What stays with our family most vividly over decades of travel is not famous landmarks – but Friday night tables in unfamiliar cities.
By Karen Kallmann
We arrived in Tehran hours before Yom Kippur with four exhausted children, no contact person, no Farsi, and only the vague address of a synagogue somewhere on Palestine Street — unbeknownst to us the second longest street in the city. After wandering for hours on the Friday night with no success, we finally found the kinnesa (synagogue) on Yom Kippur morning tucked away behind heavy doors. Within minutes, children were racing down the stairs to greet us while adults ushered us inside with warmth and curiosity.
By the time the fast ended we were being sprayed with rosewater and invited to break the fast in a beautiful family home.
Experiences like these are why my husband, Evan, and I travel.
Our romance began while travelling through Israel and Jordan, followed by a six-and-a-half-month journey through Asia. Like many young couples, we assumed that once children arrived, our travelling days would be over. Instead, much to our surprise and joy, children enhanced our travels, made our social interactions more meaningful and as one child became five, we continued travelling.
Over the years, we have explored the world as backpackers, South Africans and perhaps most significantly, as Jews. Our travels have often intersected with Shabbat (Sabbath) or Chaggim (Jewish festivities), and again and again we have found ourselves welcomed into Jewish communities in the most unexpected corners of the world.
One of the reasons we travelled to Iran was because we had read that it had the second-largest Jewish population in Middle East (after Israel); and when we visited in 2011 that was indeed the case. We chose to go between Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah in order to get the most immersion in the community and it was such an enriching and meaningful experience despite the difficulty we initially had finding the community. Once we did, we were warmly embraced and showered with hospitality.
At every kinnesa we visited, our Ashkenazi family became something of a curiosity. People crowded around us after services, fascinated by where we came from. Strangers delivered meals to our hotel and insisted we join them for elaborate family dinners. The first family we met gave us a sim card so that they could be sure we were safe wherever we travelled. We found a rich Jewish life in Iran, where Jews trace their ancestry to the time of the biblical Daniel. There was however, a darker side too – with some oppressive restrictions on Jewish observance.
The kinnesa’s were full of people, and Simchat Torah in Tehran was joyous. Women danced with their own Torah scrolls, children were overloaded with sweets and balloons, and after chag there was even a post-Simchat Torah dance party. At the end of the evening, members of the community thanked us repeatedly for visiting their communities. The irony was not lost on us.
We have discovered that children are often the best bridge between cultures. During a trip to Ethiopia in 2014/2015 with our five children, we spent time with Jewish communities in Gondar and Addis Ababa. Many families had been separated from relatives in Israel for decades while waiting desperately for the opportunity to make aliyah. Despite the hardship and uncertainty, their commitment to Judaism and Israel was profound. Our children connected instantly with local Jewish children. Together they sang “Kol Ha’olam Kulo” in Hebrew, English and Amharic. The Ethiopian children spoke better Hebrew than ours, which was both inspiring and slightly humiliating. Many of the Ethiopian Jews we met then may now be living in Israel after the Aliyah policy was relaxed.
Some of our most memorable Jewish experiences have happened entirely by accident. During our trip to Tunisia, we found ourselves on Djerba Island over Pesach. Unsure where to go, we sat outside a synagogue with our baby in a pram waiting for services to begin. A young local man walked past, looked horrified that we were sitting outside, and insisted we come home with him instead.
That evening we shared our seventh-night Pesach meal around a table that somehow included his Sephardi Tunisian family, our Ashkenazi South African family and a Chabad woman from Florida travelling with her own carefully prepared non-gebrochts food. Their handmade matzah was brittle and imperfect — truly lechem oni, the bread of affliction.
What fascinated us most about Djerba was the sense of communal interdependence. Before Shabbat, families bring their cholent pots to a communal oven to cook overnight. Before lunch the next day, the men collect the pots and carry them home. If the fire worked well, everyone has good cholent. If it didn’t, nobody does.
In 2023, shortly after the start of the Israel – Hamas war, a historic synagogue was burnt to the ground in Al-Hammah Tunisia.
We were drawn to the Jewish Caucasus by a newspaper article that alluded to the last Jewish village outside of Israel, Qirmizi Qasaba in north eastern Azerbaijan. We were then compelled to explore the whole region inhabited by the Mountain Jews, including Georgia, Armenia and Southern Russia. In Qirmizi Qasaba, we found a modern, wealthy village, barely inhabited as many Jews had left when the then Soviet Union fell but the mikveh, taharah house and the synagogues had all been rebuilt and invested in for the community who visited during the summer. We were lucky to connect with the rabbi who showed us around and joined a heritage tour group for meals and song.
After debating long into the night with our children, we decided to return to Georgia via Chechnya and Dagestan. In Derbent in Dagestan, we visited a beautiful synagogue and community centre, with a pre-school, mikveh and fascinating museum of the Jewish history of the area. Tragically, on the 23 June 2024, this historic centre was attacked and burned to the ground in a terrorist attack.
