nearly identical prints has just as vigorously assured us that the prints he is selling are HIS work. But we find the print delightful and are happy with our five dollar investment which no doubt will be worth millions upon Shlomo’s demise.

Harley then takes us to two synagogues in succession. Their respective histories are stunning. Both were founded in the 1500’s by legendary Jewish figures. One is a beautiful, whimsical, blue-interiored Sephardic synagogue founded by Joseph Caro. Caro, a Sephardic Jew, was a prolific and legendary scholar, known among other things as the author of the Shulchan Aruch, considered by many as the definitive word in Jewish law (though definitive word combined with anything Jewish, as all Jews know, is oxymoronic). The interior is comfortable, pleasing, and informal filled with whimsical color of which the blues leave for me the strongest impression. Near the sanctuary in a high alcove towards the ceiling, an unexploded artillery shell of some sort is hanging. Harley tells us that the shell landed in the synagogue’s yard and didn’t go off, hence is hanging as a reminder and proof of God’s miracles. Harley notes that the pleasing colors and comfortable, informal seating of the sanctuary reflect the Sephardic belief that a place for praying should be comfortable thus conducive to prayer and contemplation. In the middle of the sanctuary sits a replica of the single-scrolled Sephardic Torah. I take in the pleasing and calming ambience of the sanctuary. As I am leaving I notice Jerry sitting quietly, silently mouthing what appear to be words of prayer. I think back on his mentioning to me the relatively recent loss of his beloved mother.

Harley then takes us down the street to another synagogue. He says that this was founded in the 1500’s by Isaac Luria. I gulp in awe at this name. Isaac Luria is considered by many to be one of the most influential if not the most influential figures of the Kabbalist movement, has been called the father of contemporary Kabbalah, and I have repeatedly seen his name cited with reverence. I have been intrigued with Kabbalah and in my youth, which for me means when I was middle-aged, I read the mind-bending On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem. I cannot believe I am entering Luria’s synagogue and have just left Caro’s synagogue. Harley tells us that Luria’s synagogue is Ashkenazi. It is indeed a more formal, stiff, and linear structure and is beautiful and impressive and spiritual in its own way. We leave this beautiful space and spend a bit of time in harried shopping, frustrated that we don’t have time to linger over the wonderful art objects here and explore more. Judith, an accomplished artist in our group, generously uses her limited time in this extraordinarily artistic place, to, with the rabbi, select a Havdalah set to present to the temple from our group. It is delicate, nuanced, and lovely. She makes the effort to corral the passing members of our group in the art market to make sure the gift has our approval. It couldn’t be a more fitting gift, wonderfully representing the special qualities of our congregation and the equally special qualities of this trip. We head for the bus and I reluctantly leave Safed, a place of extraordinary beauty, spiritual engagement, and soul.

On the bus, we head to Haifa. Haifa is a beautiful, bustling clearly metropolitan and cosmopolitan place perched over the Mediterranean with a gorgeous harbor. With a significant jaunt back to Jerusalem ahead of us today, we mostly experience the city from the bus. We do get out, however, for a view and photos of the breathtaking Baha’i terraced gardens on the side of Mt. Carmel. I also learn that Mt. Carmel is not a mountain, but a miles-long ridge of a formation. Wendy learns a bit about the philosophy of Baha’i, which is, as I understand it, that there is one unifying religion that advances civilization through manifestations of God from messengers throughout the ages such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Muhammed. It is a wonderful, harmonious, inclusive, growing and transcending vision and Wendy decides that maybe this best fits her views. We take in the beautiful terraced gardens below us, the gorgeous harbor and the sea behind it at the bottom of our hillside view, and climb back into the bus headed to Jerusalem through Tel Aviv. We stop for lunch at a delightful vegetarian roadside restaurant that serves savory herbed vegetables and wonderful cheese and dairy products. The rabbi declares it his favorite eating place of the trip. We head to Tel Aviv, and in Tel Aviv we arrange to briefly stop at a hotel for a bathroom break. As we walk into the hotel lobby, I ask the rabbi if there is any news—he has been keeping us posted throughout the trip in a very judicious, discrete way with respect and caring for the interests of all concerned—of how Larry is doing and how Liz is. He smiles and says, Turn around, see that lady over there? I scan the lobby, not quite knowing who to look for. Now behind me, he gently turns my shoulders so I face in a certain direction. That lady, that little short lady over there, see her? I still do