I landed back in Dallas this week after nine days in Israel with JCC CEOs from across North America, as part of the JCC Association Kivunim seminar. I am still a little jet lagged, and I am still thinking about what I saw and heard. So, it feels right to me that this Shabbat we read Lech Lecha.

The parsha opens with God telling Abraham to leave his land, his birthplace, and his father’s house, and to go to “the land that I will show you.” Abraham gets no map and no timeline; he gets a direction and a promise that he will be a blessing. Rashi reads the words lech lecha as “go for yourself,” meaning the going is for Abraham’s own good. He must leave home to become who he is meant to be.

I have been to Israel many times, but every trip asks something new of me. This time, the segment of my visit that has been repeating in my head was a visit to Sde Boker, the small kibbutz in the Negev where David Ben Gurion chose to live after he stepped down as prime minister. The home he shared with his wife, Paula, is modest: a simple bed, a desk, and shelves full of books. The man who declared the State of Israel could have lived anywhere, and he chose the desert. He believed the future of the country was in the Negev, so he moved there and helped build it with his own hands.Standing in that small house again, I felt the weight of that choice in a new way.

There is a detail later in the parsha that I love. After Abraham travels down to Egypt, he comes back “to the place where his tent had been at the beginning.” He returns home, but he returns changed, and he builds an altar there. The point of going was what he brought back.

Here is what I brought back for our J community. Ben Gurion looked at the Negev and saw a place to build. He believed a community grows when people show up and do the work, even when the ground is hard. That is what happens at the J every day, in our classrooms, our pool, our camp, and our programs for every age.

I also brought back a picture of how full life is in Israel right now. The cafes were busy, the streets were loud, and families were out together, living fully after everything the country has been through. That resilience is a choice Israelis make every day. They are determined to do more than survive; they intend to thrive, and you can feel it everywhere you go. I see that same energy when I walk through our building: the early morning crowd in the fitness center, our preschoolers on their way to Shabbat, the older adults who have been coming here for decades, and our dedicated staff who make room for all of it.

Ben Gurion built in the desert. Abraham came home and built an altar. Here in Dallas, we keep building, every single day.

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Shabbat Shalom,

Todd