Israel Beyond Headlines Post 1: Intro

At the Kotel in Jerusalem with my dad in 2019.

The last time I was in Israel was in 2019 when I accompanied my elderly father, so he could visit my cousins there. My husband, Mike, and my brother, Alan, did the same in 2021. Those were wonderful trips, filled with family, laughter and new memories.This trip was different.

Mike and I were returning to Israel to celebrate our son’s marriage with relatives and friends. Two days before we were scheduled to fly, Israel came under a barrage of rockets and guided missiles.

We went anyway.

What followed was unlike any previous visit. We saw places we had never seen, stayed primarily in Israel’s most heavily populated areas, confronted the devastation of October 7, and learned things about the country, and my own family’s history, that I had never fully understood.

I’m sharing what we saw and experienced to offer a glimpse of Israel through our eyes: the grief, the resilience, the history, the humanity, and the extraordinary people we encountered along the way.

I hope you’ll read it in the spirit in which it is intended: as an invitation to see, remember, learn and connect.