It was an exceptionally stormy Monday when we arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on Feb. 6. On our way from the airport to the hotel in Tel Aviv, hail was falling on the windshield of our minibus. Our group of 12 pilgrims, none ever having been to the holy land, were ushered into the country by some of the worst weather in a century. That night, the enormous earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, burying tens of thousands of people, was felt also in parts of Israel. For two days, the strongest winds and rains kept people inside. The windows were shrieking, crying out loud from the wind. And all this was happening before the political storm erupted.

Tens of thousands of people were flooding the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem every weekend, demonstrating against judicial reform that the newly-elected government was instituting. (I intend to speak about this separately in the near future). Plus, terror attacks were occurring in Jerusalem. All of which goes to prove that if you wait for Israel to be quiet, you’ll never go. And many people do not.

Yet there is something about being a pilgrim, not simply a traveler. Despite what may scare some people from traveling to Israel, pilgrims see it as a spiritual obligation, not merely an educational trip or a vacation destination.  This is a call, a religious directive.

As many of you know, I am currently enrolled in a Columbia University course about the history of Jewish migration, and I see a connection between pilgrimages and migration: being away from home, being vulnerable and exposed, and having to face entry and exit points, often in a foreign language. Immigration is almost always for the purpose of upward mobility. Pilgrimage is for the elevation of the spirit, equally worth the risk, imbuing religious practices with inspirational meaning. Sacred space meets sacred time. A pilgrimage to the holy land is a deeply transformative experience of introspection. Those visiting the holy sites bring their everyday realities and transcend them through religious narratives.

It would be appropriate to associate pilgrimage with Jewish migration as part of the DNA within both. After all, Abraham, the first Jew, started his monotheistic enterprise in a migrating pilgrimage. Were the biblically commanded pilgrimages, three times a year, a preparation for the inevitable — human migration and immigration? A natural movement? Much like the natural migration of birds? What can we learn about pilgrimages from voluntary migration as opposed to forced migration? Is pilgrimage part of the psyche of the Jewish people that started with Abraham? Is it an exercise that transcends time and place? In this generation, we teach that the best skill is the ability to reinvent ourselves — to pack light, to pick up and go, to start over.

Holy Land pilgrimages are a dynamic and creative fusion of tourism and migration. Certain experiences are meaningful only when you are there, on the ground, visiting a new country, a living heart. As my Catholic counterparts like to call the land — the fifth gospel. For example, to experience the current judicial reform/revolution tension in Israel and the depth of the discussion, you need to be there, to plant your feet on the ground — an Aliya Laregel — with your feet. As it happened, I met by chance the man at the very eye of the current political storm, MK Simcha Rotman, chair of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. I saw him seated at the table next to me at breakfast one morning, and I approached him. I used the opportunity to reiterate to him, as a Conservative rabbi, the non-Orthodox movements’ need to be in the egalitarian prayer plaza at the Kotel — a small step I could take only by being there.

A pilgrimage is a mini-migration that is voluntary, not forced. It is designed to make you come back home with new vision. In the Jewish story, we will return home, perhaps only after millennia, but we are programmed to return home…eventually. It is an amazing phenomenon that in the past century, the entire Jewish world has immigrated. And today, most of the Jewish people live in the land. Is the whole Jewish journey a long pilgrimage that maybe is coming to its conclusion?  Could it be said that all the migrations of the Jews throughout the centuries can be seen as a grand pilgrimage that has led the people back to their eternal home in Israel? Happy month of Adar,

—Rabbi Gadi Capela