Rachel Boyman Headed Home for Yom Kippur

Look for Rachel Boyman, 28, on Orchard Lake Road this weekend. She's headed home for Yom Kippur. "I love the familiarity of it," she says of coming back to West Bloomfield. "I'll never be able to replicate that anywhere else."

Boyman, who left for New York City in 2004 and now works for Fox News in social media strategy and mobile/video content, says she looks forward to running into people she knows while she's in. Also on the to-do list: visit family and friends, her dentist, Coney Island, and the cider mill, if she can help it, she says.

"Home is family and everyone being in the same place," she says. "And of course, I miss driving."

Her travels have taken her to Chicago for graduate school at Northwestern University and back to New York, where she says she appreciates the diversity in perspective and priorities. City living promotes a focus on "figuring out who you are and what you want," she says.

Still, from family to lifestyle, she says there are a lot of trade-offs. People ask how she can take public transportation, live in New York, and handle the day-to-day stresses, she says. But on the flip side, in New York City "you wouldn't have to shovel your driveway or go outside and turn the car on and wait for it to warm up."

She has brought with her to the city the willingness to help an extended network of people, such as the kids she used to babysit for who are now out scouring for internships. And while living in New York, she says she has learned to be open to new experiences and new people. "I couldn't imagine living somewhere else now, at this point in time."

That said, she notes it's different starting with work friends and building from a new foundation. "You kind of have to get used to doing holidays in the city and long weekends, and you sort of have to create a little home away from home."

Michael Vosko Takes Lessons From Home

Ask Michael Vosko about home, and he'll tell you how moving away helped him appreciate where he came from. The 31-year-old West Bloomfield native, who left for a computer job in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2003, says he finds the camaraderie born out of metro Detroit's history doesn't exist most other places.

"You grew up there, your parents grew up in Detroit or grandparents grew up in Detroit, so there's generations of relationships of families," he says. "Everyone seems to know someone."

But moving didn't mean he wanted to leave the idea of community behind. Vosko is on the planning committee for ShabbatLuck, a group he helped found in 2007 to bring 20- and 30- something area Jews together for potluck Shabbat dinners. The group has expanded to a mailing list of 600 plus members who sign up to host and attend meals.

ShabbatLuck has partnered with other young Jewish groups and area synagogues for events including a potluck on a hiking trail, a break fast and seders. It also started a "cool shul" campaign to help young people get tickets for High Holiday services. Area synagogues donated over 200 tickets to the group last year and more are on board for this one, he says.

Back home last for a friend's wedding 4th of July weekend, he stayed with his parents in West Bloomfield and hung out in Novi. When he's in, Buddy's Pizza is a must, as is rye bread, which he claims delis do differently out West. He says he has heard it's the lack of moisture in the air that makes it harder to make. "It's a classic rye, usually with seeds, and it's okay, but it's not your crunchy deli rye that you get back East." His favorite deli in town: the Bread Basket.