Traveling Jewishly on the Road

By Audrey Lichter

What luck… Returning from our annual family reunion in Bar Harbor Maine landed on Tisha B’Av. That meant we would be doing the eight hour drive with no food during one of the hottest and most humid days of the summer.

Judaism traveled with us.

Judaism traveled with us. Our first stop was in Bangor Maine, where I knocked on the door of Congregation Beth Abraham and was warmly greeted by Rabbi Chaim Wilansky. After the  usual Jewish geography, (where we knew a number of people in common) we talked about Chai Mitzvah and Scott Shay’s new book Conspiracy U.  He in full Rabbinic gear seemed unphased by my leggings and sneakers. Fellow fasters, he welcomed this Jew-on-the-road with interest, and thanks for stopping by.

For the rest of the trip, we tuned into Hadar’s Tisha B’Av program, interspersed by our own synagogue’s (The Young Israel of West Hartford) Spiritual Resistance During the Holocaust, while checking in on the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz for the latest on Operation Breaking Dawn.

The ability to tune into meaningful virtual Jewish experiences in real time wherever you are is an amazing gift of our time. Arriving home 11 hours after we left due to heavy traffic, some stops, and intermittent rain storms, although hungry, I was filled with gratitude for the ability to observe Tisha B’Av by traveling Jewishly from Maine to CT.