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When you travel abroad, do you try to incorporate Judaism into your visits to other countries? There a myriad ways to experience Jewish life, culture, and, especially, history while traveling...
Summer is prime travel time, and we’re of the belief that no matter where you’re headed, you can “do Jewish” while you’re there – and you don’t have to travel across the globe to do it!
Weeks after my return from Elephant Nature Park, I still hold the memory of my walk with the elephants. I wonder how I can use what I've learned to help me live in service of my unique purpose.
During my recent sabbatical, my husband and I traveled to France, where we explored all facets of Progressive Jewish life in the City of Lights.
While I was in Israel as part of the 2018 Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) Wilkenfeld International Women’s Leadership Seminar, a group from ARZA (Association of Reform Zionists of America) was...
Living in Poland showed me the need for a home for every human, and the particular need for a Jewish home for our people.
In a world that is increasingly more global and interconnected, the value and importance of a global progressive Jewish movement is more important than ever.
In 2005-2006, I worked in Afghanistan, and to get to work, I had to travel on one of the most dangerous roads in the world. This is when I started praying for safe travels.
Recent headlines tell of Jewish life in countries around the world; here are just a few that caught my eye as of late.
After the ceremony, Israeli after Israeli came to me to say, "So this is what Progressive Judaism looks like? How do I learn more?"
I returned home with new Torah from the wonderful community I was exposed to in Buenos Aires. This Torah was the necessity of collective local narrative.
Visiting a congregation in another country makes a visit abroad even more personal. If you’re planning on traveling abroad, what are you waiting for?
Recently, I traveled to Cuba on a Jewish mission. Although I’d prepped, I was unprepared for how the trip would affect my self-perception as a Jew.
God Who Blessed our Mothers, we ask Your blessing now on women and men, parents and grandparents, children, and grandchildren as they prepare for tomorrow’s March for Women’s Rights in Washington.
The inscription inside the kippot (head coverings) shared on my wedding day read, "September 2, 2016, Marriage of Michael and MacDara."
Need extra convincing that URJ Kesher is for you? Here are five compelling reasons to choose a Reform trip to Israel.
It was a straightforward question, spoken in a tone that was casual but knowing: “Did it change you?” he asked us.
On my way to England, I took a trip to Prague's Jewish community, which has existed through periods of tolerance and extreme anti-Semitism for 1,000+ years.
Based on the 2008 play Adherence by Piotr Rowicki, the new film Demon plays on the Jewish folktale of the dybbuk, an evil spirit that possesses a living person, often during a wedding, when the...
Together, my travel group and I visited Greenwood, MS, where the community at Ahavath Rayim, formerly an Orthodox synagogue, hosted us for Shabbat services. Just as we came from different places...
Reform Jewish tradition teaches, “Do not destroy my world, for if you do, there will be nobody after you to make it right again” (Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 7:13). Once these sites are destroyed,...
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s the journey, not the destination. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. But what does that mean? How do we bring...
Going on a trip this summer? Here are three actions to take if you or else someone you know is traveling.
This is the beginning not only of changing perceptions of Jews in Indonesia, but also of simultaneously working toward a greater acceptance of Islam in America. This task – of advocating for those...
A Yiddish class in Lithuania? As soon as I heard there was such a thing, I was intrigued – and soon enough, on a sunny day in July, I was crossing the courtyard of Vilnius University and taking my...
I recently visited Majdanek, a concentration camp in Poland, with my classmates. Afterward, I wrote this piece - part poem and part essay - about what spoke to me there.
We enjoyed the music we heard and the good food we ate in New Orleans, but the real highlight was meeting our host, Calvin, and learning about his life and work. We returned home with more insight,...
I’ve attended many seders in the U.S. and several other countries during my 60 years. Some have been memorable, and others have been, well, slightly less memorable, fusing into an abstract painting...
Of course, Jews will never see Jesus as God or as an object of worship as Christians do. But when Jesus is the inspiration to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, and do the things I see so many...
I’ve never given geology much attention in my travel writing, but during a recent visit to Israel, I gained a new appreciation for the origins and versatility of limestone.
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Whenever I tell people that I grew up in Omaha, NE, the first thing they want to know is whether I’ve met Warren Buffett. I answer yes: I spent an hour with him in 2006, and I owe it all to my...
As I entered the third grade in secular school, I simultaneously enrolled in Hebrew school at Congregation Shalom, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Milwaukee, WI. At age 9, Hebrew school seemed like a...
During my four months studying in Italy in the fall of 2007, you could say I had more than my fair share of strange Jewish experiences.
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Kol yisrael arevim zeh lazeh. This oft-quoted Talmudic teaching – “All of Israel is responsible, one to another" (Babylonian Talmud, Shavuot 39a) – never resonated so deeply for me as when I said...
Before leaving for 10 of the most memorable days of my life with Mitzvah Corps Costa Rica, Rabbi Asher Knight left my fellow participantds and me with an important question to consider throughout...
This simple, Israeli classic was taught to me in Israel by Gilad, the owner of Hess Cafe, which students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion used to frequent for his delicious...
My wife Vickie and I were thrilled to learn that our German friends, Pastor Ursula Sieg and her husband Pastor Martin Pommerening, were coming to visit us in America. When we asked if there was...
On the plane back from my year in Israel as part of my first year of rabbinical school, I had the privilege of sitting next to a man who had participated in a Christian mission trip in Israel. It...
I've tagged along on my husband Steve's business trips to England and France, and visited my daughter the semester she studied art in Sienna, but how was it that until last month I had never set...
When I landed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in mid-May, I had no idea that Copacabana Beach would transform from a popular tourist destination to the temporary nucleus of progressive Judaism worldwide...
Dr. Gary P. Zola, executive director of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), organized a trip in 2000 to Charleston, S.C., for a group of adults interested in the firsthand study of American Jewish...
For me, sports and Judaism have always been connected. I know, I know: Judaism and sports, you say!? But as it turns out, they go together well.
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Rarely does a 16-year-old Jewish girl from suburban Massachusetts get the chance to look back on her day and recognize that she helped make history. She didn’t just talk about it or write about it;...
Cafe Spindel is a quaint café in the center of Bad Segeberg, Germany that used to house a wool-processing factory. Because it was an unseasonably warm and sunny late summer day when I visited, our...
On Yom HaShoah, the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, we remember the Jews killed in the Holocaust. On April 16, I will remember the six million. And I will remember the afternoon I spent...
Before 1933, life for the Jews in Europe was filled with rich Jewish culture. Jews often lived in shtetls (small Jewish villages) or chose to assimilate into secular society. For the most part,...
I don’t remember the first time I skimmed my skull with a bobby pin and pushed a circle of knitted white cloth and strands of hair into its metal clasp. Wearing a kippah felt like a natural...
