In general, I try to get to Israel as often as I can.  I'm usually able, one way or the other, to be here twice a year.   I have found through the decades that, as a rabbi whose responsibility it is to interpret Israel and her ongoing story to my congregants, it is absolutely essential for me to "touch base" in Israel on a regular basis.  I need to breathe its air, speak to its citizens, walk its streets, and remind myself in real time of why it is that Israel matters so much to me.

When I find myself agreeing with an editorial in The New York Times, I know I've been away from Israel for too long.

This trip, however, is purely personal, and I have been more than a little amused by some people's inability to comprehend that.  There are certainly enough "business" issues that can and do bring me to Israel, and even when nothing is particularly pressing, there is still, as I just mentioned, always a professional rationale for visiting here.  But when people ask me "what brings you to Israel" and I answer that I'm here to visit my family, they seem oddly reluctant to believe me.

Most people who have children in Israel as well as parents and siblings would want to visit them, I would think.  But somehow, it seems a bit of a leap to grasp that a rabbi like me is, at the end of the day, a father, a son and a sibling.  I love nothing more that shedding the trappings of my work identity to immerse myself in those other roles.  I've heard that some of my colleagues miss the attributions of honor and respect that come from publicly wearing the title, but I readily admit that I don't.  I think I'm at my happiest- no, I know I'm at my happiest- when I'm just me, with my family around me.  I wish I could get them all in the same place at the same time- that's gotten to be an almost impossible task- but I'll take what I can get!

So I guess you could say that I'm here on the business of family… and happily so!