Last week, Jacqueline and I met our friends Marc and Orley—the wonderful couple who had been our daughter’s host family in Tel Aviv when she was a sophomore in high school—for drinks and dinner. We sat in the lobby of the brand-new Kempinski Hotel in Tel Aviv. (As a side note, the Kempinski chain was founded by Berthold Kempinski, a Jew born in Poland in the mid-19th century whose family was in the wine business. He moved to Berlin and started what would become one of Europe’s premier luxury hotel chains with a small restaurant. This is the first Kempinski hotel in Israel.)
It turns out that the hotel manager went to kindergarten with Marc and he dropped by to chat. When he found out that, as a congregational rabbi, I sometimes bring trips to Israel, he offered to set up a tour for me. The next day, I met Liron—the hotel’s sales manager—for a visit. Along with the beachside hotel’s spectacular views of the Mediterranean coast, Liron showed me the restaurants and event spaces, including the worship configurations they can set up for groups. She then brought me to the rooftop terrace at the end of the tour for a cold drink, and we spoke a bit about our work and our children.
When I stepped outside to take a few photos, I noticed an older gentleman wearing a bright yellow hat from the Maccabiah Games that had just concluded, with the letters AUS embroidered on the crown. I said hello and asked if he had competed in the games. He laughed and said that he had won the marathon, 80-years-and-up division. “Actually,” he said, “I came to cheer on my four grandsons who were all on various Maccabiah teams.”
His accent was interesting—a mix of Australian and something central European. I asked about it and he told me that he was born in Hungary. I said that my mother’s family came from there, from a small town on the border of Slovakia called Sátoraljaújhely (it’s as hard to pronounce as it is to spell).
“That’s where I was born,” he said.
Liron and I were dumbfounded. What are the odds that on the one day I happened to tour the hotel, at the precise time he was having a coffee on the terrace, we would strike up a conversation and discover our connection? We spoke about our families, about his experience during the war. He and his brother were his family’s only survivors. After the war, he remained in Hungary, only leaving in 1958 on a special immigration program to Australia. There, each brother built his own business and his own family. Both have prospered and are alive and well with more than 10 grandchildren between them.
As we parted ways, I thought about a verse from Psalm 122 that describes Jerusalem—and, more broadly, all Israel—as a place that brings people together (כְּעִיר שֶׁחֻבְּרָה־לָּהּ יַחְדָּו—k’eer she’chubra la yachdav).
During my recent visit to Israel, I had so many experiences where I felt the coming together of Am Yisrael. From the athletes gathered from all over the world for the Maccabiah Games, to high schoolers on NFTY trips, and college students on Birthright, it felt like a grand reunion. After almost three years without the ability to travel freely to Israel, this summer every hotel was full, Ben-Gurion Airport impossibly crowded, restaurants and bars overflowing, and the vibrancy and vitality of the Jewish People on full display.
The root of the key word from that Psalm 122 verse is חבר—chaveir—friend.
My prayer for our people, for our own community, and more broadly for all Israel, is that we can find the way to come together, again and again, in friendship and in love, celebrating all that unites us, our shared history, as well as our unique destiny.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi