Early on Friday morning, the first full day of my recent trip to Israel with Congregation Beth Ha Tephila, Asheville, NC, six of the forty-three participants gathered on a momentarily quiet Metzitzim Beach near the Tel Aviv port for twenty minutes of mindfulness practice. When we finished, we noted, just to the south of us,…

If I could have only one poet, I’d choose Yehuda Amichai. He’s the poet of the city where I came to life in my twenties: Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity…. Jerusalem is the Venice of God.   Jerusalem stone is the only stone that can feel pain. It has a…

Ma’arat Ha-machpelah, the alliterative name sounded as magical to me as the lives of the people buried there: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. I learned about the so-called Cave of the Patriarchs, Judaism’s most ancient site, in Hebrew day school, and I still remembered the Hebrew name when I went to…