Did We Fail If They Don’t Make Aliyah?

These past few weeks I found myself thinking about a question that I believe Jewish educators in the Modern Orthodox world have struggled to navigate for a long time: What exactly is our responsibility when it comes to Religious Zionism? It is one thing to teach about Israel. It is another thing to teach Religious Zionism. And it is something else entirely to ask what we want our students to do with those ideas once they leave our schools, seminaries and yeshivot.

In much of the Modern Orthodox community, there has been an important and meaningful emphasis on connection to the modern State of Israel. We teach our students to appreciate Israel, to understand its place in Jewish history and to see the State of Israel as part of the fulfillment of the dreams of generations of Jews. But Religious Zionism, at least in its fullest sense, asks for something more than appreciation. Authentic Religious Zionism is based on the ideals and Hashkafah associated with Rav Avraham Yitzchok HaKohein Kook, Rav Tzvi Yehuda and several others: that the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland land, our Jewish sovereignty and the rebuilding of national Jewish life are not merely political or historical developments, but part of the unfolding process of Geulah.

This being the case, living in Israel is more than just a nice idea, it’s a statement of fact in that Aliyah is a religious imperative where we have a seat at the table of those responsible for the redemption of the Jewish people. As such, Religious Zionist institutions should not be embarrassed to say so. My own opinion is that Religious Zionism cannot be fully lived in its purest form outside of Israel. A Jew in America, Canada, England, Australia or anywhere else can certainly feel a deep affinity toward Religious Zionism. They can support Israel, advocate for Israel, contribute to Israel and live with a real sensitivity to the religious meaning of Jewish sovereignty. However, there is still a difference between being connected to the ideal and fully living it.

This of course brings us to the much harder educational question. What exactly is the role of an Israel seminary or yeshiva in teaching and imparting Religious Zionism? Is our job to push students to make Aliyah? Is success measured by where a student eventually lives? Or is success measured by the kind of Jewish life he or she builds wherever they ultimately choose to live?

Let me begin by saying that I believe strongly that Aliyah must be part of the aspiration. In the programs and schools, I have run over the years, and certainly in the seminary I lead today, it is my goal for students to fall in love with Israel. I want them to fall in love with the land, the people, the language, the culture and even some of the craziness. I want them to experience Israel not simply as a place where they spent a year, but as home. And even more than that, I want them to understand the religious significance of what Jewish sovereignty means. The fact that Jewish soldiers defend the Jewish people in a Jewish state is the definition of holiness. The fact that Hebrew is spoken in hospitals, supermarkets, universities, government buildings and traffic jams bonds us. The fact that after thousands of years Jews are once again living as a nation in their ancestral homeland is our dream being realized. We should not be neutral about any of that.

Yet, there is an enormous difference between educating toward an ideal and engineering a life decision. I am not convinced that our role as educators is simply to convince young people that if they ultimately return to their families and communities abroad, they have somehow failed the Religious Zionist experiment. Our responsibility is larger than geography. Our job is to produce young people who ask what I believe are the right questions: What does Hashem want from me? What does Am Yisrael need from me? Where can I build a serious Torah home? Where and how can I contribute? What responsibility do I have toward the Jewish people? And where does Eretz Yisrael fit into the story of my life? Perhaps the ultimate success of a year in Israel is not that every student remains in Israel. Perhaps the success is that Israel remains inside every student.

Aliyah is an extraordinary privilege, but it is also a life-altering decision with very real emotional, financial, and familial implications. As educators, we can inspire the ideal, but we must be careful not to pressure young people into decisions whose consequences we will not necessarily be there to shoulder. We are not paying their mortgages, supporting their families, or picking up the pieces if a premature move proves overwhelming. Our responsibility is to cultivate a profound connection to Israel, while giving our students the maturity and clarity to determine when and how that connection should shape their lives. I would be thrilled if that ultimately led to Aliyah, but I will never consider a student who chooses to remain in the Diaspora a failure of our chinuch. Our job is to inspire convictions, not impose conclusions. And a genuine love for Eretz Yisrael should emerge from inspiration and never from guilt.

