With the trip being billed primarily as a trade mission, Christie has devoted a portion of his daily schedule to promoting business opportunities in New Jersey.
He toured a drug company interested in expanding in New Jersey, then signed a letter of cooperation with the firm, Teva Pharmaceuticals, to continue the talks.
In Jerusalem, he visited an electric carmaker whose No. 2 executive lives half the time in New Jersey. He also discussed economic opportunities with Shapiro and the Israeli leaders.
Christie said the trip had been eye-opening. He said he had gained a better understanding of what he called Israel's "extraordinary security challenges" and said it had been a moving experience to visit the birthplace of his Catholic faith during the days leading up to Easter.
He said his children had occasionally become wide-eyed upon seeing ancient places they had heard or read about.
Christie brushed aside speculation that the trip was to burnish his credentials in a quest for national office, and the governor dismissed as "unfortunate" a newspaper headline mocking his girth in a photo taken at Jerusalem's Western Wall.
By visiting Israel, Christie is continuing a gubernatorial tradition started in the 1980s by then-Gov. Thomas H. Kean. While at least one prior governor, Christie Whitman, is said to have taken along a delegation of more than 50 people, Christie said he kept the number to 13 business and religious leaders.
"We really wanted these meetings to be intimate and useful," he said. "I wasn't looking to put on a show of force here."
Christie and his family head to the Golan Heights on Thursday before traveling to Jordan to meet King Abdullah II. They are due back in the United States on Sunday.