not see to whom he’s referring. From the tone of his voice, I’m looking for a venerated little short lady. I am literally scanning the room for Mother Theresa. There, he says with bemused gentle insistence, There. Then I see her—it is Liz! She is surrounded by delighted members of our group. The rabbi apparently arranged with her for her to come over here to see us from the hotel where she’s been staying here in Tel Aviv while Larry has been in the hospital. She looks wonderful and is animatedly talking to members of our group. I am amazed at her vitality, her attitude, and her energetic and joyful engagement with the present and with us. If there ever was a Little Short Lady Profile in Courage she is it. We share wonderful moments with Liz, and we get back on the bus to check back in to our hotel in Jerusalem. At the hotel, I check with the front desk clerk, who with his pencil mustache looks like something out of The Grand Budapest Hotel, to make sure that I am not given a room next to the garbage trucks. He assures me I am not. I go to my room, which I discover is both next to the elevator and a roomful of latency age boys who have decided that screaming is the proper volume of vocal interchange and whose parents, I small-mindedly decide, are too wealthy and busy to be bothered with the constraints of setting limits on young boys, and the boys play screaming hide and seek through the halls into the night. I decide that God is teaching me a lesson about the futility of trying to control life and the world, and that night put in my earplugs which blissfully leave me only with my tinnitus and block out the celebratory conversations going into and out of the elevator as well as the exuberant boyhood games in the hall.

Monday—We have the day to wander at our discretion, packing up and checking out of the hotel at 6:30 this evening and taking our bus to Tel Aviv and the airport. Hearkening back to my toddler nightmare of being trapped on the old yellow Denver Colfax trolley while my mother gets off it and unknowingly leaves me, I have a fear of not being ready in time and missing the bus to the airport. Wendy tells me that it only takes a little time to finish packing and that if we’re back by 5, we’ll be ready in plenty of time. After 40 years, I know that Wendy’s typical schedule expectation includes being able to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, pack up the house for moving and actually move, and be able to get ready and meet friends for dinner, all in a half-day. I have repeatedly seen these ambitiously formulated schedules fail, and plan for this. I, on the other hand, am at the exact, and equally unrealistic, opposite end of the continuum. I allow myself a week to brush my teeth. All this being said, I tell Wendy I really think we need to be back at the hotel to pack at 4, and she agrees to this. We decide to go out walking in Jerusalem and to spend time experiencing Mea Shearim, the Hassidic neighborhood. We leisurely walk up the main streets, wonderfully diverse thoroughfares filled with shops and bustling urbanites, many from different cultures, and stop at a stand and get some shawarma for lunch. Wendy has a rudimentary map and we find our way to Mea Shearim. As we go into the neighborhood, a sign in Hebrew and English both requests and implicitly admonishes that “modest clothes” are to be worn in this neighborhood. Wendy has a scarf over her head and a full length skirt over her jeans. As we further descend into the neighborhood—literally, because we go down a hill and then down some stone stairs into a development full of courtyards and the noise of children playing in nearby schoolyards—hackneyed as it sounds, we feel like we are entering another time. While there is the occasional car or cell phone, it really feels like we are in Poland in the middle of the last millenium. The men have gray and black striped caftans or long black coats, breeches, fur hats or black flat brim hats, and of course beards, sidelocks, and tsitsis. Women dress with old-fashioned modest simplicity and have head coverings. There is a striking sense of peacefulness in the neighborhood. Even with the sounds of children playing in the schoolyards, it feels incredibly peaceful and even quiet in this neighborhood. There is a sense that the daily focus is not on what it is elsewhere, that it is on things that somehow slow the pace, the franticness and freneticness of life. Surprisingly, it does not feel like we are seen or treated as strangers here. Men and women pass by us with a quiet and respectful matter-of-factness. Schoolgirls, laughingly chattering and holding hands, pass us enrapt in their conversations and don’t notice us. We go into shops on a tiny commercial street in the neighborhood, and the shopkeepers treat us with a gracious civility and respect. With the neighborhood’s gentle, peaceful, and wonderful feel, I think to myself that they have something here really worth having. We have an eye on the time, and we walk over to Ben Yehuda Street. I have heard for years of this central, bustling walking street with its diverse shops and offerings. When our daughter Caitlin, then 17, was on the Israel