Rabbi Peter H. Grumbacher
It would be easy to detail how enamored I’ve been all the times we lived in and visited Israel. It numbers at least 20. But the request was to focus elsewhere, so that’s what I will do.
As far as beauty goes, Alaska is number one. Like New York has pigeons that are often lined across a telephone wire (do they still have telephone wires??), Juneau has bald eagles, which we saw in a row. Magnificent creatures! And while I’m writing about that neck of the woods—a perfect term for Alaska and the next drop-dead gorgeous place—the Canadian Rockies—are nature’s wonders. They have an anthem, as it were, to describe what you’ll see…Trees and Rocks. Google it and listen if you want a good laugh.
Australia and New Zealand are, despite the interminable hours it takes to get there from here, worth the trip. Melbourne is like being in Europe, while Sydney is as urban a city as New York. From what I remember, there’s a law in Melbourne that there must be at least one park every mile. Australia has numerous time zones, one of which is one-half hour. Crazy!
(You see, like the Lay’s potato chip commercial of yesteryear whose tagline is, “Bet you can’t eat just one,” there’s no way I can list only one location)
The last time I saw Paris I was blessed with my fourth case of COVID. It was mild (at least milder than the first one which hospitalized me for a week, and milder than the other two which I caught in Israel). That didn’t stop us from touring the city, as well as other places in France we didn’t visit the other times we were there. It almost kept me from my part in a wedding in the south of France, but the operative word is “almost.” I had to lean on a chuppah pole and quickly sit down after I did my thing, but seeing the lavender fields made it a beautiful experience.
I’m not trying to boast about all the places Suzy and I have visited, especially in the 16 years of my retirement, but—and there’s always a “but”—it gave me a different perspective on the world because in some places, such as Argentina, being a Jew is not all that easy. We were in Argentina quite a number of years ago, and how much the more so today.
Now, what I’ve written has a minimum of Jewish “stuff,” that I’ll admit, but in all the places we’ve had the pleasure to visit there was always a Jewish component. If you seek it, you will find it because we’ve had our touch in every corner of the globe. And before I forget it, a truly magnificent experience was attending Shabbat services in Berlin. OMG, is that a gorgeous city and sensitive to its past. Anyway, if you’re able, spread your wings and take the wings of the airplanes to expand your worldview.
Rabbi Nick Renner, Congregation Beth Shalom
For this month’s prompt for The Rabbis’ Voices, “of all the places you’ve visited, what is your favorite?” there was an additional instruction that even if it’s Israel, pick somewhere else. So, I’m going to go with that direction. Sort of. But I have two places I’d mention for the same reason.
The two places, in no particular order, are Jerusalem, Israel and Istanbul, Turkey. But the reason I wanted to hold them up is the way in which they serve as liminal, in-between spaces. And when I say, “liminal,” I actually mean along two different axes. First, is the way they sit geographically at the convergence of lots of different peoples, religions, traditions, and powers. Second, is how they sit at the convergence between history and living, breathing reality.
I went on a study abroad program when I was in college 20 years ago that took place in Turkey, and was mostly based in Istanbul. I’d been to Israel several times by then, but what stood out to me when I was 20 was just how much Istanbul reminded me of Jerusalem. Both cities have tumultuous histories and to go wandering through that history is to visit the rise and fall of empires. In Jerusalem, I’m reminded of the imagery of Herodian stones that were rebuilt into Crusader architecture. In Istanbul, it was stories about the Hagia Sofia, and stories about how Christian and Muslim armies would often spare one another’s buildings in wars, just replacing the little cross at the top with a crescent, and vice versa. It’s a mess, but it’s profoundly beautiful. And it’s also the food! If you’ve had Turkish food, it’s an interesting combination of some of the kabobs and grilling culture of the Middle East, but it’s got an overlay of complexity and richness in some of the sauces that reminded me of French cooking more than anything else. And if you wanted to capture contemporary Israel, the idea of a schnitzel (fried chicken from Germany? Austria?) in a pita (middle eastern?) with Amba (an Iraqi sauce of maybe Indian origin of pickled mango?) actually tells the story of a lot of Jewish peoplehood in a single sandwich.
And then there are the names—Istanbul is Constantinople. And it applies to Jerusalem too. From the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai’s cycle of poems titled Jerusalem 1967, he played with the range of titles from Yerushalayim, Al-Quds, Y’vus, and Ælia Capitolina. It tells another story of in-between spaces, of different peoples, different stories, and the collision of humanity and history. Each has a powerful Jewish story too, but that’s another essay. For now, if you’re interested in the liminal spaces, from an anthropological standpoint, I think you’d have a hard time doing better than Istanbul and Jerusalem.
