Four daughters. Four very different paths. One home.

We returned to Israel this week after a much-needed vacation with our children and grandchildren.

Vacations are great. But there is nothing quite like landing back home in the Land of Israel.

I still get a little emotional as the plane makes its final descent over the Mediterranean, passes Tel Aviv and turns toward Ben Gurion Airport, with the Jerusalem foothills in the distance.

Okay, sometimes more than a little emotional.

It’s the end of August. Summer is ending. School begins September 1. And we are in the Jewish month of Elul, a month of introspection, soul-searching and preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Each morning, the sound of the shofar can be heard, calling us to wake up and take stock.

And lately I keep thinking about our four beautiful daughters.

More specifically:

How in the world did four girls raised in Memphis, Tennessee, all end up living in Israel?

As if they had any choice.

Or did they?

Diane and I raised our daughters in a traditional Jewish home. We observed Shabbat, kept kosher, went regularly to synagogue and celebrated the Jewish holidays, usually loudly and with too much food.

And wine.

They went to Jewish day school.

And Israel was simply part of our lives.

We didn’t sit the girls down and announce, “You must someday move to Israel.” But we certainly weren’t subtle about how we felt either.

On one of our many visits here, Diane and I made a vow: once our youngest daughter, Lily, turned five, we would never allow two years to pass without bringing our children to Israel, as long as we had the means to do it.

We kept that promise.

Israel was never just a place we visited. Gabby and Lily even celebrated their Bat Mitzvahs here. Diane and I were deliberately planting something in our daughters. We just couldn’t have known then how completely it would take root.

One summer, three of the four even spent the entire summer at camp in Israel.

Annie, being Annie, returned to America to work as a counselor at the Jewish summer camp in upstate New York that she and her sisters had attended for years.

Maybe that should have told us something.

So perhaps we stacked the deck a little.

But anyone who has raised children knows that parents only get so much credit...or blame.

Children arrive with personalities.

Diane would tell you she knew theirs from the way they moved in the womb. I had to wait until after they were born.

Long before aliyah, there were four very different little girls.

Annie, our oldest, arrived with light brown hair and sucked her index and middle fingers. Strong-willed. Fiercely independent. From the beginning, Annie could do it herself, thank you very much.

Gabrielle, Gabby, came next, with reddish hair and a thumb permanently available for sucking. Sweet, compassionate and spiritual, Gabby has always had a smile on her face and a dreamcatcher hanging wherever she lived.

Charlotte arrived blond and somehow managed to suck her ring finger and pinky. Imaginative, fun-loving and introspective, Charlotte has always been the searcher, the one willing to wonder whether there might be another path around the next corner.

And then came Lily.

Dark brown hair. Nothing like her sisters. Nothing like me. She looked a little Hawaiian, like Lilo from Lilo & Stitch.

I was a little suspicious.

Just kidding.

Lily sucked a pacifier. Confident, strong-willed, focused and driven.

Four daughters.

Same parents. Same home. Same Jewish education. Same trips to Israel.

Four very different personalities.

And four very different paths home.

This is their story as I see it.

They, of course, may see it differently.

The beauty of having my own Substack is I get to tell it my way.

Sorry, girls.

Gabby: The First to Go

I’ll start out of order with daughter number two, because Gabby was the first to make the move.

After high school, she deferred college for a gap year. Instead of heading straight to the University of Maryland, she decided to spend a year studying culinary arts in Jerusalem.

Off she went.

And that was pretty much it.

Sometime during the year, we got a call.

Gabby had decided she wasn’t coming back.

She was staying in Israel and going to study business at IDC, now Reichman University.

Oh, and she had already notified Maryland that she was giving up her place.

She had not consulted us.

That was very Gabby.

Other parents might have been upset.

We weren’t.

There was only one small problem with the plan. Gabby is very bright, but school was never her strength.

Then came the army.

Gabby was drafted, said goodbye to IDC without hesitation and served two years as a lochemet ma’avarim, a combat soldier in the border-crossing unit.

After the army, she returned to what had brought her here in the first place: food.

She became a chef, married Yaakov and moved to Tekoa, about a half-hour drive from us. They had three children: Levana, Shachar and Shiloh. Our first sabras and native Hebrew speakers.

Today she teaches Pilates and, together with her business partner Elisa, created Nuravida, making and selling delicious fermented foods.

Gabby never wanted Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

She needed nature. Space. Room to breathe.

She found it in Tekoa.

Her path to Israel began with culinary school.

Somewhere along the way, it became home.

Charlotte: The Searcher

Daughter number three loved Israel.

Moving here was another matter.

Charlotte was 17 and about to begin her senior year of high school when Diane and I decided to begin our own move to Israel.

It was not exactly a conventional family relocation.

Diane would move to Jerusalem with Charlotte and Lily while I remained in Memphis practicing law and trying to figure out when and how I could join them.

That’s another story for another day.

Annie was away at university. Gabby was already living in Israel.

And Charlotte was being asked to leave Memphis before her senior year.

She took it hard.

Ultimately, she chose to go with her mother.

Smart girl.

But for Charlotte, Israel was a process.

She wondered about the life she might be missing: senior year in Memphis, university in America, friends, family. She could love Israel and still wonder whether she belonged somewhere else.

She attended a special high school program in Jerusalem for new immigrants, earned her GED, studied psychology at Tel Aviv University and later earned a master’s degree in psychology from Reichman University.

But college degrees didn’t tell me whether Israel had become home for Charlotte.

Two moments did.

The first came seven years after she moved here.

At 24, Charlotte decided to become an Israeli citizen, knowing full well that citizenship meant she could be drafted into the IDF, something she had never exactly been eager to do.

The draft notice never came.

Moment number two was Shay.

When Charlotte met Shay, fell in love and eventually married him, something seemed to settle.

For years, she had wondered about the life she might be missing somewhere else.

Now she was building one here.

Today Charlotte and Shay are starting their life together in Tel Aviv, where she works as the office manager of a gan yeladim, a preschool.

Of the four girls, perhaps Charlotte needed the most time to decide where home was.

Which somehow makes her decision all the more meaningful.

Lily: Ready to Go

Lily was 14 when she moved to Israel with Diane and Charlotte.

Unlike her older sister, Lily came willingly.

Maybe even eagerly.

Back in Memphis, she had worked hard at learning Hebrew in school and with a private tutor. She was also a serious dancer, and in Jerusalem she was accepted to the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

There was just one catch.

Her dance program, her school day and practically everything else outside the home was in Hebrew.

So she did what Lily does.

She figured it out.

And excelled.

After high school, she was drafted into the IDF and served for two years as a mashakit tash, helping soldiers deal with personal, family and financial difficulties affecting their military service.

Then she followed the well-worn Israeli post-army path.

Work.

Save money.

Backpack through Southeast Asia.

Come home.

Start university.

Lily studied law and psychology at Reichman University. She interned at a large law firm, married Yoni, passed the Israeli bar and joined the firm full-time as a lawyer.

And now she is pregnant with her first child, our fourth sabra grandchild.

The 14-year-old girl who arrived in Israel ready to jump in is about to raise an Israeli child of her own.

Annie: “Hail No”

And finally, our firstborn.

When Diane and I announced to the girls that we planned to move to Israel, Annie did not just say no.

She said, in the language of the American South:

“Hail no.”

That’s “hell no,” pronounced with a southern drawl.

Do not misunderstand.

Annie loved Israel.

She just thought we were crazy to actually move there.

She was heading into her final year at Indiana University. Her friends were in America. Her future was in America.

Israel was a place she loved to visit.

It was not where she was going to live.

After graduation, Diane suggested she come to Israel for six months through a program that included an internship at a Tel Aviv hospital.

Annie loves the beach and sun.

Six months in Tel Aviv while figuring out her next move didn’t sound so terrible.

Then something happened.

Maybe it was Tel Aviv.

Maybe it was the Mediterranean.

Maybe it was having her mother and sisters nearby.

Maybe, if you can’t beat them, you join them.

Six months became longer.

She worked at a gan for a while and eventually landed a permanent job with a fintech startup, where she spent years in customer relations.

Then, in 2014, smack dab in the middle of Operation Protective Edge, with Hamas rockets being fired toward Tel Aviv, Annie announced that she was making aliyah and becoming an Israeli citizen.

The daughter who had once said Hail No was now saying Hail Yes.

Nature or Nurture?

So which was it?

Nature or nurture?

Were four Harkavy girls somehow genetically programmed to end up in Israel?

I’d like to think Diane and I had something to do with it.

We filled our home with Judaism. We made Israel part of their lives. We brought them here again and again, not as a distant idea or a place on a map, but as somewhere familiar.

But we couldn’t make them love it.

And we certainly couldn’t make four very different young women choose four very different lives here.

The girls with Diane, walking the land that somehow became home.

Gabby came for cooking and found her place in the hills of Tekoa.

Charlotte came because her mother brought her and needed years before she could fully choose Israel for herself.

Lily arrived at 14 ready to dive in and never seemed to look back.

And Annie?

Hail No became Hail Yes.

Eventually, the holidays got louder. And the table got bigger.

Which brings me back to the airplane.

This week Diane and I flew home after spending our vacation with our children and grandchildren.

As we descended over the Mediterranean and I watched the Israeli coastline appear beneath us, there it was again, that feeling I still haven’t quite learned to control.

Home.

Maybe that is what Diane and I gave our daughters.

Not instructions to make aliyah.

Not an obligation.

Not even a destination.

Just enough visits, enough Shabbat dinners, enough holidays, enough Hebrew, enough memories and enough love for this crazy little country that Israel became something familiar long before any of them decided to live here.

Then each had to decide for herself what to do with it.

Somewhere along the way, the trips to Israel became trips home.

Four daughters.

Four paths.

One home.

As if they had any choice.

But thankfully, they did.

——————————————————

If you enjoyed walking the land with me, subscribe to Yalla—Walking the Land with Alan. And if you know someone with their own Israel story, send this one their way.

