VOICES OF CONGREGANTS

Peggy Zilbermann

May 2009

When Mark and I decided to sign up for the trip with the Temple I had mixed feels about whether this would be one of those trips that would stay with me long after the plane had landed back home in Dallas or be just another vacation. The size of the trip and traveling in a bus with a large group of people in my mind had never been the way to really get to know the people of a country. I am also not keen on having guides tell me where to go and what to see. I have my own ideas of what I like to do on these adventures. So you see, this presented many challenges in my mind. However, I had a great desire to travel to Israel with a religious leader and who better than my Rabbis, David Stern and Nancy Kasten.

You see 15 years ago my family lived in Israel for 8 years and each summer I would take my young children Doug and Aaron to visit their Grandma for a couple of weeks. Try as she might my Gentile Mother would take me her Jewish daughter to all of the standard Jewish sights and try to explain as best she could about what we were visiting. I would have many questions that she could not answer. These trips are so clear in my memory and filled with daily adventures with and without my children. Shopping for glass in the Druze Village, sipping tea in Jericho with my Mom and Dad, my mom trying to exchange money on the streets in the Arab Market, and many hours on the beach at Hertzalia Petuah. One of those experiences included standing at the western wall and not quite understanding what I was supposed to be feeling. However, every time I would return to the US and talk to my Jewish friends about my experiences they would usually say how much they would love to go to Israel and speak of the special connections they felt if they had been there. I had never really had that type of experience in the 4 visits that I made to Israel. I wondered if this was due to my conversion and not being born Jewish. I wondered if it was because my history is not the history of my Jewish friends. I wondered if it was that my ancestors did not face the same type of suffering that my Jewish friend’s ancestors experienced. For whatever, reason I needed to find out if going on an organized trip with a religious leader could make that difference. So I shared this dilemma with my Rabbi, David Stern and he let me know that this was not an uncommon feeling among Jews by choice. I knew then and there that I was going to open myself up to any and all experiences that could make a difference with the way that I felt.

And yes, my heart was touched. On day six our group was found standing in the Kinneret Cemetery on the shores of the Galilee. Peaceful, serene, the sea spread out below us and trees shading us and standing with us. We heard poetry written by the early Zionist pioneers. We heard the stories of their love for the land and their love for each other. These people came alive for me. Rachel the Poet and others. They were so full of hope and opportunity for their lives. Many left their mothers and fathers behind and came on their own. They were young. The ages of my two sons and new daughter. I thought of my sons and daughter and how they are on their own adventures of building something new and exciting for their lives. How hard it is and yet how rewarding. These men and women who came to the Kinneret were passionate just as my children and I could feel their passion for life and feel their longing to build something unique. Many of them died young. Too young. We were then invited by our Rabbi to walk around the cemetery on our own and think about this experience. There in the Galilee. The place I had been on many occasions. I started to feel a small part of me open to the possibility of a connection with the land and the people who made the choice to come.

On Torah
Peggy Zilbermann