Miriam Leisman Rubin
As I placed my luggage in the car, my phone buzzed — “I-95 is a mess … a tanker truck fire caused a collapse of the highway …” As I drove to Newark to catch my flight to Israel for a mission trip as part of the Sinai Temple Israel Center Rabbinical Student Fellowship, I feared the destructive chasm on I-95 would foreshadow the weeklong experience.
My fear was not entirely unfounded.
In the waning months of the Second Intifada, my college sent me to study in Jerusalem. It was less than six months since my conversion to Judaism, and I recognized quickly that while I had learned a lot about an idealized Israel from the perspective of Diaspora Jews, nobody had spoken to me openly about Israel’s…