We try stay connected to Jewish communities we have visited and when tragedy strikes, we feel it deeply and it makes us reflect on our own sense of safety in the world.
Visiting India and the Jewish community of Kerela, was a fascinating encounter with the possibility and power of religious tolerance. I happened to stumble upon an article about the Kadavumbagam Synagogue of Ernakulam and was fascinated by the story of cooperation and commitment that characterises the resurrection of this shul and I dragged my family (who were desperate to go to the beach) to check it out. It took us a while to actually find the synagogue as it was behind a tropical fish store. The shul had been severely damaged in floods that had struck the area in 1975 and then in 1976, it was robbed and vandalised. It stood vacant until 1985 when the guardianship of the shul was taken over by Elias “Babu” Josephai, and he set up his tropical fish shop in front of the shul and started repairing and renovating it. What is most incredible about the story is how other faith groups contributed to the repair of the synagogue. Light shades were contributed by the Hindu community, windows by the Muslim community, and the Christian community assisted in the restoration of the bimah. It was a really profound representation of India’s tolerance, respect and embracing of other religions.
“Babu” told us about their tradition of calling men from the ground floor of the synagogue to read from the Torah in the gallery up the stairs in accordance with some verses in the Torah. He also sang some of the songs for us which I recorded. This was the shul he went to as a child, and he had many childhood memories of it and the mischief he and his friends got up to.
It was Babu’s choice to remain in India; the rest of his family are in Israel but he worries greatly about some members of his family, and I spent a long time listening to his concerns while my children were desperate to get to the beach. I tried to explain to them that travel isn’t just about taking – photo’s, experiences, information – but also about giving, even if it is just a listening ear or like we did in Iran, reminding communities just by being there that they are not forgotten.
Our latest trip to Iraq this year was quite different from a Jewish perspective because sadly, after a 2600-year presence in Iraq, there are no Jews remaining. Jews first came to Babylon after King Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE. We walked down the grand ceremonial avenue Street of Procession where the slaves most probably entered the city.
For centuries, Iraq was one of the great centres of Jewish civilisation. Iraq is the where the Babylonian Talmud was written. Jews often prospered in the Babylonian exile and were an integral part of Iraqi society, becoming successful doctors, lawyers, government officials, merchants, and artisans. In Baghdad’s markets, Jews were prominent jewellers, smiths, and cloth dealers while in Basra, many Jews worked at the important port authority. By the early 20th century, Jews made up a significant portion of Iraq’s three largest cities: making up to 40 percent of Baghdad’s population, as well as a quarter of Basra’s and a significant portion of Mosul’s populations. By the late 1940s in Baghdad, the Jewish community was funding over 60 synagogues, schools, hospitals, and health clinics. Within a single generation, almost the entire community disappeared.
There are only remnants of this history remaining (the Baghdad museum makes no mention of Jews at all, while the museums in Alqosh and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan do). You can however, identify the abandoned Jewish suburbs in the major towns by their balconies (Jewish homes had balconies facing the street while Muslim houses are built around a courtyard) and empty mezuzah crevices. Tombs of Jewish prophets, including Ezra, Ezekiel and Nahum also still exist, albeit they are now active mosques with domes over them. However, there is still Jewish writing on the ceiling and walls, and despite our fear of identifying ourselves as Jews, the caretakers seemed to know that we were and were generous in showing us side buildings where we could find more Hebrew inscriptions. We also had the immense pleasure of WhatsApp calling a friend’s grandmother in Israel, who was born in Mosul, and was airlifted out of Iraq by operation Ezra and Nechemiah in the early 1950’s when she was 16. She gave us a guided tour of her Mosul and was overjoyed to be visiting albeit by a video call.
Not all Jewish travel takes place overseas.
Afrikaburn, South Africa’s version of Burning Man, takes place in the Tankwa Karoo, and our family has been a number of times. One year, Afrikaburn coincided with Pesach. Deep in the desert, surrounded by art installations, dust storms and radical self-expression, we hosted two enormous Pesach seders and distributed countless kneidel balls. It may have been one of the more unconventional seders in Jewish history but we could not resist the temptation of celebrating Pesach back in the desert.
Wherever we travel we take our Judaism with us.
Looking back over decades of travel, what stays with us most vividly is not famous landmarks or tourist attractions. It is Friday night tables in unfamiliar cities. It is hearing familiar prayers sung in unexpected accents and tunes. It is strangers insisting we eat more food than we possibly can. It is watching Jewish children who share no common language somehow find ways to sing together.
As budget independent backpackers who are spontaneous and impulsive, rarely booking accommodation in advance and often deciding at the last minute to go on an adventure, our Judaism gives us a focus. We plan our itineraries around Shabbat, making sure that we are either with a community or if this is not possible, we are somewhere special where we can relax and walk around easily.
Travel continues to teach us that Judaism is not only something we inherit. It is something we encounter — unexpectedly and repeatedly — in every corner of the world.
*Feature photo: The writer and her family touring Iran.
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