Cath Byrne at Casa Zola in northern Tuscany. Sometimes the most extraordinary stories belong to the people you’d least expect.

Sometimes you need a break from Israel.

Not from loving it. Not from living it. Just from the intensity of it.

Just long enough to exchange missile alerts for church bells, traffic circles for winding mountain roads, and Jerusalem stone for the quiet mountain villages of northern Tuscany.

For years Diane and I have escaped to the same place each summer, a tiny village tucked into the mountains above Lucca. We stay at Casa Zola, a beautiful villa owned by an Australian brother and sister, John and Cath Byrne.

Although we had never actually met, Cath and I had become what you might call virtual friends. Like so many friendships today, ours began online and somehow became real long before we ever met. Over the years we exchanged emails and WhatsApp messages. We became Facebook friends. Every now and then, especially during the war, a thoughtful message from Australia would appear asking how we were doing.

Last week, the planets finally aligned.

We were in the village at the same time.

It turns out Cath is even more remarkable in person than she is online.

She is warm without trying. Curious about everyone. Compassionate. Funny. Well-traveled. The sort of person who seems incapable of walking past someone without striking up a conversation. Around the village she has earned the unofficial title of “Mayor.” After spending an afternoon with her, you understand why.

She spent forty years teaching children.

Somehow, that didn’t surprise me at all.

Inside Casa Zola is a bookshelf filled with books left for guests.

One book has caught my eye every summer.

Out of the Ashes by Megan Norris.

Inside the cover, Cath had written:

“Dear Guests, if you have the chance to read this story, I hope you will be inspired by the intertwined stories of love, survival, courage and friendship.”

For years, I never opened it.

This time I did.

Cath’s handwritten invitation sat on the bookshelf for years before I finally accepted it.

It wasn’t until Chapter Three that I realized Cath herself was one of the heroes.

The book tells the story of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Amid smoke, fire, and unimaginable chaos, Cath and her traveling companion, Rada van der Werff, found an Australian mother of three named Therese Fox, critically injured and terribly burned.

Most people would have frozen.

Cath didn’t.

She stayed.

She cooled Therese’s burns with bottled water, kept talking to her so she wouldn’t lose consciousness, refused to leave her side, and helped get her safely to medical care.

Doctors later said those simple acts almost certainly saved her life.

The book had been waiting patiently on the shelf for several summers.

Reading those pages, my mind wandered nearly 13,000 kilometers away.

Back to Israel.

Diane just smiled.

“Of course,” she said.

Everything reminds me of Israel.

Between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, just off the modern highway descending toward Jericho, sits one of Israel’s most overlooked archaeological sites.

Thousands of people drive past it every year without realizing what they’re missing.

The Inn of the Good Samaritan.

It’s one of my friend and fellow guide Shmuel Brown’s favorite places, along with Herodium, his other favorite. I understand why.

The museum contains magnificent mosaic floors rescued from ancient churches and synagogues throughout the country. An Ottoman travelers’ inn has been beautifully restored. Nearby stand the remains of a Byzantine church.

But fascinating as the archaeology is, that’s not what draws me back.

It’s the story.

My friend and fellow guide Shmuel Brown admiring one of the mosaics he helped restore at the Inn of the Good Samaritan.

According to longstanding Christian tradition, this lonely stretch of desert road is believed to be the setting for one of Jesus’ best-known parables.

A traveler is beaten, robbed, and left for dead.

A priest comes along.

He crosses to the other side.

A Levite comes along.

He crosses to the other side.

Then comes a Samaritan.

The most unlikely hero in the story.

He stops.

He treats the stranger’s wounds.

He carries him to an inn.

He pays for his care.

Then he quietly disappears from the story.

No speeches.

No recognition.

No medal.

Just compassion.

The ancient road from Jerusalem to Jericho still winds through the Judean Desert below.

Years ago, as a lawyer in the United States, I became familiar with “Good Samaritan laws,” laws intended to protect ordinary people who stop to help someone in an emergency.

Reading Cath’s story, I doubt legal protections ever crossed her mind.

She didn’t stop because she was protected.

She stopped because someone needed her.

The Good Samaritan wasn’t defined by where he came from. He was defined by what he did when everyone else kept walking.

That’s what Good Samaritans do.

The world has always needed them.

Perhaps it never has more than now.

If the Inn of the Good Samaritan had stood in Bali twenty-four years ago instead of outside Jericho two thousand years ago, I suspect the story would have unfolded much the same way.

So, Kol Hakavod, Cath.

Congratulations on forty years of teaching.

Congratulations on a life that has quietly changed more lives than you probably realize.

Congratulations on a well-earned semi-retirement.

One day, I’d like to guide a genuine Good Samaritan to the Inn of the Good Samaritan.

I think you’d appreciate the story.

After all...

you’ve already lived it.

And if that day comes...

I’ll be honored to be your guide.

Somewhere along the way, the Jewish guy from Memphis started teaching about Jesus.

The other morning, I was taking my morning constitutional through Sacher Park in Jerusalem, listening to Haviv Rettig Gur’s podcast, Ask Haviv Anything, when I heard an interview that got me thinking.

Haviv was interviewing George Deek.

George is an Arab Orthodox Christian who grew up in Jaffa, the ancient port city just south of Tel Aviv and today part of the same municipality. Except for a period when his family left during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, his family’s roots in Jaffa go back more than 300 years.

He studied law in Israel, later studied at Georgetown University as a Fulbright scholar, practiced law in Tel Aviv, and then joined Israel’s Foreign Service. Among his many diplomatic postings, he served as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan.

He has now been appointed to a newly created position, Israel’s Special Envoy to the Christian World.

Listening to him made me realize something.

I grew up surrounded by Christians.

And I knew almost nothing about Christianity.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, not merely in the Bible Belt, but somewhere around the buckle.

There was practically a church on every corner.

My neighbors were Christian. My classmates were Christian. Many of my friends were Christian. During my 28 years practicing law, my colleagues, staff, clients, judges and opposing lawyers were overwhelmingly Christian.

Christianity was everywhere.

And yet, at the risk of admitting how sheltered, or simply oblivious, I was, I knew remarkably little about it.

Then I moved to Israel.

The Jewish State.

And that is where I began to finally understand Christianity.

Who knew?

My education began almost immediately when I enrolled in the two-year Israeli tour guide course.

The first day was eye-opening. Maybe even a little shocking.

About a third of the people sitting in my classroom hoping to become Israeli tour guides were Arab Christians.

I hadn’t expected that.

Then we started studying.

Jesus.

The Gospels.

Paul.

Byzantine Christianity.

The Crusades.

Catholicism.

Greek Orthodoxy.

Armenian Christianity.

Franciscans.

Syriac Christians.

Copts.

Ethiopians.

Monasteries.

Church architecture.

Pilgrimage routes.

Relics.

Saints.

More saints.

At some point, I began to wonder whether I had accidentally enrolled in seminary.

And we were tested on it.

I had spent most of my life as a Jew in Memphis, Tennessee, surrounded by Christians.

Now I was living in Jerusalem, studying to become an Israeli tour guide, desperately trying to remember the difference between an apse, a nave and a transept.

And trying to understand the Trinity.

I’m still working on that one.

Then there was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

If you really want to understand the complexities of Christianity, spend a little time studying Christianity’s holiest church.

Six different Christian denominations share rights within the church, governed by an intricate arrangement known as the Status Quo.

Who controls which chapel?

Who can pray where?

Who cleans which step?

Who is allowed to move what?

These are not minor questions.

There is even a wooden ladder sitting on a ledge above the entrance that has barely moved in centuries because apparently no one can agree on who has the authority to move it.

The Immovable Ladder.

Of course it has a name.

And after centuries of Christian denominations negotiating over control of Christianity’s holiest church, who holds the keys to the front door?

Muslims.

Two Muslim families have traditionally been entrusted with the responsibility for the church’s door and keys.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The keys have been entrusted to Muslim families for centuries.

I had lived almost my entire life surrounded by Christians and knew none of this.

Now, as a Jewish immigrant to Israel, I was expected to learn it well enough to explain it to Christian pilgrims.

And pass an exam on it.

Who knew?

Of course, there was a very good reason for all of it.

This is the Holy Land.

Jesus was born here.

He walked here.

He taught here.

He died here.

Christianity was born here.

I knew all of that, of course.

Or at least I thought I did.

What I hadn’t understood was that Christianity here wasn’t simply history.

It was still here.

Alive.

For years, I had visited Jerusalem and Israel without really seeing how deeply Christianity was woven into the landscape.

Then I became a tour guide.

Suddenly, I saw it everywhere.

For years, I had looked at this landscape. Becoming a tour guide taught me to see it.

Walk through Jerusalem’s Old City and Christianity isn’t some historical footnote.

The Old City is traditionally divided into four quarters, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian.

Think about that.

Two of the four quarters bear the names of ancient Christian communities.

Churches, monasteries, patriarchates and convents are woven into the fabric of the city. Priests and monks walk streets filled with pilgrims from around the world. Church bells ring across Jerusalem.

And once I began looking beyond Jerusalem, I saw it everywhere.

Church towers rise above the ancient port of Jaffa. Churches dominate the landscape of Nazareth. Monasteries and churches climb Mount Carmel in Haifa.

And just beyond Jerusalem, Bethlehem remains inseparable from the story of the birth of Jesus.

For years, I had looked at this landscape.

Now I was finally seeing it.

But Christianity here isn’t just churches, stones and ancient history.

It is people.

That may have been my biggest discovery.

Many of the people I work with every day in Israel’s tourism industry are Arab Christians.

Tour guides.

Bus drivers.

Hotel managers.

Restaurant owners.

Shopkeepers.

Colleagues.

Friends.

Some have become very dear friends.

When I meet a new Arab bus driver or shopkeeper, I sometimes find myself wondering whether he is Christian or Muslim.

You usually can’t tell by looking.

Sometimes the name gives it away.

Sometimes it’s a cross around the neck.

Sometimes you just wait.

