Standing on Mount Scopus overlooking Jerusalem, Rabbi Rubinstein explained to us that one can only enter the city of Jerusalem for the first time once.

This makes perfect sense, but after a part one of a two-part trip, I began to think that every time one visits Israel and stands on Mt. Scopus, it is the first time. Although there were those amongst us that had literally never been here before, I would say that for the rest of us, this was a first time as well. It was my first time after visiting the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. It was my first time after meeting with nascent Reform Jewish groups in Poland. It was the first time after so many unusual meetings in Poland and in Israel before standing on Mount Scopus. But, let’s start at the beginning:

Some of our intrepid travelers (a group comprised of young and not-so-young) arrived before the actual start of our trip, but I did not, so when I arrived in Krakow it was time to hit the ground running. Beginning with lunch (subscribing to my motto: never miss a meal), we began with introductions to each other—a disparate group of congregants—and to our tour guide, Nadav Kersh, an Israeli who has trained to lead tours in Poland. And then we really began: spending two and half days in Krakow, we visited the Altshul (the oldest synagogue in Poland), the Rema Synagogue and Cemetery, the Temple (Krakow’s Reform Jewish congregation), the Kazimierz Jewish Quarter, the Galicia Museum, as well as the Oskar Schindler factory (where I found the names of my cousin’s wife’s parents—so-called “Schindler List Jews”), and the “Pharmacy,” the gateway to the Jewish Ghetto.

Not on this list is our visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps; they do not belong on a list. Our visit to the camps was life-altering. It was a cold, overcast, and very windy day. Birkenau is a huge place. The train tracks seem to go on forever. With our Polish guide, specifically for the camps, we walked into one of the barracks still standing. No heat, wind that whipped through it; although we’d seen photographs and movies, still unimaginable. With the Russian army approaching, the Germans blew up the gas chambers and furnaces. There they still sit, the rubble exactly as it was. We conducted a memorial service, remembering the millions, but also each of us remembering one nameless person, whose life ended there.

As we quietly made our way back to the bus, we walked around either in pairs, groups, or alone. I walked behind the bombed-out crematoria and saw one of the “ponds” into which ashes were shoveled. Under a rock there was a fabric Jewish star with the word Jude on it; although unfaded and looking new, a stark reminder of whose ashes are still in that pond. We also went to Auschwitz, where there are unspeakable displays of hair, shoes, and other remnants of Jewish life.

As difficult as it was to tour these concentration camps, we also had the opportunity to meet with a rabbi and temple president of a nascent 30-member Reform Jewish group and members of the Krakow Jewish community at the JCC. Each of those visits (which included dinner!) was pretty amazing, considering how the Jews were wiped out of Poland. There are those, including non-Jews, who have a desire, almost a need, to be a part of a new thriving Polish Jewish community.

It was then time to take a train to Warsaw. Very different from Krakow, Warsaw was decimated during the war and has been rebuilt as a modern city. They do have an “old town,” but it’s more like something out of Epcot, as it was rebuilt after the war to look like an old town.

We spent our day in Warsaw touring the Okapova Cemetery (a testimony to hundreds of years of Jewish life in Poland), saying Kaddish, before we went on to see remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto Wall; the Umschlagplatz (site of the the deportation of the Warsaw Jewish community to Treblinka); the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial; the soon-to-be opened Museum of the History of the Polish Jews. This is a fantastic building both outside and in (we were allowed to go inside for a short time), a wonderful addition to the memory of Polish-Jewish culture. We also visited the Nozyk Synagogue, the last remaining pre-Holocaust synagogue in Warsaw. But, as in Krakow, all was not bleak on the horizon—we met with members of the Beit Warszawa Jewish community, who graciously had dinner and conversation for us in the community room of their synagogue.

Leaving Poland, I think many of us felt that there is curiously a hopeful future for Jews in that country. But now it was time to fly to Tel Aviv—warm, sunny, delicious Tel Aviv. Barely making it for Shabbat, we had a loose Kabbalat Shabbat service, which was comprised of singing (ably led by cantorial student Laura Stein) and conversation and Shabbat dinner.  The next morning, Shabbat, we had services in a room overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean. Led by Rabbi Rubinstein and Laura Stein, they set the tone for the week to come.

Art was on the agenda that day. Led by our extraordinary educator/guide, Zvi Levran, we went to the Haifa Museum of Art and glimpsed other modern contemporary art installations. A special evening was in store for us that night as we embarked for Modi’in and Havdallah at Kehilat Yozma (the Reform Jewish synagogue and community), led by Rabbi Kinneret Shirion, followed by a delightful dinner with congregants.

On Sunday morning (are you still with me?) we met with two Russian-born Israelis to learn about and discuss the difficulties for those who are considered Israelis in terms of army life, but not necessarily Jewish without an Orthodox conversion, a not-uncommon story for many groups who are new to modern-day Israel.

