It's Loki hot in LA and it's Rosh Hashanah and I am not connecting to the most sacred of High Holy Days.  It's not the synagogue's fault. I was happy to find IKAR, a wonderful progressive social action oriented synagogue that, if I were to join a temple in LA, would be the one:  the services were excellent, the Rabbi's sermon brilliant and the people welcoming, with old and new friends.

My reality is no matter where I've wandered, Chabad or Modern Orthodox or Reformed or LBGT specific or Conservative, worshiping in a synagogue consistently fails to transport me to that place deep within my soul on the day when you are supposed to connect the most.

No synagogue, no Rabbi, no congregation compares to the most poignant Rosh Hashanah I have ever experienced in Camp Lokichokio.

Almost twenty years ago, in the summer of 1994, I was living my greatest dream as a photojournalist: on assignment for International Medical Corps, one month flying around Kenya, Somalia, Southern Sudan and finally to Rwanda, just after the genocide, landing the day after Yom Kippur.  Talk about the meaning of saying Kaddish.

But this night, on Rosh Hashanah,  I was almost asleep in my tent when I heard the blast of the Shofar.   Someone in the tent next door to mine was listening to the BBC on their shortwave, broadcasting news from the Middle East, from Jerusalem.  I sat straight up in my cot, overcome with homesickness. Imagining my parents at our family dinner.  At that moment I questioned where I was, thousands of miles away in the most northwest corner of Kenya, the only Jew in the base camp of Operation Lifeline Sudan, on the border with war torn Southern Sudan.  I spent a hot, sleepless, emotional night.

The next morning, I took my video camera and wandered the camp, creating a video diary of the day.  My accompanying audio commentary was that it was Rosh Hashanah, and that even though I was desperately homesick, I finally felt connected to what it means to really be a Jew: Tikkun Olam. I was finally living my life's purpose, documenting through my photographs that the world needs for ALL of us to help repair it.  After all, the Jewish people are charged with the responsibility of being the Light unto the Nations. Photography is, at its essence, darkness illuminated by little points of light, and if ever there was a need for that Light, the wars, famines and genocides of the past few years in this region was it.

Staying at the camp were leaders of the  Dinka tribe from Southern Sudan, on their way to a World Food Programme conference in Nairobi.   Their leader, a beautiful elegant man named Aquiele, called out to me from their chairs asking what I was filming.  I explained it was Rosh Hashanah, and that I was on my way back from the mess tent with apples and honey to celebrate the New Year.  He wished me a happy new year, and asked how they could make my new year special for me.  Instantly in tears, so moved by his genuine interest to know why this skinny geeky looking short haired white women was wandering around with a video camera talking to herself, I joined them, explained the Jewish New Year, the significance of apples and honey, who I was and why I was there, and that I was homesick.

Aquiele gave me a huge smile, asked me again, how they could make my New Year happy for me, and so together, we said the Shechecheyanu prayer, thanking God for bringing us to this moment.