One of my favorite transportation companies is owned by a Syriac Christian family.

Over the years, I’ve spent many hours on the road with Gaasan, one of the family’s drivers, who has become a friend.

They speak Arabic in everyday life, but their community preserves Syriac, a form of Aramaic closely related to the language Jesus spoke.

I grew up in Memphis and had to move to Jerusalem to hear Aramaic.

Who knew?

Gaasan, my friend and one of the Syriac Christian drivers I’ve worked with over the years.

And the Christian community here isn’t disappearing.

It is growing.

Today, roughly 184,000 Christians live in Israel.

That is especially striking when you consider what has happened to many Christian communities elsewhere across the Middle East, which have declined dramatically through emigration, persecution, war and instability.

In Israel, the Christian population has grown in absolute numbers over the decades.

I didn’t know that either.

There was a lot I didn’t know.

People often imagine Israel through neat categories.

Jewish.

Muslim.

Christian.

Israeli.

Arab.

As though everyone fits cleanly into one box.

Then you meet someone like George Deek.

An Arab.

A Christian.

An Israeli.

A diplomat representing the Jewish State to the Christian world.

None of those identities cancels out the others.

They all belong to the same person.

Just as all of these communities, histories and identities somehow occupy this tiny piece of land.

Not always comfortably.

Certainly not simply.

But undeniably.

Jerusalem. Nothing here fits neatly into one box.

As I continued walking through Sacher Park listening to George Deek, I found myself thinking about the strange route my own education had taken.

I spent the first half of my life living in the Bible Belt, surrounded by Christianity.

Then I moved halfway around the world to live in the world’s only Jewish state.

And that is where I finally began to understand the Christian world that had surrounded me my entire life.

Who knew?

“You’re a tour guide, for heaven’s sake,” Diane said.

“You’ve written about a gun. You’ve written about a hat. Guns, hats, blah, blah, blah. What about the Land? Don’t forget about the Land.”

This, by the way, is the very same Diane who pushed me into writing these stories about Israel in the first place.

Israel, as I see it. One story at a time.

And now my forever editor was reminding me what those stories were supposed to be about.

The funny thing is, I never forgot about the Land.

I couldn’t.

In Hebrew, Israel is often simply called Ha’aretz.

The Land.

As if there were no other land on planet Earth worth discussing.

It reminds me a little of the way proud alumni refer to my alma mater as THE University of Michigan.

Our archrivals in Columbus, apparently feeling insecure, insist on THE Ohio State University.

Annoying.

But for purposes of this article, instructive.

Ha’aretz.

The Land.

No further identification required.

The Promised Land. The Land Flowing with Milk and Honey. The Holy Land. The Land of Israel.

With all due respect to my wife and forever editor, I thought the gun story was about the Land. I thought the hat story was about the Land too.

At least they were about my experience living here, walking here and trying to understand my place here.

For me, it has always been about the Land.

Thousands of years ago, Abraham entered this land and came to Alon Moreh, looking out at the place God promised to him and his descendants.

A people and a place.

We Jews are often called the People of the Book.

We are also a people of the Land.

You really can’t separate the Land from the Bible. God’s covenant with Abraham wasn’t only about a people. It included something wonderfully tangible.

A particular piece of earth.

You might even call it the world’s oldest real estate deal.

As a former lawyer, I appreciate that.

As a tour guide, I appreciate it even more.

Because sometimes I feel a little like Abraham.

Not the father of nations part. That’s above my pay grade.

The standing on a mountaintop and surveying the Land part.

That I do all the time.

And I get to bring people with me.

A week or so ago, I finished a series of days guiding families with young children.

There was seven-year-old Lavi and his father, Abe.

And Sarah and David with three of their five children: Lev, Rosie and six-year-old Amira, better known as “Little Bit.”

These kids were some pretty awesome, interesting and interested young humans.

Their parents were pretty awesome too.

I’ve guided people of nearly every age, background and religion. First-time visitors. Veteran visitors. People who have been coming to Israel longer than I’ve lived here.

But there is no greater rush than guiding inquisitive and impressionable young humans.

Adults ask intelligent questions.

Children ask honest ones.

We walked the Land and discovered pomegranates, figs, olives, grapes, dates, wheat and barley.

The Seven Species.

The same things they had read about or heard about in the Bible.

The Land of Milk and Honey.

Little Bit looked around.

“Where’s the milk?”

Fair question.

We stood in the brook in the Elah Valley, where seven-year-old Lavi searched through smooth pebbles for the right five stones.

David had apparently left him plenty to choose from.

Looking for the right five smooth stones. Just in case.

We walked by flashlight through a dark, narrow, 2,700-year-old water tunnel carved during the reign of King Hezekiah beneath the ancient City of David.

We stood on the banks of the Jordan River, near the place where the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land.

These weren’t stories on a page anymore.

They were places.

Sometimes the Land makes my job very easy.

You could stand there.

You could walk there.

You could get your feet wet.

And sometimes, if you’re six years old, you could ask where they were hiding the milk.

That, to me, is the privilege of being a guide.

I sometimes joke that I have the best office in the world.

Actually, I’m not sure I’m joking.

But my job isn’t simply to point out ruins, recite dates or explain history.

My privilege is introducing people to the Land.

Sometimes for the first time.

Sometimes reconnecting them after years away.

And sometimes helping a child discover that pomegranates, olive trees, shepherds and slingshots aren’t just things from Bible stories.

They’re real.

You can touch them.

Taste them.

Walk among them.

One week I am standing atop Nimrod Fortress in the Golan, looking across Israel’s northern frontier.

Another day it’s Mount Meron in the Upper Galilee or Mount Gilboa overlooking the Jezreel Valley.

I stand at Mitzpe Jericho and watch the Judean Desert fall toward the Dead Sea.

At Mitzpe Ramon, I look into the enormous Ramon Crater.

From the Eilat Mountains, I can see four countries.

From Tel Azekah, the Elah Valley and the rolling foothills of the Shfela spread out below me.

North.

South.

East.

West.

And somehow, I always come back to Mount Kabir, above Alon Moreh.

To Abraham.

To the place where he entered the Land and first heard the promise God made to him and his descendants.

Sometimes, standing there with a group and looking out across the Land, I feel just a little like Abraham myself.

Again, not the father of nations part.

The tour guide part.

Standing on a mountaintop.

Surveying the Land.

And bringing people with me.

Every summit tells a different story.

Somehow, they’re all chapters of the same one.

So, Diane, don’t worry.

I haven’t forgotten the Land.

I never could.

I can write about a hat.

Or a gun.

Or a wedding.

Or a siren.

They all happen here.

Every story I’ve written has really been about the same thing.

The Land.

And I suspect the next hundred stories will be too.

For two years, this little card represented one of the greatest responsibilities of my life

This week I drove to Netanya, sold my Glock to a licensed gun dealer named Ofer, surrendered my firearms license, and drove home unarmed.

The drive gave me plenty of time to think.

Not about whether I was making the right decision.

I was at peace with that.

I wondered whether I should tell this story at all.

It feels too personal.

And stories about guns have a way of becoming something other than the story you intended to tell.

Then again, anyone who knows me knows I’ve never been very good at keeping my thoughts to myself.

So, here goes.

Because this isn’t really a story about a gun.

It’s a story about responsibility.

When I left Memphis and made aliyah, I expected to learn Hebrew, celebrate Jewish holidays in my homeland, hike through the Judean Desert, and spend my days introducing visitors to one of the most fascinating countries on earth.

I never imagined I’d one day carry a Glock on my hip while explaining King David, leading a hike through the Galilee, or walking the streets of Jerusalem.

Yet for the past two years, that’s exactly what I did.

When I became a licensed Israeli tour guide, I found myself facing two questions that challenged my values in ways I never expected.

The first was whether I would guide on Shabbat.

As a somewhat observant Jew, that wasn’t a simple question. It was one that tour companies and prospective clients understandably wanted answered.

The second question surprised me even more.

“Will you carry a gun?”

Not can you.

Will you.

In Israel, licensed tour guides are eligible to obtain a personal firearms license because we often lead groups in remote areas and places with security concerns. Earning that privilege requires background checks, medical approval, classroom instruction, practical training, and qualification at the shooting range.

After a great deal of thought, I decided the answer was no.

For seven years, I guided without carrying a weapon.

I felt that responsibility was better left to the army and the police.

Then came October 7.

Until that morning, I had always assumed that if the unthinkable happened, someone would come.

The police.

The army.

Someone.

October 7 didn’t erase that faith.

It simply reminded me that sometimes, help arrives too late.

For the first time since moving to Israel, I found myself wondering whether the most responsible thing I could do wasn’t simply explain Israel’s history—but be prepared to protect the people standing beside me if history ever repeated itself.

So I changed my mind.

Showing up for firearms training only confirmed how out of place I felt.

Everyone spoke Hebrew.

Everyone seemed younger than me.

Everyone had served in the army.

Then there was me.

The closest I had ever come to firing a weapon was earning a riflery badge at Jewish summer camp when I was ten years old. Apparently, Camp Timberlane wasn’t considered adequate military preparation.

The instructor looked like Sergeant Hulka from the movie Stripes—half my age and twice as intimidating. He barked commands in rapid-fire Hebrew as though we were preparing for combat.

It didn’t take long for him to discover that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

What surprised him was that I didn’t know how to shoot.

What surprised me was that he seemed surprised.

I remember thinking, Isn’t that why I’m here?

Instead, halfway through the lesson he sent me to the sidelines like a kid serving timeout in kindergarten.

Thankfully, another instructor noticed what was happening.

He quietly took me aside, slowed everything down, patiently coached me through the exercises, and somehow transformed me into someone capable of passing the qualification.

I walked away that day with a firearms license, a Glock, and, looking back, perhaps the first clue that carrying a gun was never going to come naturally to me.

For the next two years, I carried that Glock while guiding.

Truth be told, I never became comfortable with it.

Emotionally.

Or physically.

