The first time I went to Israel, I was 20 years old. My older brother David was 27.

We visited Sharm el Sheikh. We trekked through Sinai, which today is part of Egypt. I remember the desert — not perfectly, because memory is not a photograph, but vividly enough to still feel something of the silence, the heat, the stone, the sky, and the strange awareness that a place I had first encountered in Bible stories was suddenly under my feet.

At 20, I was old enough to think I knew who I was and young enough for Israel to unsettle and enlarge that answer.

David was beside me then.

That matters more to me now than it did at the time.

When you are young, you often think the journey is about where you are going. Later you understand it is also about who was with you before you knew what the journey would mean.

Since that first trip, my brother and I have both been back to Israel many times — dozens of times. Israel is not a place we visited once and preserved in memory. It has been part of our adult lives: a place of return, argument, love, concern, belonging, heartbreak, pride, and responsibility.

But this trip will be different.

Approaching 65, I am preparing to return to Israel with David again, this time on a Taglit-Birthright trip built around intense service.

We are not going back simply to see Israel.

We are going back to show up for Israel.

That distinction feels important.

When I was 20, Israel helped me understand something about who I was. Now, after October 7, I am returning with a different question: what does who I am require of me?

That question has followed many Jews since the massacre.

It is there when we read the names of the murdered. It is there when we see the faces of hostages. It is there when we hear from families who have lived for months inside an agony the rest of us can barely imagine. It is there when soldiers return home changed. It is there when communities near the borders try to decide whether safety can ever again feel ordinary. It is there when Jewish students on campuses wonder whether they must explain their grief before they are allowed to feel it.

What does who I am require of me?

For me, the answer begins with presence.

Not performance. Not........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)