Pennsylvania
Where I found my place in the American story.
Philadelphia · Harrisburg · Scranton · Pittsburgh · Hershey · Easton
The Journey
Pennsylvania sits right next to home, and like our other neighboring states, we have been there dozens of times.
Having close family friends in Scranton means countless weekends there. The charm never really gets old. Neither do the views overlooking the city from near our friends’ home, and somehow Scranton never stops reminding us of The Office.
Philadelphia is something else entirely. I consider it one of the most inspiring cities in America, if not the most inspiring. The Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Revolution, the museums, libraries, cemeteries, architecture, and streets all carry pieces of the American story.
I have spent countless hours in Philadelphia libraries, days exploring its culture, and plenty of time wandering its cemeteries looking for founding fathers, Jewish names, and whatever little gem of history I could uncover next.
And when history starts getting a little boring for the girls, Pennsylvania knows how to fix that too.
A few hours away is Hershey. We spent several nights enjoying Hersheypark, the water park, and Hershey’s Chocolate World, loading up on some of the freshest chocolate we could find. For Leah, it is one of her favorite places in the country, right up there with the World of Coca Cola.
For tradition’s sake, we made sure to visit Harrisburg and the State Capitol, continuing our journey through every capital in America, before quickly returning to the fun stuff.
Another trip brought us to Easton and the Crayola Experience, where the girls learned about color, creativity, and how crayons are made. Most importantly, they got to create and personalize their own crayons, so future wars over whose crayon belongs to whom could finally be avoided.
Pennsylvania is not a state you visit once and say you covered.
Most states are not.
But Pennsylvania demonstrates that especially well. It could take a lifetime to fully grasp its importance and experience everything it has to offer.
Jewish Pennsylvania
Jewish Pennsylvania is another story I did not simply visit.
Over the years, I have experienced Jewish communities across the state, from Scranton to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and places in between.
But Philadelphia gave me some of the most defining Jewish American moments of my life.
At Congregation Mikveh Israel, Rabbi Yosef Zarnighian showed me around and helped bring its history to life. The congregation traces its roots to 1740, making it Pennsylvania’s oldest Jewish congregation and the oldest continuous Jewish congregation in America.
He showed me historic objects, including an old Torah scroll traditionally associated with Haym Salomon. Standing there and imagining Jewish life in Philadelphia almost three centuries ago was surreal.
Nearby, I visited the old Mikveh Israel cemetery and paid my respects at the grave of Haym Salomon and other early Jewish American pioneers.
But perhaps my most defining moment came inside the Museum of the American Revolution.
There, I stood in front of the original 1776 letter written by Jonas Phillips in Yiddish, sent together with a copy of the newly issued Declaration of Independence. A Jew in Philadelphia was using my mother tongue language, Yiddish, in 1776 while participating in and hoping for the success of the American experiment.
I stared at it for a long time.
For me, that was the moment my belonging to this country stopped being something theoretical
Then there was Pittsburgh.
I visited the Tree of Life synagogue, where eleven Jewish worshippers were murdered on October 27, 2018 simply because they were Jewish.
Standing there was painful. Pennsylvania is a state where Jews have been present since before the Revolution, where Jews helped finance the fight for independence, built businesses, communities, synagogues, and generations of American life.
And still, centuries later, someone tried to murder Jews in their synagogue and tell them they did not belong.
That served as a warning. But the fact that Jewish life continues to thrive and shine across Pennsylvania served as the answer.
What Stayed With Me
What stayed with me about Pennsylvania was a sense of belonging.
I have always felt deeply American, but standing in Philadelphia and seeing Jonas Phillips writing in Yiddish in 1776 changed something for me. Here was a Jew, using the same language I grew up speaking, living through the birth of the country and hoping for its success.
And Pennsylvania being Pennsylvania, we also managed to bring home plenty of family memories, and probably a few extra calories from Hershey.
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