The thing weighed just enough to make one side of my pants seem determined to head south.

I spent an unreasonable amount of time discreetly pulling up my pants while explaining Herod, the Crusaders, or David Ben-Gurion.

It was almost comical.

Almost.

The more I carried it, the more I realized the weight wasn’t on my belt.

It was on my shoulders.

There’s a famous line from Spider-Man:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom in comic books.

Owning the gun wasn’t the responsibility.

Being prepared to use it was.

That meant training regularly.

Remaining proficient.

Having the confidence that if the unthinkable happened, I could make good decisions under unimaginable pressure.

I wasn’t doing that.

Once, I even took the Glock back to the shooting range intending to sell it.

The instructor talked me out of it.

“You just need more training,” he said.

He was probably right.

I promised him I’d think about it.

I drove home.

I slept on it.

And then I didn’t train.

Not because I didn’t respect the responsibility.

Because I respected it enough to admit I wasn’t giving it what it deserved.

So this week I made the drive to Netanya.

I sold the Glock.

I surrendered my license.

And I drove home feeling lighter.

Not because Israel is suddenly safer.

Not because October 7 couldn’t happen again.

But because I finally admitted something to myself.

Carrying a firearm isn’t simply about owning a gun.

It’s about accepting a responsibility that deserves continual preparation, discipline, and commitment.

I’m deeply grateful there are Israelis who willingly shoulder that responsibility.

The soldiers.

The police officers.

The security volunteers.

The civilians who train, stay proficient, and stand ready if they are ever needed.

As for me?

I’ve decided the weight I want to carry is different.

Carrying what matters most

I’ll carry maps instead of magazines.

Stories instead of sidearms.

I’ll keep introducing visitors to this complicated, beautiful country I love.

Helping people understand Israel is my responsibility.

Protecting it is theirs.

An Israeli tour guide’s most important piece of equipment, the hat.

Today is June 21, the summer solstice and officially the first day of summer.

In Israel, that feels a little like announcing that water is wet.

Most Israelis would argue summer actually began sometime around Passover when the winter rains stopped. Others might point to Shavuot, with the wheat harvest and the arrival of summer fruit. Either way, by June 21 we’ve already been sweating for weeks.

People tell me Israel is part of Asia.

Technically, that’s true.

But when I’m standing on a hill overlooking Jerusalem in late June, with the sun beating down on my head and my water bottle already warm by 9:00 a.m., it feels a lot more like Africa.

After all, Egypt is less than a two-hour drive from my house.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. I know heat. I know humidity. I know what it feels like to walk outside and immediately regret every life decision that brought you there.

But Middle Eastern sun is something else entirely.

The heat can be unpleasant.

The sun is relentless.

Which is especially unfortunate because I inherited my mother’s Ashkenazi ginger skin.

Thanks, Mom.

Shortly after making aliyah, I went for my first Israeli dermatology appointment.

The dermatologist asked what I did for a living.

“I’m a tour guide,” I said.

He looked at me the way an emergency room doctor might look at someone who announces that their hobby is juggling chainsaws.

“Uh oh,” he said.

Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

“If you’re going to be a tour guide,” he continued, “you need long sleeves, long pants, strong sunscreen, and always wear a wide-brimmed hat.”

Always.

He was particularly passionate about the hat.

Unfortunately, I hate hats.

I hate hat hair.

I hate sweat collecting around the brim.

I hate chasing a hat across Masada when the desert wind decides to launch it toward Jordan.

And most of all, I hate how hats make me look even dorkier than I already look.

Which brings us to my Tilley hat.

When I finally completed the Israeli tour guide course and received my guide license, my brother-in-law Jim and my sister-in-law Leslie, of blessed memory, gave me a Tilley hat as a graduation gift.

For those unfamiliar with Tilley, they’re a Canadian company famous for making hats that block nearly all harmful UV rays and somehow manage to survive longer than most automobiles. They’re guaranteed for life.

At the time, I appreciated the gift.

Years later, I understand what it really was.

It was protective equipment.

Today, when I leave the house to guide, there are four items I absolutely must have:

Water.

Sunscreen.

Long sleeves.

And that hat.

Last summer I was guiding a wonderful family from Chicago. They wanted to hike Masada for sunrise.

Normally, that’s one of the best ways to experience the mountain.

The idea is simple: start before dawn, avoid the heat, enjoy the sunrise.

Except last summer wasn’t normal.

Even before sunrise, temperatures were so extreme that the Snake Path was closed.

Closed.

When the authorities decide hiking in the Judean Desert before dawn is a bad idea, that’s generally a useful clue.

So instead of climbing Masada, we drove north to Gan HaShlosha near Beit She’an and spent the morning floating in cool spring water.

Officially, Beit She’an was probably around 125 degrees.

Unofficially, it was the temperature at which crayons melt and tourists begin questioning their vacation choices.

The water was cold.

The shade was glorious.

And my hat stayed on.

So this summer, like every summer, I’ll continue my routine.

Dermatologist every four months.

SPF 100 sunscreen.

Long sleeves.

Long pants.

Plenty of water.

And my Tilley hat.

A hat that protects me from the Israeli sun.

And reminds me every day of Leslie.

Haim Karel, guide course director, mentor, teacher, and closest thing we had to a drill sergeant

I just completed an 18-day private tour with Gregg and Miriam, the longest tour I have ever guided.

Eighteen days.

I know what you’re thinking. How could anyone spend that much time with me?

Fortunately for me, Gregg and Miriam did.

The tour was wonderful. At least from my perspective. I hope they feel the same way.

One unexpected benefit of spending nearly three weeks together was that it gave me time to reflect on how I became a tour guide in the first place. As they were boarding their flight home, I found myself thinking not about the tour we had just completed, but about the journey that made it possible.

In Israel, not just anyone can become a licensed tour guide.

Before receiving a license from the Ministry of Tourism, candidates must complete a rigorous course that lasts more than two years and resembles a master’s degree program more than vocational training.

The areas of study are surprisingly simple.

You only need to learn Middle Eastern history from the beginning of time until today, archaeology, anthropology, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, geology, geopolitics, government, flora, fauna, geomorphology, and just about every other subject connected to this tiny country.

The list of things we don’t study is considerably shorter.

When I made Aliyah at the mature age of 53, the Israeli army showed absolutely no interest in drafting me.

A wise decision on their part.

But the tour guide course became my army service.

And Haim Karel, the head of the program, became my drill sergeant.

At least that’s how it felt.

I entered the course with rose-colored glasses. I imagined two glorious years of learning about the country I loved, traveling to fascinating places, and meeting interesting people.

How hard could it be?

After all, I had survived law school.

As it turned out, this course was harder than law school.

Much harder.

There were days when I was convinced my head would explode from information overload.

Every week brought ten hours of classroom lectures taught by leading professors, archaeologists, historians, geologists, and scholars. Every Sunday began before dawn with field trips that often started around 6:30 in the morning and ended long after dark. We traveled the length and breadth of Israel, from famous landmarks to obscure sites I had never heard of.

My hand cramped from taking notes.

My brain cramped from trying to remember them.

Our class consisted of about thirty-five students. Young and old. Native-born Israelis and immigrants. Jews, Christians, and Muslims. People from every imaginable background, all trying to absorb an impossible amount of information.

I quickly realized that loving Israel and understanding Israel were two very different things.

At the same time, I was winding down a thirty-five-year legal career and preparing for an entirely new profession in an entirely new country.

The uncertainty was overwhelming.

Would I pass?

Would I get licensed?

Would I find work?

Would I succeed?

Would I be happy?

The answer to all those questions seemed far from certain after I failed my first written exam.

I remember sitting in my car afterward wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake. I had left a successful legal career, moved halfway around the world, and now couldn’t even pass the first test.

That failure hit me harder than I expected.

It had been more than thirty-five years since I had last sat in a classroom. Suddenly I found myself competing academically again, surrounded by people who seemed far more comfortable with the material than I was.

I lost weight.

I lost sleep.

I lost confidence.

For the first time in my life, I found myself talking to a psychologist.

Fortunately, I wasn’t alone.

Diane carried me through.

My daughters carried me through.

And, oddly enough, so did Idan Amedi.

I listened to his music constantly. Somewhere between the anxiety, self-doubt, and endless studying, his songs became therapy.

Then there was Haim.

To understand Haim Karel is to understand a certain kind of Israeli.

Outside the course, he was the sweetest man imaginable. Everywhere we went, former students would run over to greet him. He hugged everyone. Kissed everyone. Asked about their families. He seemed less like a teacher and more like a beloved grandfather.

Inside the course was a different story.

Inside the course, Haim was relentless.

Demanding.

Unforgiving.

Occasionally terrifying.

And, if we’re being honest, sometimes downright mean.

Haim also had a standard answer whenever a student asked for a bathroom break, a snack break, or a little extra sleep.

“Tour guides don’t eat, pee, or sleep.”

That was it. End of discussion.

At first, we thought he was joking.

Eventually, we realized he wasn’t entirely joking.

According to Haim, tour guides were expected to be a higher life form. Ordinary humans required food, rest, and occasional access to a restroom. Tour guides, apparently, survived on historical facts, determination, and perhaps the occasional cup of black coffee.

A typical Sunday in guide school. Haim talking. Thirty-five exhausted students taking notes. Lunch was still just a rumor

Years later, I still hear his voice every time I am hungry on a tour, need a bathroom break, or consider sitting down for five minutes.

The remarkable thing is that after two and a half years with Haim, part of me actually believes him.

At the time, many of us thought he was simply making our lives miserable.

Only later did I realize what was really going on.

Haim wasn’t trying to break us.

He was trying to make us better guides.

He knew something we didn’t know yet: one day we would stand in front of visitors who had traveled halfway around the world and entrusted us with their experience of Israel.

“Good enough” wasn’t good enough.

The standards were high because the responsibility was high.

At the time, I didn’t appreciate that.

Today, I do.

Eventually I passed.

Eventually I received my license.

Eventually I found work.

And eventually something unexpected happened.

