To travel beyond the borders of possibility:A journey into our own past, while dreaming of Israel’s new future.
With a mix of pain and pleasure, our most recent travels have taken us beyond the borders of Israel, allowing us to leave the tragedy of our current war-torn world behind. Indeed, after a month and a half immersed in the heart of the struggle that our nation faces, we have chosen to take a leave of absence for a few weeks and revisit our childhood home in America. My beloved partner and wife, Devra, with our daughter Gaia alongside, have joined me on our excursion back to our former homes, and back to the places where our respective childhoods have guided and grown us into the travelers and storytellers who we are today.
This journey has been lined with a tragic sense of ambivalence for our home country at war, and our own personal desire to alleviate our emotions from that tragedy. Indeed, when the opportunity arose to escape Israel, shortly after October 7, I balked at the notion and outright refused to even consider scurrying away in a time of such national disharmony. By volunteering and attempting to add some good into the world, I was able to spend the first month experiencing our new world with a sense of service to abate the horror that had befallen us. Finding myself mourning for my nation was an unexpected double-blow against the backdrop of my own personal familiar tragedy, having recently lost my brother, my twin brother, James Rafael Katz.
And so our journey to America, and to our childhood homes was both a chance to escape the realities of war, and also an opportunity to lay to rest some of the unfinished business that would await us upon our arrival. While I certainly will not delve into unnecessary details, I do wish to highlight the emotional, and indeed psychological importance of what travel represents in this case, and in many cases for journeyer’s and pilgrims alike. The conversations we held with our American families gave rise to a re-examination of our nuclear family, and how we feel about the future that we ourselves are creating together over the oceans in Israel, ironically the very land my father left to make his life in America. In traveling into our past, we were able to more securely and honestly imagine our future and the home we are building in Israel as immigrants, as journeyers, as guide and host to our guests.
The emotional journey is almost as important as the physical steps we take when traveling. If all we’re after is a selfie and some bucket-list tourism, then we are surely not the guide and host for you. But if indeed, you are seeking to penetrate the depths of the human experience that can come out when we trek into our own unique cosmic interconnectivity with our past, balanced with an intense immersion in the present, an experience that can sometimes arise if we’re truly fortunate, then I hope you can join us here in the holy land or beyond, for what can be something worth celebrating, called great travel. It’s this type of travel that leaves us needing a vacation after returning from our vacation. it’s the type of travel that has us furiously writing in our journals, and laughing out loud at the pictures we did manage to take together. It’s the type of travel that has you in tears of joy and sorrow simultaneously, and sometimes interchangeably, as our hearts pounding in our chests. It’s found in our sense of connectedness with others, that is nearly tangible, yet has to fade with time. It’s the glory of the human experience that sometimes comes out on tour, when we give ourselves over to the moment.
On the last day of our trip to Denver, Colorado, where my wife grew up and where I went to college, we had the opportunity to celebrate the fifth night of Hanukkah with the local Jewish community. Protected by armed guards, that unfortunately needed to be there amidst the rise in antisemitism that once again plagues our people, we watched our daughter jump and play, make friends and celebrate her seven years of childhood innocence. We were also accompanied by plenty of our countrymen from Israel, having made their homes in Colorado years earlier. But one family like us currently make our home in Israel thought we found ourselves visiting Denver for different reasons. They were a family from Kibbutz Be’eri, that barely managed to survive the horrors from October 7. They were there to light the candle on the Hanukkah with our host community in Denver. Unlike ourselves, they didn’t have a home to return to, and their future is tragically unknown. Indeed, the war had followed us across the ocean, and yet our responsibility was to be present with the joy of our children, amidst the horror of a war to which we are returning as I write this blog, and to old friends and new, that we tied together on this adventure to our former homeland.
Travel will one day return to Israel, though it may take a little while. But we are returning now, remembering the joy and the sorrow, the friendships and the fallen, as we reemerge from our travels beyond Israel’s borders and into a brighter future that we seek to create.
My name is Amir Katz and I am the owner and guide for Beyond Israel Travel. I look forward to welcoming you to travel with me into the realm of the possible, into the spontaneity of adventures in Israel, and into that playful space where new friendships can give rise to lifelong traveler relationships, and into the celebration of life while on tour.
To life, Lchayim, to travel
