The Jewish family travelling to every country on earth

ARIELLE KAPLAN

The last option might be incredibly expensive, and time-consuming, but it’s exactly what one Jewish family intends to do.

Justin Zackham, a screenwriter who literally coined the term “bucket list”, is attempting this feat. But he’s not doing it alone – his wife, Katherine, and their sons, aged 5 and 10, are travelling along.

This impossible journey has an incredible back story.

After graduating from New York University’s film school in 1994, Zackham, 48, scribbled what he called a “list of things to do before I kick the bucket”, which he later shortened to “Justin’s bucket list”. Marrying the “perfect woman”, jumping out of an airplane, and visiting the pyramids in Egypt and Taj Mahal in India were just a few things on his list.

In 2007, he crossed off the first item: Get a movie made at a major Hollywood studio.

Yes, Zackham’s list is what inspired the hit movie, The Bucket List.

About 12 years later – plus two kids, two movies, and a TV show – Zackham and his family are 21 countries deep into their endeavour. The mission is twofold: Zackham wants to scratch “visit every country” off his bucket list, as well as cement the family name in The Guinness Book of World Records.

Following a trip to the Bahamas, Zackham took some time from his current “office” in Puerto Rico to chat to us about adventures with little ones, if it’s plausible to travel to every single country in the world, and what, if anything, being Jewish has to do with it.

When and why did you decide to travel to every country?

It’s kind of a crazy idea and adventure, but the reality is we have always loved travelling as a family. We really want to show our kids – especially given everything that’s going on in America right now – how to focus on the good in the world. The best way of doing that is to travel.

Your kids are being home schooled in a very non-traditional sense. What are they learning that they wouldn’t in a classroom setting?

Our boys get to see completely different cultures and ways of thinking than they’ve ever known. In Fez, Morocco, they saw a tiny, single-classroom school in the Medina. Finn, who is 10, was particularly affected by the difference in education. He immediately asked to sponsor a student. He gives a dollar a week from his allowance, which directly pays for a boy his age to go to a private school he would otherwise be unable to attend.

How did your kids react when you told them what was in store?

The little one is more concerned about Wi-Fi strength than anything. When we get to the hotel, he wants to know how good the Wi-Fi is because, you know, YouTube beckons. Our older son, Finn, wants to go to Finland because he feels that he’s going to be welcomed like a king. He wants to go to Greece because he studied ancient Greece.

Do you take breaks? How do you plan to go to every country? And how long do you stay in each place?

Guinness listed 195 sovereign, self-governing nations, that doesn’t include territories. There are people who have done this before, but no group has ever done it. There are ways of travelling, and you have to document everything. They don’t want you to stay in any country for more than two weeks, and once you start, the idea is that you keep going without taking extended breaks unless it’s for an emergency. So we have those rules, but we also have two kids. If a year goes by and, as much as our 10-year-old loves to travel, he wants to go home, we will do that. We don’t think he will because he loves it so much, but those are our biggest task masters, and this is all about them and for them.

What have you learned from travelling with kids? Do you have advice for parents?

Just do it. It’s easier than you think because your kids adapt faster than you do. You’ll grow closer to your children, and grow as a parent. Our biggest tip is to leave extra time on travel days. Airports are stressful for everyone – but more so for children who don’t walk as fast, use the bathroom more, and can’t see over the heads of crowds.

Being in an interfaith family, how do you navigate religion?

My wife’s family is not religious at all, and I haven’t practiced religion for years. I do, however, identify strongly with the cultural side of Judaism. My oldest son is at the age where we are beginning to talk about what it means to be Jewish. We will read the Torah together when we go to Israel, and both boys will learn about the modern history of our people.

This past autumn, during our visit to Spain, we all learned about the Sephardic diaspora from Iberia and the forced conversions for those that remained. It led to some wonderful discussions about what makes our people different, what makes us strong, and why our culture is worth preserving, even if it makes us outsiders. We were able to add another link to this chain this past week in Medellin, Colombia, where we learned that the city was originally founded by Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal.

Some countries aren’t considered safe to travel to. How will you navigate that?

There are some countries that are too dangerous to go to, but there are ways around this. Like, there is a resort island off Yemen that you can go to. It’s more about the journey, and the experience.

If you don’t make it into The Guinness Book of World Records, how will you feel?

The Guinness Book of World Records is great, and we’d love to get it, but we are doing it for our sons to have that connection, to have an appreciation for each other, and a love of travel.

• This story originally appeared on Kveller.