Get Away to Get Together

Bochurim and road-trips have been grist for the mill of this column over the years.

(Yes, I am smiling at having used this expression. I don’t really know what grist is, but the expression is satisfying and feels right and I will continue to use it until some letter-writer informs us that actually, it has its source in avodah zarah, secular culture, some hateful anti-Semitic practice, or whatever.)

I feel it’s time we graduated from bochurim trips to their grown-up version: shul expeditions, in which shul members join their rav for a few days in Eastern Europe or the Holy Land for chizuk/tefillah/shared learning.

These shul trips have little in common with the teenage getaways, and in some ways, they are the opposite.