Jews and the Sacred Balancing Act

(I shared these words with the Temple Israel community the morning after I returned from a synagogue trip to Israel.  Click here to see photos and reflections from the families who participated in the trip.)

I returned yesterday morning on the red-eye from Israel, having spent 10 days with a group of Temple Israel families. 

It was an amazing trip. I’m suffering a little bit from jetlag and my brain is currently somewhere over Greenland, but I’m going to do my best to share a few interesting stories about our adventures and, hopefully, to make a worthwhile point.

Monday morning, 2:30 am.  Three adults, including me, and three teens, all of whom celebrated becoming bar mitzvah on our bimah, left the lobby of our hotel in Jerusalem to drive to Masada so we could climb it and then watch the sun rise.

While we were planning it the night before, it seemed like a great idea (and in the end it was, as you can see!)

Ten Days in Israel with Family

On the concrete level, Temple Israel’s trip to Israel concluded for each participant with the thwack of the US Customs stamp on our passports at JFK.  But the impact of the trip is hardly over for any of us, certainly not for me.

I’ve been to Israel many times and each trip resonated in its own way, a function of itinerary, company and life circumstance.  But this trip was unique for me in at least one respect.  Never before have I led a group of families – young children, teens and adults – as a rabbi.

For starters, I enjoyed watching people of all ages as they took in the kaleidoscopic reality of Eretz Yisra’el, some for the first time.  What’s it like to watch the mostly Jewish throngs (some in thongs) on the Tel Aviv promenade?  What’s it like to shmooze with Israeli teens (some who idolize America) at a natural watering hole in Beit Shean?  What’s it like on Shabbat to walk to and from shul on the streets of Jerusalem? 

What’s it like to dance with wide-eyed kindergartners in Ashkelon and then see the shelter that they have 20 seconds to run to when rockets strike? What’s it like to celebrate with a Bat Mitzvah a few hundred feet from where the ancient Levites used to ascend the steps to the Holy Temple?