I am writing this post from Israel, having spent five days visiting our daughter (who is living here for the year), and I’m about to spend a week with a group of Protestant seminary students. But this post isn’t really about who I’ll be interacting with on my travels. It’s about the feeling I have in Israel – and one I hope we all have at special destinations which bring about the sensation of being at home, even when you’re far from your regular home base. Indeed, this is a feeling that can be cultivated to great meaning and joy.
Yes, I do feel very at home where I am right now. But Israel wasn’t the first place where I felt this strong dynamic at work. The first place I declared to be my home away from home, according to family lore, was my grandparents’ house in Palm Springs, Calif.
Home is where the heart opens, and the hearts of others open to yours.
My family typically visited Palm Springs twice a year, and at age 2, I apparently walked in on the first day of one such visit and simply declared, to all who would listen, “Home.” (Ironically, that house was actually a second residence of my grandparents’, not their primary address.) “Home” was not about a place where any of us spent the majority of our time. It wasn’t even about where everything was ideal. We were two grandparents, two parents and four kids in a small three-bedroom house, after all!
The sensation of being at home was the feeling of being in a place where I belong, where I’m meant to be, where others around me are glad that I’m there, and where I’m safe. Although the city of Jerusalem is a long way from Palm Springs, personally not much has changed: Home (for me, at least) is not only where the heart is, but where the heart opens and the hearts of others open to yours.
You may have a different definition of home. But whatever it is that home means to you, if you can locate it and cultivate it, you too can own many homes. Here’s how: Where do you call home now? Stop and think about the feelings evoked by that space, when it’s working best for you. What other spaces evoke (have evoked) that feeling for you? How can you spend more time in those spaces, or others like it? In a way, this really puts you on a path to having multiple homes, and to a kind of emotional wealth that this “multiple home ownership” is uniquely poised to offer you.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”