Words and Wonderings

Bringing this Ashkenazic Ancestral Journey to a close is no easy task. I am certain I will be alchemizing and integrating this experience for the rest of my life. As I set to publish this closing entry on our two weeks of travel, I have already been back in Oregon for...

On the bus from Sejny to Warsaw. I can't believe that this trip is coming to an end. I am very tired. And so grateful. And I can't wait to see my guys, Stefan and Jonah James. We have visited many places on this trip. Traveling much of the length of Poland over the...

Content warning: includes brutality of ghetto life in Warsaw, Poland. Immediately upon arriving and descending from the bus the cacophony of city sounds filled our ears: Jackhammers working on the street, cars at high speeds whizzing by, metro cars clacking along...

The morning after the heaviness of Lublin and our visit to Majdanek concentration camp, we wandering pilgrims boarded our bus and rolled north to welcome Shabbat in the beautiful village of Kazimierz Dolny.   Winding past vast fields of ripe wheat, sunflowers,...

Content Note: Descriptions of life and death inside a concentration camp.   Lublin, Poland.   Before World War 2 the Jewish population here was around 42,000 people, a third of the total population of the town.   After World War 2 less than 500 Jews...

Julie Wolk and I and our crew of courageous journeyers are leaving Krakow today after two very full days beginning our pilgrimage.    Yesterday we visited the forced labor/concentration camp of Plasow.    Poland has a very complicated relationship with its...

  It is so incredible to be here in Krakow, Poland getting ready to co-facilitate an Ashkenazi ancestral pilgrimage with my friend and sister-in-spirit, Julie Wolk. The container we have prepared for the past 7 months is now becoming real as the soles/souls of our...

I’m rolling through the Austrian Alps, listening to Beethoven’s Archduke Trio on a train, slipping in and out of tunnels— A green, rainy May afternoon, then back into pitch black. Who built these tunnels? How many hands picked and shoveled? How many men laid the...

Yesterday was the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin in Jerusalem. My broken heart needed to hear the words of his deeply wise and courageous parents in order to properly bless his neshama's/soul’s aliyah, its ascent. I also needed to bless the body that once held his...

A few years ago, I read a teaching about joy by Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, that I couldn't get out of my head for days.  Like a song on repeat in your mind that you don't really know the lyrics too, I tried to tease out an understanding of his idea. He more or less...