I became the guide I had hoped to become.

Not because the course taught me everything.

No one could possibly learn everything about Israel.

Rather, the course taught me how much I didn’t know, and how to keep learning.

Looking back, those two and a half years were among the most difficult periods of my life.

They were also among the most rewarding.

As Gregg and Miriam boarded their flight home after eighteen days together, I found myself grateful.

Grateful for the course.

Grateful for the struggle.

Grateful for Diane, my daughters, Idan Amedi, and yes, even Haim.

The army didn’t want me.

Haim Karel did.

Looking back, I’m still not sure which was the tougher assignment.

Thank God for both.

After months of uncertainty, canceled flights, regional tensions, and friends back home questioning their sanity, Gregg and Miriam Beeber landed in Israel.

A few days later, we found ourselves taking shelter from Hezbollah rockets while standing inside a 900-year-old Crusader latrine.

If that sounds unusual, welcome to Israel.

After recovering from jet lag in Tel Aviv, we headed north along the Mediterranean coast to Akko, or Acre if you’re a Crusader. You say Acre, I say Akko.

Akko is one of the most fascinating places in Israel because an entire Crusader city lies buried beneath the Ottoman city that sits above it. It is one of the reasons Akko was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As a tour guide, it’s one of my favorite places to explain how history in Israel isn’t layered neatly in books. It’s layered literally under your feet.

As we descended beneath the Ottoman fortress into the excavated halls of the Knights Hospitaller compound, I was doing what tour guides do: talking.

And talking.

And talking.

I explained the Crusaders.

I explained the Hospitallers.

I explained Saladin, Baybars, el-Jazzar and Napoleon.

I explained sieges, battles, architecture, and medieval sanitation.

Which is how we eventually found ourselves standing inside the Crusader latrines.

For those wondering, medieval toilets were not exactly what one would describe as luxurious. But after surviving for 900 years, they are surprisingly sturdy.

Then the sirens sounded.

A rocket alert.

According to our phones, Hezbollah had launched rockets from Lebanon.

We had 45 seconds to seek shelter.

Fortunately, we were already standing about as deep underground as it is possible to be in Akko inside a medieval fortress designed to withstand attack.

“Let’s stay here,” I told Gregg and Miriam.

I can’t honestly say that was part of my guiding plan for the day.

Nor did I ever expect to utter the sentence:

“Everyone remain calm. The Crusader bathroom should protect us.”

For those wondering what a 900-year-old Crusader bomb shelter looks like, here it is.

As we waited underground, another alert appeared on our phones.

The IDF had reportedly captured Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon.

Now the story became even stranger.

Beaufort is another Crusader fortress. The Crusaders built it. Muslim armies captured it. The Mamluks damaged it. The Ottomans inherited it. The PLO occupied it. The IDF captured it in 1982, withdrew in 2000, and now it was apparently back in the news again.

There we were taking shelter in one Crusader fortress while reading reports about fighting around another Crusader fortress.

At some point I began wondering if the Crusaders had ever really left.

My family knew I was guiding in Akko.

Whenever rockets are launched in Israel loved ones immediately check on one another.

My family WhatsApp group immediately lit up.

Lily:

“Dad, are you in Akko? sirens?”

Me:

“Yes.”

“In Akko.”

“Sheltering in a Crusader fortress.”

“Very cool.”

A few moments later Diane responded:

“Thank God we value history and protected those Crusader castles.”

I laughed.

But honestly, she had a point.

There aren’t many countries where preserving medieval architecture can unexpectedly become part of your emergency preparedness strategy.

Then again, there aren’t many countries where a tour of a UNESCO World Heritage Site can suddenly become an air raid drill.

Israel has a funny way of making history feel less like the past and more like current events.

Here, you can spend the morning discussing King David, the afternoon walking through ancient Roman roads, Byzantine ruins, Crusader halls, Mamluk arches, and Ottoman markets, and before dinner find yourself checking the Home Front Command app.

Everything happens at once.

The Crusaders apparently refuse to leave.

And history is never content to stay in the history books.

Eventually the all-clear sounded.

We exited the latrine, dusted ourselves off, and continued the tour.

I suppose that’s another thing about Israel.

When rockets interrupt your day while you’re standing in a 900-year-old Crusader bathroom, you don’t cancel the tour.

You simply add it to the story.

Still guiding. Still hopeful. Still checking the news every six minutes.

Going into Shavuot weekend in Israel, there was really only one question hanging over the country:

Are we going back to war with Iran…or not?

The news cycle here has become a bizarre combination of existential dread and weather report.

“High probability of escalation.”
“Possible strikes overnight.”
“Ceasefire talks continuing.”

Apparently this is now normal.

Reports were swirling that negotiations were underway to avoid renewed Israeli and American strikes on Iran. President Trump was reportedly staying in Washington instead of attending his son’s wedding because events were becoming so serious again.

And so, like most Israelis, we spent the holiday weekend in that familiar psychological position:
half celebrating,
half doomscrolling,
half preparing the safe room.

Yes, that is three halves.
That is also Israel.

But while everyone else was wondering whether missiles would start flying again, my mind was obsessing over something else entirely.

Would Gregg and Miriam come?

Since the Iran war began back in February, tourism here has essentially collapsed.

One day my spring and summer calendar was packed.
Groups.
Families.
Heritage trips.
Pilgrimage tours.
Private guiding all over the country.

Then, boom!

Flights canceled.
Airlines suspended.
Tourists disappeared.

Just like that, an entire season of guiding vanished.

My last group, a church group from Florida, basically ended with me escorting them toward the Egyptian border like some kind of slightly anxious Jewish Moses with WhatsApp updates.

After that?
Nada.

Except Gregg and Miriam.

My brother Lee introduced us almost a year ago. They were planning their first trip to Israel in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary.

And let me tell you something about tour guides,
we do not simply plan trips.

We construct masterpieces.

For nearly a year we Zoomed, emailed, and WhatsApped our way through what I, objectively of course, considered the perfect Israel itinerary.

Tel Aviv.
The Galilee.
The Golan
The deserts; Judean, Arava and Negev.
Jerusalem.
History.
Food.
Stories.
Adventure.

The kind of trip where I already knew which overlook would make them emotional.

Then came the Iran war.

Flights were canceled.
Then rebooked.
Then canceled again.
Then rebooked again at prices normally associated with organ trafficking.

But Gregg and Miriam never folded.

They just kept coming.
Or trying to.

Which honestly made me feel simultaneously inspired and guilty.

Because Israelis have a complicated relationship with people who voluntarily choose to come here during wartime.

Part admiration.
Part concern.
Part “You know there are easier anniversary destinations, right?”

Like Tuscany.
Or Greece.
Or literally anywhere currently not discussing uranium enrichment.

Still, the ceasefire seemed to be holding.
Things quieted down.
And finally it looked like they might actually make it here.

Until this weekend, a few days before their arrival.

Suddenly the headlines heated up again.
More threats.
More negotiations.
More speculation about whether the ceasefire was collapsing.

And there we all were again,
refreshing the news every six minutes like emotionally unstable stockbrokers.

By the end of Shavuot and then Shabbat, thankfully, the sirens never came.

No missiles.
No running to shelters.
And now it appears the ceasefire will hold a little longer.

Which means Gregg and Miriam are coming.

Good news, right?

Of course it is.

And yet…

Here is where life in Israel starts to become psychologically confusing.

Because I am thrilled.

Thrilled we are not currently under missile attack.
Thrilled my clients are finally arriving.
Thrilled I get to work again doing the job I love.

But at the very same time, another part of me feels deeply unsettled.

Because many Israelis also believe this is unfinished business.

That Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis remain existential threats sitting just beyond the horizon waiting for the next round.

That this ceasefire is not peace.
It is intermission.

And so now I find myself in the strange emotional position of simultaneously celebrating calm while worrying we stopped too soon.

I realize how schizophrenic that sounds.

One side of me wants quiet streets, open airports, tourists filling hotels, and arguments about hummus instead of missile alerts.

The other side wants this threat eliminated once and for all so maybe we can stop living from siren to siren and ceasefire to ceasefire.

One half of me:
“Welcome to Israel! Look at the beautiful sunset over Jerusalem!”

The other half:
“Maybe we should dismantle the regional axis of terror before dessert.”

This, I suppose, is modern Israeli life.

You learn to hold two completely contradictory emotions at the same time.

Relief and anxiety.
Hope and suspicion.
Normal life and emergency preparedness.

You discuss summer vacation plans while keeping one eye on the news ticker.

And somehow, despite all of it, life keeps moving.

Gregg and Miriam are coming.

We will travel the country together.
We will eat too much shawarma.
We will solve the Middle East conflicts several times over hummus.
We will stand in ancient places and talk about history and survival and resilience.

And for two weeks, at least, life will feel almost normal again.

Until the next headlines.

A lactose-intolerant people’s act of faith

We have counted fifty days since Passover and arrived at another holiday: Shavuot.

Yes, I’m writing about another Jewish holiday. But after this one, I promise, no more holiday articles until Rosh Hashanah in the fall.

Maybe.

Shavuot in Israel is one of the most fascinating and strangely joyful holidays of the year. It celebrates both the spring harvest, especially wheat, and the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, the moment the Israelites became a nation.

And like many things in Israel, the holiday is filled with irony, contradictions, and customs that somehow make perfect sense here.

The first irony is that outside of Israel, Shavuot is almost an afterthought.

If you asked many Jews in the diaspora to name the most important Jewish holidays, Shavuot probably would not crack the top ten. It gets overshadowed by Passover, Hanukkah, and the High Holidays.

But in Israel?

Shavuot is huge.

Besides Shabbat, it feels like one of the country’s defining holidays. In Israel, everyone celebrates Shavuot in one way or another.

Religious Jews stay up all night studying Torah.

Secular Israelis on kibbutzim celebrate the agricultural roots of the holiday with folk dancing, white clothing, flower crowns, and tractor parades showcasing the first harvests.

And then there is the food.

