Thursday, March 10th - Getting ready to go.......

I attended the last meeting today with my delegation of educators to go over our itinerary and a variety of other details for our trip next week. For me, it is difficult to fathom that at this time next week, I will be somewhere over the Atlantic heading for Israel. I have experienced both of my children visiting Israel and my Mom, in fact, is there at this moment. She is coming home this weekend from a trip with members of her temple. While it is exciting to experience this land through loved ones, planting my two feet on Israeli soil will be something totally different.

This trip, in some ways, is the culmination of a different, but related, journey that I have been on for many years. My Jewishness did not play a central role in my life through much of my early adulthood. I was busy with career, activities, building a life with Carol......Judaic ritual and culture held little interest for me. The state of Israel held little interest to me....I did not want to be bothered with the religious, social and cultural complexities of the Jewish homeland. And then, a miracle took place in my life.......this miracle took the form of Joshua and Rachel....my children. Their birth summoned me.....called to me......required me to ask myself some very challenging questions about who I was and what I wanted to pass on to them about me, my family, and in many ways more importantly, the thousands of years of Jewish culture that preceded them. How could I teach them about their long, proud and incredible heritage if I was standing on the Jewish sidelines? This was the beginning of my journey. Joshua and Rachel have lead me, taught me, nurtured the strong Jewish connection in me. I have witnessed the two of them grab on to their Jewishness with a sense of purpose and pride through the years. It is through them that I walked back to Temple, to a Jewish life, to a sense of connection and meaning, to a moment in life where I can no longer envision doing all that I do without being guided by all that the Jewish people can teach me. My children are responsible for my journey to Israel.

Keith