Kansas
Where we stood in the heart of America.
Topeka · Lebanon · Manhattan · Seneca
The Journey
Kansas is the middle. Literally and figuratively.
The roads were long, the land was open, and the sky seemed to take up most of the view. It was one of those states where driving itself became part of experiencing the place.
We started out from Kansas City, yes, the other side, and crossed into Kansas on our way to the capital, Topeka.
There, we visited the State Capitol, another stop in our journey through every capital in America. The building rises high above the city, with its enormous copper dome and the statue of a Kansa warrior standing at the very top. The grounds were beautiful, filled with plants and flowers.
From there, we made our way to the Brown v. Board of Education historic site at the former Monroe Elementary School. Linda Brown attended this segregated school because she was not allowed to attend the white school closer to her home. The girls saw photographs, exhibits showing the signs separating Black and white Americans, old classrooms, and the reality of what segregation actually looked like. They learned firsthand about equality and how ugly it becomes when we treat people differently because of who they are. At the end, they were quizzed by a ranger and proudly earned their Junior Ranger badges.
But one of the Kansas moments I remember most came much farther north, near the tiny town of Lebanon.
There, surrounded by open farmland, we stood at the geographic center of the contiguous United States. A small stone monument marks the center of the forty eight mainland states. Nearby, we noticed a stone bearing Hebrew letters with one of the names of God. Standing in the heart of the country we love so much, we stopped and said a prayer for America.
Along the way, we passed beautiful fields of tall Kansas sunflowers. At one point we spotted some growing wild, stopped the car, and picked a few fresh Kansas sunflowers of our own.
There was something wonderfully simple about it. No enormous museum or famous attraction. Just us, a stone marker, Kansas farmland, and America stretching for thousands of miles in every direction.
Jewish Kansas
In Topeka, we visited the beautiful Kehillah Beth Sholom. At the entrance was a message that immediately caught my attention: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”
Standing there, after visiting Brown v. Board earlier in the day, those words felt especially meaningful. It was beautiful to find such a large and active synagogue right in the Kansas capital.
Jewish roots in Kansas stretch back almost to the beginning of the state itself. In Leavenworth, Temple B’nai Jeshurun was organized in 1859, while Kansas was still a territory. Today, Congregation Emanu El in Wichita, founded in 1885, is the oldest active Jewish congregation in the state.
Jewish merchants, farmers, and families built communities across the plains, in Wichita, Topeka, Leavenworth, Kansas City, and smaller towns in between. Today, much of Jewish life is concentrated around Johnson County and the Kansas side of Greater Kansas City.
Driving across all that open land, it was remarkable to think that Jewish communities had been planting roots here for generations.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Kansas was standing in the middle, in the heart of the land.
We drove through miles of open country to reach a little stone marker outside a tiny Kansas town. There was nothing dramatic about it, yet somehow it perfectly represented what we had been doing.
Rachel and Leah stood at the center of the forty eight states while thousands of miles of America stretched around us in every direction.
By then, we had already traveled through so much of that country. Standing there somehow made the map feel real.
For a few moments, we were not heading east or west.
We were simply standing in the middle of America, with song and prayer for the country that has given us so much.
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