Study Trip in the summer of 2001, Ben Yehuda Street was eliminated from the itinerary due to bombings at the time. I am delighted to be here today and Caitlin was later impressed and a bit envious that we went here. I am looking for a Buchari, a large, embroidered yarmulke that looks to have originated in central Asia. I have envisioned a light blue Buchari, evoking hopeful and holy blue skies, like those of Safed. I have yet to see one like this, even in Safed. This being our last day in Israel, I hope to have the good fortune to chance upon one today. As we start down Ben Yehuda, we go into a shop run by a very authentic looking, amiably welcoming, old Hassidic man. I tell him what I am looking for and he nods approvingly. He says he has only a couple left, neither of which resemble what I’m looking for. One has a blue Hebrew letter on its top, so he declares this a blue Buchari. It is tiny, maybe for a child, and it perches on me like an Arrowhead water bottle cap. The proprietor tells me that it is exactly the right size, and without any success, tries to jam it down further on my head. He then tells me, counterintuitively, that if I wash it it will stretch. Wendy furtively confirms to me that it looks way too small. We thank the man for his time, he assures me that he will save the Buchari for me because he knows I will return, and we leave his shop. We then walk down the street and I miraculously see hanging from a clip at an outdoor kiosk, the exact Buchari I have envisioned. It is light blue, perfectly embroidered, and I think this is too good to be true. The kiosk is not exactly the Hassid’s shop of Judaica that we just left. It is called something like Kippah Korner and is manned by a young man on a bar stool eating a hot dog and talking on a cell phone. I tell him that I am interested in the Buchari. He unclips it and I try it on. It appears to fit and he says it looks to him like it’s my size. Now skeptical and mistrustful (if you can’t trust an authentic looking old Hassid in a Judaica shop who can you trust?) I say I think it might be too small. He wonders what size it is, looking inside it, and to my amazement I see that it is fully lined complete with a tag in Hebrew that also gives its European size. He goes into his inventory and gives me the next larger size to try on, though notes that he does not have any others in the blue color. I now am impressed with his knowledge, trust him completely, and to my delight find the next bigger size is too large. I with great pleasure buy this perfect Buchari, clearly the only one of its kind and made just for me, and we depart the Kippah Korner. It is now three o’clock. My work in Jerusalem done with my perfect Buchari, I am ready to head back to the hotel, with plenty of time to pack at a reasonable pace and be ready for the bus. Wendy, however, asserts with characteristic certainty and firmness, that we of course have time to go to the Old City and go into the Jewish Quarter, which we have yet to see. I say I don’t want to be late for the bus. With thinly disguised disdain for my anxiety and with great authority, she pulls out her rudimentary map and notes we have plenty of time to walk over to the Jewish Quarter, experience it a bit, go out the Dung Gate and in a hop, skip, and jump be back at the hotel to pack. With trepidation and 40 years of experience with Wendy’s sense of time, but also with great respect for my often overblown sense of anxiety, I grudgingly agree and we head off on foot to the Old City. As we see it in the distance, it seems really far to me and my mind becomes a stopwatch, ticking off the hours, minutes, and seconds we have left until the bus leaves for the airport. We head into the Old City through the Jaffa Gate. Wendy beams, taking in the bustle, diversity, and unique life of the place. I just want to get to the Jewish Quarter, satisfy Wendy and appear like an explorer rather than a nail-biting neurotic, then get back to the hotel and pack. We wander around the Old City and despite our rudimentary map can’t find the Jewish Quarter. Where are the Jews in Jerusalem when you need them? We ask directions and finally locate the Jewish Quarter. I say, OK, we did it, now it’s time to go back to the hotel. Wendy looks at her trusty semblance of a map and locates the Dung Gate about half a finger-nail’s length on the map from where we supposedly are, noting with her fingernail that we’re THIS CLOSE to it. I know that actual distance, steps we have to take, is in reality the length of many, many fingernails and the stopwatch in my head ticks ever more loudly. We wander around to where the map says the Dung Gate is and it is nowhere to be found. I envision the plane at Ben Gurion taking off without us and Temple Micah forgetting that we ever existed. I stumble onto a you-are-here map posted on a wall and see that we are nowhere near the Dung Gate. We follow traffic flow of people who look like they might be leaving the Old City and eventually exit through the Jaffa Gate. We double-time it back to the hotel and with me soaking in sweat arrive, you guessed it, at 4:00. Not wanting to hear Wendy say I told you so, I start packing.

