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Today I am feeling nostalgic. Opening my phone this morning, I was reminded that six years ago today, knackered from taking 250 Jewish kids away on a youth camp for New Year, I headed to the airport. I boarded a plane, nervous, worried and far more anxious than I’d have let on.

For those of you starting here, I’ve spent the past 52 days, trying desperately to answer the question “how are you feeling?”. [Part 1] [Part 2]

I’ve been asked this question hundreds of times in the last 52 days, and I’ll be honest - most of the times I’ve lied; …

It’s said there are 5 stages of grief:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

They don’t have to come in order… and some of them don’t need to come at all… and yet, I am pretty confident in speaking for the vast majority of Jews in saying that over the past …

Given the number of times those words have presented themselves to me since arriving home in the early hours of Saturday morning, you’d think I might have an answer. Truth is, I don’t really know.

The last few days… and in fact the days since the 7th October feel surreal. Many times in the …

My heart is ALWAYS heavy in the departure lounge at Ben Gurion Airport. In fact, when I arrived on Sunday 1st October, and peered down into the giant bowl of departures before the happiness of the ramp, I felt a glimmer of sadness.
Sadness that I knew that in just 2 weeks time, I would be back, down …

What’s this? An out of cycle blog post? No holiday, no travel, and there’s a post?! What on earth is going on? Good question reader… today was a bit of a day… and I thought I could do with processing it by writing it down… and I did say to a colleague today that I …

… and getting scrubbed like a Sultan!

For the last time, Good Evening London, Good evening world, Istanbul Calling!

Today started with a “reasonable” wake up call which resulted in a slightly less busy breakfast room… After a quick breakfast, I hot footed it down to …

…and lots of walking!

Welcome back to Istanbul (not Constantinople) part 2! I’m back in the rocking chair on the balcony writing for the second evening running…

Greetings reader old and new, and welcome to another set of ramblings bought to you by Steven while in a foreign land… This time, from Istanbul (no, not Constantinople).

Thanks to a lack of outbound companion voucher flights to Israel and a want to have come and visit for a while, I find …

I don’t want to question the artistic license used for the classic film the Sound of Music, but I do start to wonder what on this earth they feed the Nuns at that monastery if they think they can climb ‘Ev’ry Mountain’

Today, I climbed a mountain. insert nun jokes about not …