Or more specifically:

the dairy.

Between Mount Sinai and the dairy counter

Cheesecake. Blintzes. Cheese bourekas. Cheese lasagna. Pizza. More cheesecake.

This brings us to the second irony of Shavuot.

The Jewish people, as a general rule, are not exactly famous for their ability to process dairy.

Who looked at a largely lactose-intolerant population and decided:
“You know what this holiday needs? Massive quantities of cheesecake.”

Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

Just as you know it is Hanukkah in Israel when sufganiyot suddenly appear in every bakery window, and you know it is Purim when hamantaschen take over the supermarkets, you know it is Shavuot when cheesecake begins appearing EVERYWHERE.

Mahane Yehuda Market during Shavuot

Not New York-style cheesecake.

Not the dense, glorious cheesecake my mother still makes back in Memphis with the secret ingredient known to Jews everywhere as Philadelphia Cream Cheese.

Israeli cheesecake is different.

Lighter. Airier. Fluffier. Almost cloud-like. Entire sheet pans of soft white cheesecake suddenly appear in cafés, bakeries, markets, and grocery stores all over the country.

Only the Jewish people would receive the Torah and immediately celebrate with cheesecake.

Not everyone observes the holiday the same way, though.

My family, for example, has become something of a Jewish United Nations.

My “first” son-in-law, Yaakov, is an Ashkenazi immigrant from Ohio. My other sons-in-law, Yoni and Shay, are Sabras, Israeli-born Jews whose families came from places like Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey; what Israelis broadly call Mizrahi Jews.

Yaakov does not miss an opportunity to observe as many Jewish customs as possible. So he has both dairy and meat meals on Shavuot, just carefully separated in accordance with Jewish law.

First comes the cheesecake.

Then comes the barbecue.

By afternoon, the grill is fired up to commemorate the ancient holiday sacrifices once brought at the Temple in Jerusalem.

One of the interesting things about Jewish holidays in Israel is that cooking is permitted on Yom Tov, unlike Shabbat, provided you transfer an existing flame rather than create a new one.

But enough with the technical details.

As for the traditions of my Mizrahi sons-in-law, I’m still learning. I’ll report back after spending this Shavuot with Yoni’s family.

Yemenite Jews, on the other hand, seem far less willing to let a dairy custom interfere with a perfectly good meat meal.

While much of Israel is eating cheesecake and blintzes, somewhere a Yemenite family is standing around a barbecue wondering why anyone would voluntarily eat dairy in the first place.

And then there is perhaps the greatest irony of all.

On the holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people, we read the Book of Ruth, the story of a non-Jewish Moabite woman who leaves her homeland to remain with her Jewish mother-in-law.

Her famous words remain some of the most beautiful in all of Jewish tradition:

“Where you go, I shall go. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

Judaism is famously not a religion that actively seeks converts, which somehow makes Ruth’s story even more powerful.

From this outsider who chose to join the Jewish people would eventually come King David himself and, according to Jewish tradition, the future Messiah.

There is something deeply moving and very Jewish about that idea:
that belonging is sometimes chosen as much as inherited.

And so, after weeks of holidays, memorial days, independence celebrations, barbecues, sirens, ceremonies, family meals, and now cheesecake overdose, Shavuot quietly brings the long holiday season to a close.

Soon Israel will settle into the long, hot Middle Eastern summer.

The beaches will fill.

The tourists will arrive, God willing.

The country will collectively exhale.

And for at least a little while, no one will be talking about Jewish holidays again.

Maybe.

The wedding went on against all odds

We can finally exhale.

Charlotte and Shay got married this weekend in Tel Aviv, and as I write this, I am recovering from equal parts emotional exhaustion, dance floor abuse, and approximately seventeen too many celebratory shots.

To be honest, I’ve avoided posting much about the wedding online these past few months. Call it superstition. Call it Jewish trauma. Call it not wanting to tempt the ayin hara, the evil eye, the kenahora jinx.

Because until very recently, we genuinely did not know if this wedding was even going to happen.

For the 74 days leading up to the wedding, we lived in a strange suspended state somewhere between celebration and crisis management.

Flights from the U.S. were canceled.
Sirens continued to sound.
Missiles and rockets continued to fall.
Government restrictions limited gatherings.
Every few days there was a new escalation, a new rumor, a new reason to wonder if we should start preparing for postponement.

Then suddenly, a temporary ceasefire.

But would it hold?

Planning this wedding felt a little like planning a wedding in Buffalo when the forecast suddenly changes to a massive blizzard three days before the event.

Except instead of nervously checking the weather for 72 hours, we were holding our breath for over two months.

And yes, before I go any further, let me say this clearly:

I fully understand how small and privileged our stress sounds compared to families who lost loved ones, wounded soldiers, displaced families, and people carrying grief far heavier than wedding anxiety.

Our stress pales in comparison.

But it was still real.

Most days since October 7 have felt like living on a roller coaster nobody can get off.

One day you feel hopeful.
The next day you feel like you’re drowning.
One day life feels almost normal.
The next you’re standing in a stairwell or bomb shelter checking Telegram updates while trying to calculate how far away the interception sounded.

And then somehow, in the middle of all of that:

you have a wedding.

In Jewish tradition, weddings are considered profoundly life-affirming events, especially during periods of tragedy and uncertainty.

Maybe even acts of defiance.

There’s a well-known Jewish teaching that if a wedding procession and a funeral procession meet, the wedding goes first, symbolizing the obligation to choose life and continue forward.

During this war, there were countless stories of weddings taking place in bomb shelters, underground parking garages, and evacuation hotels.

Because life here does not pause neatly for history.

People still fall in love.
Families still gather.
Glasses are still broken beneath the chuppah.

And eventually, after weeks of anxiety, ours did too.

The wedding took place along the coast in Tel Aviv, Israel’s vibrant, chaotic, cosmopolitan White City.

It felt completely different from our other daughters’ weddings in the hills outside Jerusalem, where the backdrop was mountains, stone, and pine trees.

This one felt unmistakably Tel Aviv.

Warm Mediterranean air.
Music thumping.
People spilling onto the dance floor before dinner was even served.

Israeli weddings are next level.

Partly because Israelis know how to celebrate.
And partly, I suspect, because living with uncertainty makes people appreciate joy differently.

The ceremony itself took place under the chuppah, the wedding canopy, with guests gathered closely around the couple rather than seated quietly in rows.

And then came the dancing.

Israeli wedding dancing is less “formal reception” and more “contained public uprising.”

Circles.
Singing.
Sweat.
Chaos.
Shots appearing magically in people’s hands every seven minutes.

And the dress code?

This is Israel.

Some guests were elegantly dressed.
Some looked like they came directly from the beach.
I’m pretty sure at least one person was wearing sneakers they also use for gardening.

Israeli weddings operate on a very simple principle:

Did you come?
Did you dance?
Then, you’re appropriately dressed.

Toward the end of the ceremony, Shay smashed the traditional glass beneath his foot.

The custom serves as a reminder that even at moments of greatest joy, Jews remember sorrow, particularly the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

This year, though, the shattered glass carried additional meaning.

It reminded us of everyone who could not be there.

Friends whose flights never made it.
Family who stayed behind because of the war.
And especially my mom back in Memphis, who desperately wanted to come but simply could not.

And yet somehow, despite everything, the wedding happened.

For one evening, people stopped checking the news alerts.
They stopped talking about interceptions and ceasefires and canceled airlines.
They danced.
They laughed.
They celebrated life.

And honestly, after these past months, that may have been the most Israeli thing of all.

Stealing firewood, under the cover of darkness but in plain sight

Warning: close your windows and doors. Bring in your dogs and cats.

Not because of the hamsin, those spring dust storms that drift in from the Sahara and coat everything in a fine layer of grit. We have those too.

But because tonight, at sundown, is Lag BaOmer.

The 33rd day of the counting of the Omer, the seven-week stretch between Passover and Shavuot. It marks a break in the semi-mourning period observed by many Jews.

Why?

Depends who you ask.

It may commemorate the end of a plague among the students of Rabbi Akiva.
Or mark the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the mystic sage associated with the Zohar and the foundations of Kabbalah.
Or connect to the fires of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans.

As they say: two Jews, three opinions.

What is not debated is how it’s celebrated in Israel.

Fire. Lots of it.

A central tradition of Lag BaOmer is lighting large bonfires symbolizing the light of Torah and the teachings of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

Which brings me to the view from my balcony.

For months now, the kids in the neighborhood, especially the local Ezra youth group, have been preparing. This isn’t minor. It’s a full-scale operation.

They move in packs with wagons, bicycles, trolleys, and the occasional “borrowed” shopping cart. Their mission: collect wood.

Not so easy in a country where wood is, let’s say, scarce.

They’ve scavenged construction scraps, broken furniture, and abandoned pallets from every corner they can find. What starts as a small pile quickly becomes a carefully guarded neighborhood asset.

This year, however, the operation has taken on a slightly more personal dimension.

Directly across from our building sits a stalled construction site, generously stocked with wood scraps. Apparently, this has been deemed fair game.

At all hours of the night, we’re treated to the sound of teenagers climbing over the metal security walls, hauling away their latest prize like burglars.

The police have been called more than once. (Not by us!)

It’s been equal parts annoying and, I have to admit, a little amusing.

By tonight, all of this effort culminates.

Thousands of bonfires will be lit across the country; on beaches, in parks, empty lots, and occasionally places that probably shouldn’t host open flames.

Families gather. Picnics happen. Kids play with bows and arrows. Teenagers linger a little longer than necessary.

And the smoke?

It doesn’t rise. It settles.

Into your apartment. Into your clothes. Into your lungs.

This is not a great night for asthmatics… or firefighters.

Hence the earlier warning: seal your windows.

Lag BaOmer also marks a lifting of certain Omer restrictions. Weddings resume. Music returns. And for many families, it’s the day for a child’s first haircut at age three, the upsherin.

Last year, we celebrated with an upsherin for my grandson, Shachar.