We get to the bus on time at 6:30. Some in our group have peeled off, to take additional trips while here, and will be coming home later. The rabbi is staying an extra day with family. We are all acutely aware that Larry and Liz are not able to come back yet. Harley and Yossi take us to the airport and make sure we are on our way. We go through security surprisingly, to me, manned (misnomer) by a series of some of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. I think, How can THESE people guarantee our safety? Wendy has the same reaction. I, jauntily smiling and arching an eyebrow, look at the gorgeous agents, trying to establish eye contact and am greeted by as deadly serious, penetrating, scrutinizing looks as I have ever encountered and feel very assured that these people are very good at what they do and that we are completely safe in our trip home. After we arrive in Newark, we leave the group to spend a few days visiting our daughter Caitlin and her husband Pete in Manhattan. Wendy, like many in the group, has caught a cold. I still am not sleeping and this is compounded by jet lag. As a result, we are both spacey. I forget to pick up my credit card after paying a tab; Wendy, as we go to leave a restaurant, finds that she no longer has her wallet and phone. In both cases, our precious property is recovered by restaurant personnel and returned to us. Caitlin, the seasoned New Yorker, is astounded and says that the odds of having this good fortune and honesty in Manhattan are nil. She declares us incompetent and when we go to the ballet, she will not even let us hold our own tickets. We then take the train to Boston to see our daughter Amy, husband Gabe, and granddaughters Josie and Rosalie, and arrive just in time for the first of the infamous Boston Blizzards of 2015. Now not only is Wendy sick, but Amy has a bad cold and Josie develops a fever. I remain healthy as a horse (and a healthy horse, at that). So much for my fears of falling apart on this trip and being left to deteriorate into oblivion in an isolation ward. We manage to get out of Boston between blizzards and arrive back in Denver. I am exhilarated, having experienced the trip of a lifetime!

