Last month, I traveled to Israel with a group of nine other St. Louis Jewish leaders who had never visited the land before. The trip was jam packed with incredible people and places that have changed my life. Here are some beautiful moments of our time together. Thank you to Pam and Ron Rubin for making this experience possible.

We landed!

Our first stop is in Neot Kedumim where we herded sheep and goats on a biblical landscape reserve and planted trees.

Ahhh…Tel-Aviv! What a fun city! I didn’t include photos of everything we did, but here are a few I took during our walking tour, graffiti art tour, and Segway tour!

Israel is filled with what we affectionately like to refer to as squirrels. Here’s one of them!

We got to surf in the Mediterranean Sea and then watch the sun set!

It was an honor to visit some of the border police…

Here we are, spending a little time with women who live on a kibbutz…

Making bread…

Learning and growing in Nature…

Picking sweet potatoes to be donated! This was so much fun! For more info about the organization, Leket Israel, visit https://www.leket.org/en/.

Moshe, who is 70 something years old, shared his incredible story of surviving a missile attack to his ship. Unfortunately, many of his friends did not survive. He runs a food pantry dedicated to the men who died.

We came to a mountainside and pulsed our love across the world through a heart meditation and the sounding of the shofar.

I created this panoramic shot the old fashioned way by taking nine images and merging them together in Photoshop. It is a LOT harder than taking a panoramic with an iPhone!

Wow, wow, wow! United Hatzalah is an unbelievable organization of super-hero volunteers. Jews, Muslims, and Christians all over Israel remain on call in case of an emergency. There are so many volunteers available that someone can arrive on the scene within 90 seconds from the time a call is placed to Israel’s 911. Volunteers are trained to administer life-saving treatments until an ambulance arrives. You can learn more by visiting https://israelrescue.org.

Here we are preparing to shop in the shuk (the Jerusalem market) for Shabbat dinner, which we prepared ourselves! What a great memory and deee-licious food!! You can do the same thing next time you’re in Jerusalem! Ruthie and her sister-in-law are SO wonderful!! http://www.shukandcook.com

I like the photo bomber in the background… The guy on the guitar was cool too. He told me something extremely profound, but I was too tired to grasp the concept.

Camels can be found at gas stations in Israel…

Masada!!! We were really hoping to climb it, but people are not allowed to climb once the temperature hits 100 degrees. It was 100.4 degrees when we arrived, so we took the tram.

This scribe, who was in the old synagogue on the top of Masada, shared a teaching with us and sounded the shofar!

These are the remains of the old synagogue.

Here we are, floating in the Dead Sea, which is ten times saltier than the average ocean and super healthy for your skin!

These are all photos from my iPhone, which I decided should be my camera of choice during our ATV trip through the Northern Judean Desert (one of my favorite places in Israel).

We visited an amazing school where Jewish and Arab children learn together (there was a squirrel at the entrance). https://www.handinhandk12.org

Our first visit to the Western Wall was at the beginning of Shabbat, so I didn’t get any pictures, but it was an unbelievable experience that I will never forget. As soon as I entered the Old City, a wave of energy washed over me. I was inspired to not speak another word until I touched the Wall for the first time. We came back after Shabbat, and visited the egalitarian side as a group, and danced in Joy!

I also went back to the women’s side one more time before our trip came to an end.

I slept almost the entire way home, but here we are after landing back in Newark shortly before sunrise!

And here’s one of our last cuddly group photos from the trip!! I miss my friends so much, and can’t wait for us to all get together again!! Katie, Dave, Lisa, Steve, Lauren, Sharon, Matt, Mindee, Paul, and Jodi, I love you all so much!!!

For more details of our experience, visit www.rubinisrael.org.

Rubin Israel Experience {St. Louis Portrait Photographer}

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