And then there’s the grandest bonfire of them all.

Traditionally, tens of thousands gather at Mount Meron, ascending the mountain with candles and torches to light a massive fire near the burial site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

It’s an extraordinary scene.

I last experienced it in 1984.

This year, it won’t happen.

Meron sits uncomfortably close to the Lebanese border, and with ongoing Hezbollah rocket fire, the event has been cancelled.

Even here, even on a night of fire and celebration, reality has a way of intruding.

Still, across the rest of the country, the fires will burn.

From my balcony, I’ll watch the neighborhood’s carefully assembled pile finally go up in flames. The same kids who spent months collecting wood will stand around it, proud of their work.

It’s smoky. It’s chaotic. It’s a little absurd.

It’s also deeply, unmistakably Israeli.

So tonight, we’ll close the windows. Bring the pets inside. Maybe complain about the smoke.

And then we’ll step outside and watch.

Everywhere blue and white. Balconies, cars, highways. In Israel, during these days, the flags aren’t subtle.

In Israel, a country can go from a memorial ceremony to barbecues in the park in a matter of hours.

Life here is measured in holidays.

Not just the big ones. Holidays shape the rhythm of the country in a way that’s hard to understand until you’re living it.

Shabbat is the anchor.
Arguably the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar.

And somehow, it happens every single week.

Try explaining that one to non-Jewish friends: “Our most important holiday? Yeah… every Saturday.”

But that’s a topic for another time.

Right now, we’re in a very specific stretch of the calendar. The fifty days between Passover and Shavuot.

The day after the Seder, we start counting. Forty-nine days leading up to Shavuot. It’s an old, deliberate tradition.

But in Israel, something else is inserted into this stretch of time.

A cluster of modern holidays.

National ones.

I just call them the Yomim.

The Days.

Yom HaShoah.
Yom HaZikaron.
Yom HaAtzmaut.
Yom Yerushalayim.

They all fall in rapid succession within these fifty days.

And they feel very different from the biblical holidays.

Less ritual. More national identity. More emotion.

If you want to understand Israel, watch what happens on Yom HaZikaron.

In the U.S., Memorial Day is a long weekend. Sales, barbecues, the unofficial start of summer.

In Israel, it’s not that.

The entire mood of the country shifts.

The music changes.
Television slows down.
Plans get quieter.
Flags are lowered to half-staff.

People go to cemeteries.

Not out of obligation.

But, because they know someone.

Or know someone who does.

Israel is small like that.

This year, one memory stayed with me.

Rachel Goldberg standing on a stage with a violin at a past Yom Hazikaron ceremony.

Her husband, Rabbi Avi Goldberg, had been killed in the war.

Years ago, when they were on shlichut in Memphis, Avi and Rachel often played together in our home. He, clarinet and her, violin.

Now, she stood there alone.

A recording of Avi playing the clarinet filled the space, and Rachel played alongside him.

Just as they had before.

Only this time, she was accompanying a memory.

That’s Israel in these days.

Loss… and something that continues anyway.

And then comes the turn.

Yom HaZikaron ends… and almost immediately, everything flips.

The flags go back up.

The mood changes.

Yom HaAtzmaut begins.

Fireworks. Music. Crowds. And what Israelis call “al ha’esh,” on the fire.

Which loosely means: everyone in the country grills at the exact same time.

Watching an Israeli family arrive at the park for a Yom HaAtzmaut barbecue is something to see.

The car pulls up.

The trunk opens.

And then… it just keeps going.

Out comes the grill.
A folding table.
Chairs.
Coolers.
Bags of food that could feed a small army.
More bags.
More food.
Children.
Saba and Savta.

At some point you start to wonder if the kitchen is coming next.

It’s like a clown car.

It doesn’t make sense how much comes out of one vehicle.

And then, within minutes, it’s all set up and running like a full outdoor restaurant.

This is how Israelis celebrate independence.

Together. Loud. With a lot of food.

And everywhere, the flags.

On balconies. On cars. Lining the streets.

There are flag dances on Yom HaAtzmaut.
Parades of flags on Yom Yerushalayim.

Blue and white everywhere you look.

Which brings you back to what the Yomim really are.

Not just separate holidays.

But a sequence.

You move from remembering the cost straight into celebrating the country.

One leads into the other.

It shouldn’t make sense.

But here, it does.

A “hafuch,” Israel’s version of a cappuccino. Upside down. Like everything else here.

In Israel, if you order a cappuccino, you don’t ask for a cappuccino.

You ask for a hafuch.

Literally, “upside down.”

Milk on the bottom. Espresso on top.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that hafuch might be the best way to understand Israel, not just the coffee, but the country itself.

Especially now.

A ceasefire is announced, first with Iran, then with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But what really caught my attention was the reaction.

Watching members of the opposition respond with frustration, even outrage, at the idea of a ceasefire, I had the same thought I’ve had many times here:

this place is completely hafuch.

From the outside, you might assume you know how that plays out politically, who pushes for a ceasefire, and who pushes back.

But here?

It doesn’t line up so neatly.

What you expect from “left” and “right” flips.

One of the things that has surprised me most since moving to Israel nearly eleven years ago is how different the conversation feels in real life.

In many places, politics starts with ideology, left, right, liberal, conservative.

Here, it usually starts with a simpler question:

Is it safe?

And when security is the starting point, the usual labels don’t always apply.

People described as “left” can sound hawkish.
People described as “right” can sound cautious.

Criticism doesn’t always come from where you think it will.

Even a ceasefire can feel… hafuch.

This isn’t a political argument. Far from it.

Any halfway decent tour guide in Israel knows the rule: don’t talk politics.

I’m not trying to explain who’s right or wrong, or what should happen.

I’m just noticing something.

If you don’t live here, it can be hard to make sense of.

Honestly, even when you do, it still is.

Because this is a place where the threats aren’t theoretical. Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, these aren’t just headlines. They’re part of daily life, in ways both visible and invisible.

So the conversation bends around that reality.

And when it does, things don’t always fall into the categories you expect.

Maybe that’s the point.

Israel doesn’t always fit the frameworks we try to impose on it from the outside.

The layers are different.

Sometimes reversed.

Sometimes confusing.

Often both.

Like the coffee.

Upside down.

Old City walls lit with yellow star, memorial candles, “We Remember”

The sirens are sounding all over Israel.

Not the kind that send us running for shelter.

Not the Az’aka, the rising and falling alarm warning of rockets from Gaza, drones from Lebanon, or missiles from Iran, Iraq, or Yemen.
Not the tornado sirens I grew up with in Memphis, tested every Saturday at noon.

This one is different.

Steady. Unbroken.
A single, piercing tone that cuts straight through you.

In Israel, a whole language has developed around sirens, how they sound, what they mean, how fast you need to move. We’ve learned, almost instinctively, to tell them apart.

But this siren asks for something else.

Silence.

At exactly 10:00 a.m. on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the siren sounds across the country. For two minutes, Israel comes to a complete standstill.

Cars stop in the middle of highways.
Buses and trains halt.
People step out and stand in silence.

No one runs for shelter.

Because this siren is not a warning.

It is memory.

A collective pause to honor the approximately six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II. A moment that says, without words: We remember. We will not forget.

This year, that moment feels different.

Because we are also at war.

In the days leading up to Yom HaShoah, the Home Front Command issued an unusual directive: the memorial siren is one continuous tone. Attack sirens rise and fall.

If an attack were to occur during those two minutes, the Home Front Command warned that the siren would stop and be replaced by the attack warning.

Even in remembrance, we are not entirely free from the present.

Last night, just before the day began at sunset, Gabrielle and Yaakov came in from Tekoa with the kids, Levana, Shachar, and Shilo, for an early pizza night before everything closed.

Because here, on Yom HaShoah, it all closes.

By law.

Restaurants, bars, theaters, and anything resembling normal life pause.
The radio plays only somber music.
Television shifts to Holocaust testimony and films, Schindler’s List among them.

After the kids left, Diane and I settled into our own quiet ritual, watching the national ceremony at Yad Vashem on television.

Six survivors are chosen each year to light six torches.

Six flames for six million.

There are fewer survivors every year now. Fewer voices who can say, I was there.

Today, fewer than 200,000 remain worldwide. About 111,000 live here in Israel.

One of this year’s torch bearers was 89-year-old Ilana-Lina Fallach.

Elegant. Composed. Radiant.

After surviving the war and building a life in Israel, she now has a large family, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. A living testament to continuity.

When they are all together, she says one thing:

“Just protect our country. Because people do not understand what it was like before we had a state of our own.”

And so this morning, as the siren sounded, the country stood still.

Not in fear.

But in memory.

Tens of thousands gather for Friday prayers on the Temple Mount—just hours after restrictions were lifted, as life across Israel snaps back to “normal” instantly.

There is never a shortage of things to write about here in Israel.

History. Religion. Culture.

And then there’s the news, which moves as fast as the Artemis II, at warp speed.

As I sit down to write this, what was supposed to be a pause turns out to be more suspense. A fragile temporary ceasefire was announced, but no one here seemed quite sure how to feel about it. Relief, maybe. But also doubt.

Now, after 21 hours of negotiations yesterday in Pakistan, talks ended without a deal.

So what now?

Anyone’s guess.

And that, is the story.

Before going any further, a quick disclaimer, especially for my friend, Jon R.

If you’re looking for a deep political analysis of this war, you won’t find it here. There are people far more qualified than I such as Daniel Gordis, Yossi Klein Halevi, Douglas Murray and many others.

I’m just a tour guide who can direct you to all the restrooms in Israel.

I live here. I work here. I walk these streets every day…..and like everyone else, I’m trying to make sense of the situation as it unfolds.

And if you live here long enough, you come to understand something:

Wars here don’t really end.

In just a few days, Israel will celebrate 78 years of independence.

And in one form or another, seventy-eight years of conflict.

What the rest of the world often calls “the end,” we experience more like an intermission.

A pause.

A ceasefire.