Additional thoughts and perhaps insights stimulated by this trip:

My spiritual compass and the rabbi—When our group gathers at the end of January to socialize and begin to process the trip, Sam, an intelligent, sociable, generous and appreciative man, stands up and publicly expresses his deep appreciation for the trip and its experiences and in a heartfelt statement thanks the rabbi for being his spiritual leader. I think, Is the rabbi my spiritual leader? Do I have a spiritual leader? I think, How can a guy with an earring, of whom I am literally old enough to be his father, be my spiritual leader? I have an enormously deep affection and respect for Rabbi Adam Morris. I was co-chair of the Pulpit Committee that recommended his hire. I was the one who vetted him, having contacts in Nashville where he had perhaps his first post-seminary position. I consistently heard the same things about the rabbi from those who knew him—a complete mensch; a caring, compassionate, and present man; a man who is loyal, dependable, not self-absorbed, who is invested in caring for others. His interview trip here not only supported this, but made it clear that this was only the beginning of who he is. On the committee, I used every bit of strategic and persuasive skill I had to try to assure that he would be the rabbi we hired. He was my guy. As much as I liked him for the position then, I could not have imagined how positive and how good he has been for the temple and for the whole community. I am enormously proud of whatever part I had to play in hiring Rabbi Morris. But, my spiritual leader? I am delighted by his innovations, his thoughtful boldness, his reaching out for peace and community. But he is a bit new-age for me—I am more old age. I miss certain traditions, certain prayers, certain poetry in services. I disagree with some of his assessments of people, of politics, of situations. I am certain there are positions of his that I could not follow his lead, could not march behind. I am aware of this and being in his presence throughout the trip in some ways clarifies this. So in many ways he is not my spiritual leader, I am not his disciple. And one of the things that’s wonderful about him is that I am sure he would be, will be, completely accepting of this. He fashioned this trip to Israel—his fingerprints are all over it. And a hallmark of this trip, what characterizes it, is that it is set up—he has set it up—so that we are exposed to an amazingly broad sample of the range of places, experiences, perspectives, and people that are Israel. I surmise that it was Adam who found out about Avner and arranged for our extraordinary experience with him and his perspective, and the Palestinian perspective to which we were exposed; and I surmise that it was Adam who found out about Artie and on the same day of Avner’s perspective and the non-violent Palestinian perspective, we also got a chance to not only see and hear but literally digest through a meal, the equally compelling perspective of a settlement and those who live there. And I surmise that it was Adam who put together the juxtaposition of a memorial showing the horrors of the Holocaust followed that same day by us experiencing the vibrant life of Jews thriving in the wake of this horror. He put together a trip to Israel of extraordinary, unusual depth and perspective that allowed us to experience these sites, these people, these perspectives so that we could form our own conclusions, enrich our own lives and humanity, in whatever way fit for each of us. This is extraordinary. Maybe this is what Sam means by a spiritual leader. In any case, this trip and its experiences evoke emotions, thoughts, perspectives, changes that help me in my journey to clarify who I am, to hone my own spiritual compass, my religious beliefs, and to clarify who I am as a human, a spiritual person, a religious person, a Jew, to set the drumbeat to which I march and in that way become my own spiritual leader, and to take comfort, support, and confidence from this, including with gratitude and humbleness wearing my talis whenever it feels right to me. And the icing on the cake is that Rabbi Morris tells us when we are gathered after our return, to write about our experience; to write whatever we want; to feel free to share it with others; and bottom line, to follow our hearts when we are writing. This is a wonderfully clarifying, informative, and freeing experience for me to do this, and I am deeply grateful to the rabbi for his role in this gift.

Thoughts on our trip and terror in Israel—When we decide, REALLY decide, to go on this trip, it is with mixed feelings of excitement and fear. The tragic kidnapping and murder of the Jewish teenagers in the West Bank and the killing that followed in the months before our trip make me wonder, is this the kind of place that I want to visit? I think of a book of Chaim Potok’s in which he describes the tragic death of the protagonist’s parents, killed by a bomb while they were pleasantly having coffee at an outdoor café in Jerusalem in the late 1940’s. When I read the book in the early nineties, I thought that this was a tragically senseless death in ancient history and personally did not think that this could ever be part of my life. Yet as I anticipate the trip now, I remember this book and wonder if I want to subject my girls to that risk of loss. It does not help that friends of ours, lots of friends, Jew and gentile, when they find that we are soon to go to Israel, start looking at us as a condemned couple and treating our time with them as precious moments to be savored at, without a doubt, the end of their relationships with us. Before we go on the trip, I make sure to