We are at a pivotal moment in the life of Israel and in Jewish history.
We are in a war for the existence of Israel. While I am sure you have heard that before, I don’t think I have seen explained why this is the case. While the current military threat posed by Hamas in Gaza is small, what it did to us on Oct. 7 was to destroy the notion of Israel’s invulnerability.
The fact that they pulled off such a surprise on such a large scale destroyed the facade of Israeli intelligence being all-knowing. The failure of the cameras, sensors, and fences destroyed the notion of Israel’s technological superiority. The hours of Israeli civilians hiding in their own homes, whispering into their phones, begging the army to come, shattered the myth of the IDF being the absolute guarantors of the safety of the Jewish people.
Along with the God of Israel, the perception of Israel’s military and economic strength supported by its intelligence community is not only what has kept Israel alive the last few decades, but it is what has led the Arab states, from Egypt in 1979 to the Abraham Accords today, to sit down and make peace with Israel. These agreements were not made out of love for the Jews but because, after decades of Israel winning war after war, the realization that Israel is here to stay set in. It was a calculation made that the good of a peace agreement with Israel far outweighed the bad of continuing belligerence with it.
The Hamas attack, along with the fact that there are still over 100 people in captivity 11 months later, puts every assumption of Israeli superiority into question.
This alone would be enough of a catastrophe, but add to that the tens of thousands of Israelis uprooted from their homes in the North, where we practically lost territory, along with the threat by Hezbollah and Iran. (Not to mention the hundreds of billions of shekels this war will cost us and our progeny.) The bottom line is that Israel is in trouble.
But none of these concerns worries me as much as I fear the average Israeli just getting tired of all this and picking up and moving away. Even before the war, when I would hear about Israelis moving away from here, I felt a real pain in the gut. It hurt me personally.
I never for an instant blamed them; if anything, I blamed Israel itself. I would think to myself, “Why couldn’t we keep him here? Why doesn’t she see her future here? Why is it not obvious that helping to build Israel as a strong Jewish state is the greatest privilege a Jew can have?”
THIS, OF course, raises the question: What are we doing here? What is Israel all about?
However, something incredible is happening now. They will yet write the last book in the Bible about this time, and each of us will be privileged to contribute a verse.
What Israel has accomplished in the last eight decades is nothing less than a full-fledged miracle.
The spirit of Yisrael Saba (the Jewish people throughout all the generations) was stirred around the globe, and what it brought forth is a new renaissance of Jewish life and belonging. Jews woke up to their Judaism and had to either confront or embrace their identity, and for the most part they embraced it.
But still, what is it that we are doing here?
What is the end game?
It is easy to look to Israel as a safe haven for the Jews. That would be low-hanging fruit. And for those who want to counter with the 1,200 Jews murdered on Oct. 7 as proof of Israel’s failure as a safe haven, I would only remind them what happened on Oct. 8 when the sleeping lion woke up. We saw an Israeli TikTok Gen Z turn from its solipsistic selfies to become entirely selfless. Never mind the fact that the 1,200 murdered Jews, each one a universe unto him/herself, represented but an hour of the death toll in Auschwitz on any given Tuesday in 1944.
No, Israel is not about being a safe haven for Jews. If it were that and that alone, it would not be enough. Not enough to suffer for. Not enough to strive for. Not enough to endure for.
Israel is about the Jews taking their unique gifts as Jews and presenting them as an actor on a world stage. It is about our return to history. It is about taking Judaism out of the home and synagogue, where it had been exiled for too long, and applying it to a nation-state. No longer should we be limited to asking whether our food is kosher, but are our economic policies kosher? Are our employee/employer laws kosher?
Israel, as David Ben-Gurion once said, “makes everything that is human, Jewish; and everything that is Jewish, human.” It is an attempt to take all the values and wisdom of the Jews, and use the nation-state as the vehicle to showcase it to the world. It is the fulfillment of the biblical mandate of Israel to be a “light unto the nations.”
We became “Israel” after Jacob’s struggle with the angel. Jacob’s limp is our limp; it is a physical manifestation of the continued struggle of the Jewish people “to wrestle with both God and man.” The State of Israel gives us the best opportunity to continue the struggle and eventually win it.
This is why we are here. We are here because Judaism is the greatest idea in world history, and Israel allows us to share that gift infinitely more than when we were a despised minority in other people’s countries.
That is why if there were no God, I would continue to believe in Him; and if there were no Jerusalem, I would still dream of it.
Israel acts out in history the best of what humanity has to offer or, at the very least, has the potential to offer. I just hope we Jews who live in this land take the opportunities Israel offers us to bring this to fruition.
Twice before, we lost the chance. Let’s not lose it again. ■