Or what’s often referred to as a hudna, an Arabic term for a “temporary” truce. Not peace. Not resolution. Just a pause.

It’s hard to imagine a real ending until something more fundamental changes—until Israel’s neighbors, and those who support them, accept that Israel isn’t going anywhere.

That’s the big picture.

But life here isn’t lived in headlines or news stories. It’s lived in real moments.

After 11 years of living here, I am often asked if I get used to this.

Yes… and no.

You learn where the nearest shelter is. You learn how to move when the sirens go off.

But you never really get used to it.

As a guide, I’ve lived through Gaza operations, COVID, October 7, the long Iron Sword war with Hamas, the 12-day Iranian conflict and now this latest 39-day war.

Each one is different. Each one leaves something behind.

On October 7, I was guiding a passionate church group from Oregon. We were in the Galilee on the morning when the attacks began. They were incredible; steady and patient, but after days of rocket fire and devastating news coming from the south, the decision was made to flee.

We drove them to the Jordanian border where they crossed and flew home from Amman.

Fast forward to this latest war.

Once again, I found myself up north, this time with an enthusiastic group from Tampa on pilgrimage. After they landed, we started in Netanya with a perfect Mediterranean sunset. The next day; Caesarea, the Carmel, Megiddo, Nazareth, Mt. of Precipice.

A really amazing day.

Until it wasn’t.

By nightfall, the U.S. Ambassador advised Americans to leave.

That night, the group decided to stay despite the warning.

By sunrise the next morning, the war had begun.

Sirens. Missiles. Shelters. Over and over again.

By the following morning, the group understandably made a different decision.

Under missile fire, the bus driver and I took the group on a 4.5 hour drive to Eilat so they could cross into Egypt and fly out of Cairo.

We got them out safely.

That’s the important thing.

But for me, that was the beginning of a very hard stretch.

More than 50 days of guiding was wiped from my calender overnight.

Just after the calendar had filled back up after the last round. Tourism was returning. And then, just like that……..it wasn’t.

At home, life shrinks.

You stay close to shelter. You sleep in spurts. You stop seeing people, not because you don’t want to, but because everything becomes complicated.

You function.

But you’re not really living.

And in the middle of all of that, we were trying to plan our daughter Charlotte’s wedding.

Guests flying in from the U.S. Flights getting canceled. No one knew what the next day, week or month would look like.

And then, just as suddenly, a ceasefire.

Restrictions lifted.

And across Israel, life snapped back.

Not slowly. Not cautiously.

Immediately.

Roads filled again. Cafés reopened. Kids went back to school. Flights resumed. People stepped back into routines they had dropped overnight.

And here’s the part that always gets me.

Within hours, Jerusalem, like the rest of the country, was full again.

Thousands of Jews made their way back to the Western Wall.

Roughly 100,000 Muslims gathered on the Temple Mount for Friday prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque.

And yesterday, countless Orthodox Christians packed into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the “Holy Fire” ceremony.

Life doesn’t ease back here.

It snaps back.

The airport reopened. El Al announced full flight schedules returning; New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, Paris, Rome.

And already, I’m seeing it.

Groups are rebooking. Some never canceled.

Because people still want to come.

They want to see this place, not just in the quiet moments, but in the complicated ones too.

So is the war over?

No.

Am I okay?

Maybe.

Will the tourists come back?

Absolutely.

And when they do, I’ll be here.

Telling the story and finding them the nearest public restrooms.

Doing my best Singin' in the Rain impersonation

I know; I just posted yesterday.

But this morning, Jerusalem inspired me…..again.

I woke up to the unmistakable sound of real rain. Not a drizzle, not a “maybe later,” but the kind of rain that demands an umbrella and guarantees wet shoes.

And in Israel, that’s not just weather.

That’s an event.

Because this could very well be the last rain we see until the fall.

Seriously.

So yes, I grabbed my umbrella, threw on my University of Michigan cap (still riding high after last night’s championship win), and went out for a walk, fully committed to my best Gene Kelly impression.

There’s something uniquely Israeli about a morning like this.

Here, you don’t take rain for granted when you know you might not see it again for seven or eight months.

Rain isn’t just background, it’s part of the rhythm of the land.

There’s a line in Book of Deuteronomy about “the early rains and the latter rains.” It sounds poetic, but it’s actually practical. The early rains arrive around October or November, waking the land up after a long, dry summer. The later rains carry us through winter and into spring.

And then… they stop.

Every year around Sukkot, specifically on Simchat Torah something small but meaningful happens.

In the middle of the regular daily prayers, a single line gets added, a request for rain.

Nothing dramatic. Just a quiet reminder that here, rain matters.

Those prayers continue through the winter and then end around Passover, when the rainy season is essentially over.

If you’ve ever been here in the winter, you know the scene.

You’re in the Old City, following some overly enthusiastic tour guide (no names), slipping your way down David Street toward the Western Wall, or making your way along the Via Dolorosa while that same guide is shouting over the downpour:

“HOW BLESSED WE ARE THAT YOU BROUGHT US THE RAIN!”

And honestly?

It’s not just tour guide theatrics.

It’s true.

Levana and Shachar not taking rain for granted

The best part?

Watching my grandkids splash through puddles like it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever seen.

Because here, rain is exceptional, a blessing and not taken for granted

I grew up in Memphis, where rain comes year-round, especially those warm summer showers.

In Israel, rain has just one season. And when it’s over, it’s over.

Because soon enough, the skies clear, the sun takes over, and we settle into months of relentless blue skies and what I like to call “Africa hot.”

No clouds. No rain. Just long, dry days stretching all the way to the fall.

So yes, posting two days in a row might be a bit much.

But a mornings like this?

Hard to resist!

This year’s Seder wines: Samaria, and these are just the reds😉

I’m writing this a few days after the Seder.

Still a little hungover.

Four cups of wine… and two trips to the shelter will do that.

Our Seder, like many in Israel this year, went late. Very late.

And yes, we fulfilled the obligation of the Four Cups of wine.

And then some.

I have a bit of a Seder tradition.

Every year, I highlight an Israeli winery, vineyard, or wine region and try, sometimes successfully, to connect it to the story of the Exodus.

It’s a tour guide thing.

You can take the guide out of the tour… but you can’t take the tour out of the guide.

This year, though, something shifted.

After a conversation with my friend Douglas, I found myself focusing less on slavery, persecution, and antisemitism, and more on something he called pro-semitism.

Not what we’ve survived.

But the miracle that we’re still here.

Because if you really think about it, the most remarkable part of the Passover story isn’t just that we left Egypt.

It’s that thousands of years later, we’re still sitting around tables, telling the same story.

Together.

As one people.
As one nation.

In that spirit, this year’s wines came from the hills of Samaria.

Places where our ancestors walked thousands of years ago.

Places where Jews today are planting vineyards, growing grapes, and making wine…...again.

Not easily.
Not without challenges.

But they do it anyway.

And to me, that’s the continuation of the Passover story.

Because leaving Egypt was only the beginning.

Freedom isn’t just about what we escaped from.

It’s about what we build afterwards.

And here in Israel; in vineyards, in homes, in families, that story is still unfolding.

Of course, this year, there was… another element.

The war.

Before we even sat down, we got a siren.

So instead of “Kadesh,” we had… “Miklat.”

We headed across the street to the shelter, waited it out, and then came back upstairs to start the Seder, like this is all somehow normal.

And sometime after midnight, when the Seder finally ended…

Back to the shelter again.

To their credit, the Iranians mostly held off during the Seder itself.

Our table was smaller this year.

Not by choice.

Gabrielle and her family stayed home in Tekoa, close to their safe room.
Lily and Yoni stayed in Tel Aviv with his family.

But others made it, somehow.

Annie, Charlotte, and Charlotte’s fiance, Shay came up from Tel Aviv, navigating a country that felt, at times, like it was holding its breath.
They were joined by Serena, a close family friend.

Elissa came from nearby Nachlaot.
Alona, Gili, and their son Asher from Rechavia.

And Sharon and Russ, who ended up at our Seder somewhat by default after two failed attempts to get out of the country.

And you know what?

All things considered…

It was awesome.

At the Seder we say:

“In every generation, a person must see himself as if he personally left Egypt.”

There’s even a Midrash that every Jewish soul stood at Mount Sinai.

Which I assume is how someone eventually came up with the name SawYouAtSinai.

Only the Jewish people could turn divine revelation into a dating site.

But there’s something real there.

Because for me, those Seder tables, year after year, are where my connection to Israel was formed.

Maybe even before that.

Somewhere between hearing the story as a kid… and deciding, at some point, to actually live it.

To leave one place and come here.

I guess I took that last line of the Seder a little more seriously than most:

Next year in Jerusalem.

This year, we said those words in Jerusalem.

With sirens.
With missing seats.
With a little less certainty than usual.

But also with something else:

Pride.
Resilience.
And the quiet understanding that this story, our story, is far from over.

Because Passover isn’t just about leaving Egypt.

It’s about what comes after.

And here in Israel……even now……

we’re still writing the next chapter.

This blog exists for one simple reason:

My wife, Diane.

She didn’t suggest it, she insisted I write a book.

Because everywhere we go; on walks, hikes, and excursions around Israel, she hears it all: the stories, the history, the random moments from tours. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Galilee, the Negev Desert, and everything in between.

You can take the man out of the guide, but you can’t take the guide out of the man.

Eventually, she’d just look at me and say:
“You need to write this stuff down.”

Relentlessly.

My more digitally literate daughter, Charlotte, on the other hand chimed in-
“If a book is too much for you, Dad……just start a blog.”

So here we are.

I’m a tour guide in Israel and also an American who somehow became an Israeli (more on that in later posts). I spend my days telling the story of this country to others, but the truth is, some of the best moments don’t make it into the “official tour.”

They happen in between; on a bus ride, at a lookout, in a conversation that turns into something more than expected.

Those are the ones that stay with me.

And now, thanks to my wife………I’m writing them down.

Let’s see where this goes.