So, before I go to bed, I thought I'd tell another story.

The story of the first time I went to the Israeli Holocaust Museum.

This was in 2006, January. I was on Taglit, or Birthright- a trip for 10 days that's subsidized to bring young Jewish people to Israel to visit.

The tone of the trip is, without a doubt, one of Zionism.

During the trip it is standard for a group of soldiers to join with you. It is also standard to visit Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum.

Now, if you haven't been to this particular museum, I do recommend it, but it is *brutal*. Like terrifically, fantastically brutal. No punches are held, it's put together in a way to really draw out the emotion and everything is laid bare. Everything.

On my trip I'd made good friends with Ben, a religious paratrooper who was one of the soldiers we had with us. Really good guy- we share a love of dark humor. We made a bunch of your standard dark style jokes and bonded over it.

But, by the time we'd reached most of the way through the museum I'm brutalized. He sees it. I know it.

We reach a model of people scrambling to get out of a gas chamber. There are old, faded shoes under us with a glass floor between us. I've got tears in my eyes, on the edge of losing it.

That's when Ben looks at me. Kippah on his head. Tzsit at his sides and he leans in to whisper to me: "How many Jews can you fit in a Volkswagon?"

He never finished the joke. He didn't have to- it was enough to push me out of the despair. I laughed. I laughed in the most inappropriate place- he laughed.

We laughed together so we wouldn't cry.