We then had the wonderful opportunity to meet with members of one of the mechinot or pre-army academies that are flourishing in Israel as a “gap year” before going into the army. This highly-regarded mechina, in Jaffa, is a special social-service project and is under the umbrella of the Progressive Jewish movement.

Lest we stay in any city too long, we boarded the bus to northern environs, stopping at Zippori National Park along the way. Zippori is known for its ancient mosaics and Jewish life after the Temple’s destruction. Before settling in for the night, we had the extraordinary opportunity to visit an Arab-Israeli village in the Galilee, learning about Jews and Arabs living there from Rabbi Marc Rosenstein, executive director of the Galilee Foundation for Value Education, and a group of Arab students who exhibited all the enthusiasm and ambition of teenagers everywhere.

Our stay in the Upper Galilee was at Pastoral Kfar Blum, a kibbutz near the Jordan River. We were treated to a dinner that for some of us seemed straight out of the Catskill hotels, from back in the day…

The next day (tired yet?) we headed out to Tsfat, the center for Jewish mysticism that is evoked during our Kabbalat Shabbat services every Friday night. It was a wonderful morning of visits to synagogues, shopping (finally) in small shops, and an interactive meeting with artist and glassblower Sheva Chaya. 

Then came a highlight of our trip (one of many)—lunch and a tour at the As-Is Goat Farm. Eating outdoors at long tables, we enjoyed delicious items made from goat cheese as well as local wines. The goats we saw were adorable and noisy, and we were happy to learn that they are there for goat cheese and goat milk, but not goat meat.

Onward, we then visited the Beit She’an National Park, one of Israel’s largest archaeological sites, where we were treated to a lesson from Rabbi Rubinstein, with an assist from Zvi about Yochanan ben Zakkai, who ensured the continuation of Jewish scholarship after Jerusalem fell to Rome in 70 C.E.

Finally it was time for our stop on Mount Scopus, where we said our traditional Shehechiyanu blessing—always a moving moment, but after what we had experienced in Poland, it was piled high with feelings of thankfulness and gratitude to be able to stand there together and view Jerusalem before entering it.

But there was still more to experience. The next morning we went to Yad Vashem, where after a difficult visit, we held a Yizkor service. Once, back in the bus, we drove to Yvel, an international jewelry company and workshop that employs and teaches Ethiopian Jews to make much of the jewelry they sell. Our interaction with the Ethiopian Jewish community did not end with that visit. We drove on to Beit Ambosa where we met with two people (a husband and wife, he from Israel, she from Ethiopia) who are from Friends by Nature, a community-empowerment NGO. Even more amazing, after that, we were invited into the homes of several Ethiopian Israelis, who graciously served us coffee, traditional Ethiopian food, and conversation.

Another extraordinary experience followed this visit—we drove back to Tel Aviv to have dinner and conversation with Knesset member Merav Michaeli. Michaeli is currently chair of the Caucus for Female Knesset Members, and is a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. It was an extraordinary opportunity to meet with one of the movers and shakers of Israeli government.

Although we had only two more days for this trip, we didn’t slow down for a moment. The next day we went to the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, the Kotel and Western Wall Tunnel, all requisite visits on a trip to Jerusalem. But later that same day (thanks to Felice and Michael Friedson, co-founders of the Media Line, a nonprofit news organization established to enhance and balance media coverage in the Middle East), we veered from that path and boarded a Palestinian bus with a Palestinian driver, leaving our Israeli guide behind, and drove to Ramallah. A remarkable part of our journey, we met with the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, who talked to us in a very fast cadence, giving us the party line, and being filmed all the while. We did have the chance to ask questions, but answers were given the same way. After leaving the building known as the State of Palestine Ministry of Information, we drove to a lovely building that held the offices of Padico Holding, a limited public shareholding company. We were graciously met by Hiba Darwish, Sustainability and Corporate Communications Manager, and listened to and talked with CEO Samir Hulileh. A more uplifting conversation, Padico’s mission is to develop and strengthen the Palestinian economy by investing in vital economic sectors.

Ah, our last day, but a full one, mainly visiting the Israel Museum and Dead Sea Scrolls. We, of course, had a wrap-up conversation before dinner, but how can one wrap up a visit such as the one we’d just had—the words “journey” and “process” were surely coined for a trip such as this one. The trip was a journey, processing from the destruction of European Jewry, with glimmers of new Jewish community and continuity cropping up in the bleak environs of Poland, to the hopeful, but confusing world of Israeli Jews and Palestinians—a disparate world of “New Jews,” newly-arrived Jews from different countries, all with different ways of worship, different ways of living Jewishly, and also of Palestinians with different ways of living as Palestinians—much to process and much to be grateful for, but all begging the question: what can we do to help those whose lives are somewhat topsy-turvy with trying to live in Israel as one community? More importantly, what do we do?