Hawaii
Where our fifty state journey came full circle.
Honolulu · Oahu · Maui · The Big Island
The Journey
Hawaii couldn’t have felt more different from where we had just come from.
We arrived during the Jewish holiday season in October after traveling through Alaska. On the same trip, our suitcases went from winter clothing for glaciers and mountains to bathing suits for the tropical Pacific.
Almost immediately, Hawaii felt like another world. The warm tropical air, palm trees, green mountains, blue water, and colors everywhere made it difficult to believe we were still in the same country we had spent years crossing.
In Honolulu, we visited the Hawaii State Capitol and had the honor of meeting Governor Josh Green, who congratulated us on completing all fifty states. The girls even received special pins from the Hawaii Office of the Governor. The Capitol itself is one of the most unusual in America. Its open air design reflects the islands, with columns resembling palm trees and water surrounding the building to represent the Pacific.
On the Big Island, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park felt like another planet. Steam rose from the earth, black volcanic landscapes stretched around us, and the colors seemed unlike anything we had seen before. Yet elsewhere on the island everything was lush and alive. We picked fresh starfruit straight from the tree and ate it on the spot.
Then there was simply the ocean. Swimming with the girls, watching the sun disappear into the Pacific, eating fresh pineapple, and enjoying the tropical landscape gave us some of the simplest and most beautiful moments of the entire journey.
Unlike many of the other states, this really felt like a vacation.
A vacation we had earned, because Hawaii carried another meaning for us.
This was state number fifty.
After years of road trips, flights, capitols, synagogues, national parks, small towns, big cities, late nights, packed suitcases, and thousands of miles together, we had finally reached every state in America.
Jewish Hawaii
Experiencing Jewish life in Hawaii during the holidays was surreal in its own way.
Only days earlier, we had been bundled up in Alaska. Now we were celebrating the same Yom Tov surrounded by palm trees and tropical weather, thousands of miles from the Jewish communities we knew back home. We joined Chabad of Hawaii in Honolulu and had a beautiful time celebrating with the local community.
Talking with people there opened another Hawaiian story for us. Organized Jewish life on Oahu began in earnest in 1938, when thirty five Jewish families formed the Honolulu Jewish Community. That community eventually became Temple Emanu El, whose current sanctuary was completed in 1960.
One of my favorite stories reaches back even further. In the nineteenth century, Elias Abraham Rosenberg developed a relationship with King David Kalakaua, teaching him Hebrew and sharing Torah with him. Rosenberg eventually entrusted a Torah scroll to the king, creating one of the most unusual connections between Jewish and Hawaiian history.
Then, standing beside Governor Green, Hawaii’s second Jewish governor, the point of our entire project came into focus again. We had searched for Jewish life in every state, and here, on islands in the middle of the Pacific, we found it once more. Linda Lingle had previously become Hawaii’s first Jewish governor, making Green the second.
What Stayed With Me
Hawaii will always be beautiful to me, but what stayed with me most was what it represented.
One evening, I was swimming in the Pacific with Rachel as the sun was setting. We had started this journey years earlier with little trips close to home, never knowing whether we would actually finish.
Now we were thousands of miles from New York, standing in our fiftieth state.
I thought about all the places the girls had grown up seeing, all the miles we had traveled together, and how much of their childhood had unfolded somewhere along those roads.
The goal had been to visit fifty states.
By Hawaii, I realized that the number was never really the point.
The time together, and the memories we would carry forever, were.
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