tell my therapist and my dear friends how precious they are and how much they mean to me. I make sure the kids know where all our important papers are and who the resources are who will be key in settling our estate and getting them what we have put aside for them. I leave for the trip feeling that this is a grand and important adventure, part of the risk entailed in having a life worth living, I am committed to do this, but at some level feel that I will die in the endeavor. However, when we actually depart, on our trip there and, with the one very fleeting exception that I mentioned experiencing in the Shuk, the whole time I am in Israel, I do not feel concern for my or Wendy’s safety. Even in the deeply unsettling H-1 experience in Hebron, I do not personally feel in danger. Instead, I find myself immersed in the diverse, vital, fascinating, amazingly compelling and satisfying experience of being alive and part of life in Israel. This is a fascinating phenomenon and I wonder how this can be. And then I think about cancer. I know about cancer because I had a cancer that was scary and to be respected. When I was diagnosed, I was told there was a 33% chance that it had metastasized, and when I read obituaries in the paper I literally could see my name there. But Wendy and I did the best investigative work of our lives, settled on a course, found an incredibly gifted and mensch of a surgeon, the cancer was removed and assessed as not having metastasized, I had no side effects, and continue my life without constraints. I am healthy, fit, and completely functional. However, when it comes down to it, I have no doubt that somewhere in my body, there are cancer cells. They are running around in me. But the overall picture is that I am a healthy, living, vital organism, wonderfully engaged in life and these cancer cells running around in me do not take root, do not alter or dampen this life, this vitality, this functionality. And as long as I stay fit, vitally engaged and present in life, I will continue in this manner (until I, as all living things, wear out). And, I think, this fits with Israel. Israel is a vital, functioning, alive organism, fully engaged in life. All you have to do is to be there, be part of this, to see how powerfully this is the case. Like any vital living organism, Israel has its cancer cells. These are the terrorists (from many persuasions) there. But these cells are not enough to take the life, the vitality, the thriving, out of Israel any more than my cancer cells in their isolated minority can take this from me. So when I was in Israel, I had no compelling sense of the cancer cells there, I was just immersed in the wonderful vitality of the place and its people, not feeling any cause to worry about safety. Now if one looks at Israel from a microscopic perspective and not as an overall living organism, the terrorists are the cancer cells running around inside the organism. And just as in any organism, if a healthy cell, i.e., a tourist, a citizen, an innocent bystander, encounters a terrorist, a cancer cell, the cancer cell can kill it, can take innocent life. But this is a very, very small part of the picture, and the vast majority of cells are healthy, and combine together as part and parcel of the vibrantly functioning organism. So when I am in Israel, I experience the vibrance of the organism and am completely taken with and fully engaged with its life, with thoughts of risk and safety seemingly irrelevant and pushed to the margins. It is interesting that when I return from Israel, I hear of the taking of life on the Golan shortly after we were there, and a terrorist knife attack in Tel Aviv. Rather than any feeling of serendipitously missing lethal danger there, I feel no sense of having been at any risk. The overarching feeling I have about Israel is that it is a vital, fascinating, compelling piece of life that occupies a central position in who I am and to which I would love to return with no more fears of safety than I have here, the vital and thriving place of my birth, where I feel safe even though dozens were killed or wounded in a slaughter in a movie theater and the paper frequently recounts people murdered in my city including in the supposed safety of their homes.

Last thoughts, at last—I have just completed a wonderful book, which I feel pertains in an uncanny way to our trip to Israel. It is called Winter’s Tale. It is huge in length, in scope, in the philosophical depth of its considerations, and in the soaring majesty of its prose. It speaks to the perfect balance of our universe which we can’t see because we’re too involved in our lives to have an overview. It speaks to the importance of all parts of humanity and how both good and evil are critical to the amalgam necessary to grow and transcend, and how our mortality, rather than need for supernatural powers, is critical in this transcendence, and what a beautiful balance and symmetry there is in life. I am reminded so much of the seeming contradictions and clashes of forces and perspectives in Israel and how, like Dalia said, if one is able to simultaneously see them, feel them, hold them, and respect the importance of each, there will be growth and transcendence. This to me is a core if not the core of the breathtaking richness, vitality, and beauty that is Israel. And speaking of symmetry and balance, I am so delighted to hear that Larry and Liz are returning from Israel, to see in Larry’s e-mail that he returns his incisive, smart, funny, wonderful self, snapping back like the brim of his ever present fedora, and now that we are all gathered home from our trip, I feel that balance is completed and that the trip to Israel is of a piece.