The Publisher’s Perspective - 1/23/20

The following is my piece in the January 23, 2020 edition of the Philadelphia Jewish Link:

As I write this, I’m sitting in a special place, 6,000 miles away from Philadelphia. I had the privilege of visiting Israel, and while every trip to Israel is magical and unique, for me, this one was different.

I am currently saying Kaddish for my father, and therefore my daily schedule in Israel revolved around where I was going to catch a minyan for Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv. Regardless of what the plans were for any particular day, I needed to make certain that I had access to a minyan, irrespective of where I might have been at any given moment.

The experience, while not always easy, actually made this trip one of my most special ones yet. In my quest to ensure that I did not miss a minyan, I had the opportunity to spend time in places that I ordinarily might not have found myself in, and I had the chance to meet and interact with people who were from various points along the broad and beautiful spectrum of Judaism.

I davened Mincha in the airport before leaving the United States and I served as the shaliach tzibbur for Maariv in the back of an El Al plane while flying at an altitude of 35,000 feet. It was a diverse minyan comprised of Chassidim, people from the yeshivish community, Sephardim and Modern Orthodox Jews. When a chassidic man came up to me after I davened Maariv and asked for whom I was saying Kaddish, it gave me an opportunity to speak a little bit about my father and to accept this gentleman’s heartfelt message of condolence.

While in Israel, among the places I davened was a shul in Yerushalayim made up of French olim, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, a large shul in Yerushalayim, where before davening began, I heard two English speakers talking about potential matchups for this year’s Super Bowl, a small shul in Kfar Chabad in Lod, and a Sephardi minyan in the Great Synagogue in Yerushalayim, where although it was challenging for this Ashkenazic Jew to follow along with a nussach of the tefillah that was quite foreign to me, I still had the chance to say Kaddish for my father.

One of the most special minyanim I attended was a vatikin minyan at the Kotel, where I was able to recite Shemoneh Esrei with the utmost kavanah I could muster as the sun was rising and I recited Kaddish under the beautiful morning sky at one of the holiest places in the world.

I had the good fortune of being in Efrat for Shabbat, where I enjoyed a spiritually uplifting Kabbalat Shabbat and Shabbat morning davening at Shirat David, Rav Shlomo Katz’s shul. When the Jewish music star, whose niggunim I find particularly moving and enjoyable, served as the shaliach tzibbur for Shacharit and used some of those very same tunes, I closed my eyes and was instantly transformed to a special spiritual place.

I of course wish that I wasn’t in the position of having to say Kaddish, but it did afford me the opportunity to experience different people and different places, and it enabled me to honor my father in so many different ways in the Holy Land.

I saw Israel through the eyes of others, which gave me a fresh perspective on how incredible it is to live in this special land that every Jew is blessed to be able to call home.