Marcus James looks like he rolled off a wave from SoCal and somehow landed on the shores of Jerusalem. He is all bright colors and salt.

“I’m a Southern California boy,” James says. “I’m from a working-class family. Corn-fed but well-read.”

Raised in Santa Barbara, California, James spent part of his youth hitchhiking across the United States, reading writers like Jack Kerouac and following the Grateful Dead before eventually attending university to study philosophy, “just enough to mess me up for the rest of my life,” he says.

“If you had told me 10 or 11 years ago that I’d end up happily at home in Jerusalem,” James continues, “I would’ve asked what drug you were on.”

James was not raised Jewish — or religious — and Israel was never part of the future he imagined for himself. But years after divorcing his Jewish wife, his daughter traveled to Israel during what was supposed to be the start of a European backpacking trip.

“She told me, ‘Daddy, I found my people, my place, and my purpose,’” James recalls.

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Wanting to understand what she meant, James began reading........

© The Times of Israel