Day 1: Sunday, August 31

The essence of everything is peace - shalom - and balance is the key to achieving peace, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein told a room filled with Fellowship supporters on Monday, the first full day of The Fellowship's 25th Anniversary Alaskan Cruise.

Speaking in the Hudson Room of the cruise ship Westerdam, Rabbi Eckstein told attentive listeners, "We have to achieve balance before we can build unity with each other; and, with that unity, we can achieve peace - shalom."

Rabbi Eckstein said that balance comes by properly combining the male characteristics of being aggressive, being creative and conquering the world on six days with the female characteristics of stillness and tranquility on the seventh day. "There is a spiritual femininity of God's presence in our life," he explained, adding, "We each need to have both dimensions [to achieve balance]."

"'On the seventh day, you shall rest' is not just a commandment for men," Rabbi Eckstein noted.

"Unity is spiritual balance - God created tide and ebb, creative and reflective characteristics. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. Unity is [discovering] a balance within ourselves, and then extending that balance within our relationships to our spouse, children, and grandchildren. Unity is what we strive for [for] ourselves and what we strive for with others," Rabbi Eckstein explained.

Life is a test and a challenge for each of us of how we're going to find balance, noted the Fellowship founder.

Balance might come in the forms of exercise, reading, spending time with grandchildren or stopping to smell the roses - "the definition of a vacation" - but, Rabbi Eckstein said; it needs to be more about re-orienting our spiritual principles and realizing our lives should be a witness to God.

Elaborating on the purposefulness of unity, Rabbi Eckstein told his listeners: "Right now everyone should be feeling like we are from New Orleans … we should be in unity with the elderly there, the poor there, the people who have gone through Katrina and now are in the path of another hurricane - that's what unity is. Unity is not uniformity. In unity, you remain yourself distinctively with your faith, your color, your geography."

Admitting he was deeply touched by the personal testimonies from Fellowship supporters at Sunday night's meet-and-greet, as the Westerdam left Seattle, Rabbi Eckstein said, "This is from the Lord. It is awesome in my eyes that Jews and Christians have come together in the Hudson Room, and we're on the same page. There's something bringing us together, and that isn't natural. This is a divine moment made possible by all of you having tried to be obedient."

"But this is much more than that. This is the mystery of God bringing his children together with their differences - color differences, background differences, faith differences, geographical differences. God is a miracle," he reminded the men and women who gathered from the north, south, east and west with one common bond: their love for Israel and their commitment to offer hope to needy Jews in Israel and the world.

The highlight of today's itinerary is breathtaking Glacier Bay National Park, with cruise participants eagerly anticipating the potential sightings of seals, whales, porpoises, mountain goats, bears, eagles, and a variety of birds which make their home in Glacier Bay's 3.3 million acres. After viewing Icy Straight, Sisters Island, Bartlett Cove, Reid and Lamplugh Glaciers, Grand Pacific and Margerie Glaciers, our cruise ship heads on an easterly course towards Juneau, Alaska.