Rick Recht

By Rick Recht, United Hebrew's Artist in Residence

Even before I visited Israel for the first time, I felt an innate connection with the Holy Land as well as the important place it held in my family history.  My mother who was impoverished as a child always dreamed of going to Israel and saved all of her money to eventually travel there, not just for herself, but for her Zionist father who never had the opportunity to visit during his lifetime.  My mother dreamt that someday, she would have a child and he would have his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall in Israel.  She continued saving her money with my father, and when I was 13, as she had dreamed, I had my Bar Mitzvah at the Wall in Israel.  35 years later, I’m proud to say that both of our children have had THEIR bar mitzvah’s in Jerusalem. 

There are so many layers to the beauty, strength, spirituality, and miracle we find in Israel… and all of these things deeply touch my Jewish soul.  Israel is a thread through generations and generation of hundreds of thousands of people who have hoped and dreamed of a homeland for the Jewish people… and I’m blessed to have lived in this sliver of time when my family could sew this thread through our own personal family story.