Connecticut
Where our journey was inspired.
Hartford · New Haven · Chester · New London
The Journey
Connecticut is close to home. Not New Jersey close, but almost.
It was one of the states we visited early on, before traveling to all fifty had even become a real goal. At that point, we had visited a small collection of states, many of them close to New York. Somewhere around the first ten, something began to change. Instead of simply asking where we should go next, we started wondering whether we could actually visit them all.
Connecticut was part of that beginning.
In Hartford, we visited the State Capitol, another building, another capital, another piece of America beginning to connect to the larger map in our minds.
We rode the historic Essex steam train through the forests and along the Connecticut River Valley, visited the Mark Twain House, and walked through Yale and its art galleries in New Haven. In the little river towns, we experienced another side of Connecticut, quieter, older, and deeply New England.
At Mystic Seaport Museum, we walked among historic ships and explored America’s maritime past. One of the most remarkable vessels there is the Charles W. Morgan, launched in 1841, the last surviving vessel from America’s great whaling fleet and the oldest American commercial ship still afloat.
Years later, after Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Iowa, and so many places much farther from home, Connecticut feels different when I look back at it.
Sometimes a very long journey begins with a very short drive.
Jewish Connecticut
One of our Jewish stops was the Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, housed inside the former Temple Beth Israel. Standing at that magnificent old building, it was remarkable to realize that it was built in 1876 and remains the oldest synagogue building in Connecticut.
Its story actually begins with a fight for religious equality. Until 1843, Connecticut Jews did not have the same legal rights as Christians to formally establish religious societies. Members of Congregation Beth Israel helped change that law, and a generation later built this synagogue.
But Jewish Connecticut did not feel like something preserved only in an old building. Across the state we encountered established Jewish communities, synagogues, yeshivos, kollelim, kosher life, and generations of families who had made Connecticut home. Congregation Mishkan Israel, today in Hamden, traces its history all the way back to 1840 and is Connecticut’s oldest continuously operating Jewish congregation.
Standing at Charter Oak, with all of that modern Jewish life around us, connected those two stories: the Jews who once had to fight for the right to organize here, and the thriving communities that came after them.
What Stayed With Me
Connecticut is difficult for me to reduce to one memory because I have been there dozens of times. The border is only about thirty minutes from our home. We have crossed it for family, travel, medical appointments, passports, and ordinary parts of life. Connecticut never felt distant or exotic.
Maybe that is exactly why it matters.
Those early trips helped turn traveling around America from something our family enjoyed doing into something we wanted to complete. At the time, we could never have imagined that they would eventually lead us to glaciers in Alaska, deserts in Arizona, mountains in Colorado, and finally every state in America.
Connecticut reminds me that big journeys often do not begin with big moments.
Sometimes they begin thirty minutes from home, in Hartford, Connecticut.
Have a story, an idea, or a reason to connect?
For editorial inquiries, media, speaking, collaborations, historical research, or simply a story you think I should know I'd be glad to hear from you.
Contact Dov