Blog

Late Sunday night, Rabbi Michael and I returned from a trip to Israel with 20 congregants from our TI community, somehow simultaneously exhausted and invigorated, glad to be home with our family but already missing a truly unforgettable experience.

It’s hard to explain what made this trip so remarkable.  We hit the traditional highlights of any great Israel trip: ascending Mount Masada, putting notes in the Western Wall, floating in the Dead Sea.  We also had unique experiences that were new to each of us: cooking a meal with a Druze family in their home, riding bikes through the Hula Valley, and singing along with a didgeridoo band at a kibbutz in the Golan.  We shuk-hopped for the best falafel, taste-tested whiskey and wine, and stayed up late at night talking and toasting. We discussed poetry in the streets of Jerusalem, climbed endless numbers of stairs, and compared graffiti and art in one city after the next.

But I’ll tell you what truly made this trip magical. It wasn’t just about exploring everything that Israel has to offer, or the fun of having adventures in a country where nearly everyone around you is Jewish yet it still feels incredibly diverse. It was about taking a group of individuals from our TI community, each of whom Rabbi Michael and I knew in some way -- we’d celebrated lifecycle events with their families, or taught them in class, or welcomed them at services -- and forming new, close relationships over these shared, holy experiences. It’s one thing to get to know a person at a Board meeting, it’s quite another to walk through the halls of Yad VaShem together and share stories of our parents and grandparents and how lucky we were to be in this time and place. We walked away feeling like we had deepened our relationships with each other as a group, with our Judaism, and with TI.  It was just transformative, and we feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to say together, This year in Jerusalem!   

By Rabbi Amy
afeder@ti-stl.org

Click here to view more photos from the trip!