This is a vacation to celebrate lifecycle events with family. A Bat Mitzvah in Connecticut. A graduation from Swarthmore. It gives us the opportunity to reconnect with friends in person.

For 30 years I lived in Boston. It never quite felt like home. I always dreamed of being back in Michigan. I remember standing on top of Sleeping Bear Dunes when my father was still alive saying to Simon, “We have to come back.” He, of course, would sing, “I want to go back to Michigan, to dear Ann Arbor town….I wanna go back. I got to go back to Michigan.” We considered ourselves misplaced Midwesterners. We looked for opportunities.

We finally found one. So we packed up a house we had owned for 24 years and moved across the country. Back to our roots. To Chicagoland. To Elgin.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to see seven friends. Larry and Alice. Marylin. Gloria and Alan, Nori and Rags. These are friends that we have been friends with since before Sarah was born. OK–not Marylin. She was Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah teacher making her the “recent” addition in this group. What we have in common with this group is a shared history. It goes “way back” It is deep. Easy. Comfortable. There was good conversation, good food and lots of laughter.

We have stayed in touch with all of these people. Some by phone. Some by Facebook. Some by email. Some because they have “stopped by” Elgin.

Simon and I like living in Elgin, although the Midwest we remember has changed some. I love my job–and having a vacation allows me to appreciate that. We made the right decision to move and we decided on the right position of the three I was offered. That is a good feeling!

But I miss these friends and the ones I will see the rest of this trip.

“Make for yourself a Rav (a teacher); acquire for yourself a friend” (Pirke Avot 1:6)

I am very lucky. I have lots of friends (as this trip clearly points out!) This verse from Pirke Avot has always troubled me. How do you make a teacher? Every year in grade school I would be assigned to a teacher’s class. I had very little choice. I didn’t make a teacher. Maybe I found a teacher. And acquire a friend? We should buy friendship?

Maybe this verse is backwards. Maybe we should acquire a teacher, a tutor, pay them money and make a friend. That makes sense. It goes with the Girl Scout song. “Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.” That is exactly what we have done. And this trip points out how lucky we are to live out this verse.

But there is something deeper in this text as written. I learned from Chabad.org, “After we were taught how a person is supposed to perfect his home, something to which he is closest, we are now taught how a person is supposed to perfect his relationship with other people with whom he is close.”

This reminds me of the verse from Lech Lecha, Genesis 12:1. “The Lord said to Abram: lech lecha, Go  towards yourself, out of your country and from your family and from your father’s house.” It is a series of concentric circles of leaving, getting more and more difficult the closer you get to the inner circle, your father’s house, the place of your birth. Chabad continues,  “A Rav and a friend are very close to a person, although they are out of his house, and not as closely attached to him as those who dwell in his house. The Mishnah is in order of closeness: One’s Rav, followed by one’s friend, followed by other people…The word “knei,” acquire, is appropriate for the process of relating to friends, since each one is frequently doing a favor or providing needed resources for the other, and as such their is an element of mutual “acquisition” in their friendship. But the word “acquire” is totally inappropriate to describe how one relates to a Rav, since the student does not “own” the Rav (members of the Board of Directors of Shuls — take note!)”

So now I understand the acquiring friends. It is not buying per se. It is a mutuality. And through the years I have chosen or appointed teachers, thus making them my own.

When I got back to the hotel last night I had a piece of writing to do. I had been asked to write a tribute to my teacher Rabbi Zlotowitz who was honored at this year’s ordination. Rabbi Zlotowitz is a leading scholar of the Reform Movement. He is fluent in seven “dead” languages. He taught my class on pluralism, responsa literature, Isaiah, Job. He became my thesis advisor. When others questioned whether I could be a rabbi, he believed in me. More than that. He went to bat for me. He stuck with me. He cares not only for me and my intellectual pursuits. He cares about my family. He always remembers to ask about how Sarah is doing–with her chronic headaches and with her acting. He believed in her dream too. I called him last week to tell him about my book that is being published this fall. His wife Shirley said, “He is always so proud of his students.” No doubt about it. He has taught me much. Much more than book learning. It was an honor to write about him.

I am learning lots on this trip. I have many teachers. I have many friends. And I have many friends who have become teachers. And I am in exactly the right job, in the right place and the right time. I hope that is true for each of you.