It is possible for a person to make Aliyah and live an entirely private Jewish life. He or she may be a wonderful person and build a beautiful family but remain largely disconnected from the broader needs of Am Yisrael. Another person may return to America, Canada, England or other places and become a Torah teacher, a community leader or an extraordinary layperson. They may build a home built on the ethos of Religious Zionism, send their children to Israel, advocate for Israel, give tzedakah to Israeli institutions, support Israeli organizations and understand that the fate of the Jewish people is intimately bound with the fate of the State of Israel. Who has more fully embodied the mission? The answer is not as simple as an address.

None of this should become apologetic for staying in chutz la’aretz. Religious Zionist institutions should speak unabashedly about the religious value of Aliyah! Aliyah should be taught, discussed and placed before students as a real aspiration. But the educational mission cannot be reduced to a plane ticket. Our job is not simply to tell our students where to build their lives. Our job is to make sure that wherever they build those lives, Torah, Eretz Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael and responsibility for the Jewish people become the walls within which our students are surrounded.

This question is also deeply personal for me. When I first came to Israel for my gap year, my experience did not look like the classic yeshiva experience. I worked on a kibbutz for the most part. I spent a great deal of time in the date fields of Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi. That was my Israel. It was deeply spiritual and growth filled. It connected me to this country in a way that was surreal and refuses to leave my heart and soul. My serious Torah learning developed later when I went to Yeshiva University. For a long time, there was an internal tension within me about where I wanted to be, what kind of life I wanted to build and how the various parts of my religious identity fit together. As I matured, I came to understand that these things did not necessarily need to compete with one another. Aliyah remained a dream. My wife and I both believed in that dream, and eventually we were privileged to make it a reality. We made Aliyah just a few years ago. There have been beautiful moments and complicated moments. There have been days of enormous inspiration and days of frustration. But that experience itself taught me something very important. You really need to believe in the idea of Aliyah to navigate the vicissitudes and complications of living here. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin used to speak about the difference between viewing Israel as the Holy Land and viewing Israel as Disneyland. That distinction is enormously important.

There is a version of Israel that people encounter when they come for Yom Tov, stay in a beautiful hotel, walk down Ben Yehuda, eat in great restaurants and hire a driver to take them from one inspiring destination to another. There is something profoundly beautiful about that, but that is not the same as living here. Living in Israel is beautiful, sweet, inspiring and extraordinary. But it can also be complicated and frustrating fraught with bureaucracy.

For my wife and me, it has been one of the best and hardest decisions we ever made. However, part of honest Religious Zionist education means not selling students a fantasy. The Rabbi’s teach that the land of Israel is acquired through hardships. There is a price to living here. There are hurdles and challenges and if we want to raise young people who will seriously consider Aliyah, we need to be honest enough to tell them that if you believe deeply enough in an ideal, you need to be willing to live with some of its complications. That may be part of the reason that I do not believe Aliyah should simply be pushed or pressured upon every young person in the same way. Everyone has, different responsibilities and different circumstances. Even when a person does not YET make Aliyah, or perhaps ultimately does not make Aliyah, Religious Zionism should still leave a permanent imprint on the way that person lives. It should create responsibility and commitment as well as a sense that Israel is not simply “over there.” Israel should remain part of one’s identity; one’s family, one’s priorities and one’s dreams.

One of the clearest examples of this for me came from a conversation with one of my son-in-law’s. He was at Columbia Law School during October 7^th and experienced the chaos that followed. He told me something that disturbed me deeply. Many Jews on campus, including the religious ones, simply did not know how to fight back against the onslaught of the woke leftist pro-Hamas, antisemitic crowds. These Jews on campus cared about and loved Israel. They were emotionally connected to Israel, but they did not necessarily have the language, knowledge or confidence to explain Israel’s position or advocate effectively for it.

That conversation is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in teaching Israel advocacy. I teach a weekly class on the subject because I believe that this too is part and parcel of good Religious Zionist education. If our students are going to live in communities outside Israel, we cannot simply send them back with warm feelings, because feelings are not enough. Love without knowledge is fragile and identification without education is vulnerable. If they are going to advocate for Israel, they need to know what they are talking about. This means that they need to understand the history, the ideological challenges and they also need to understand antisemitism, anti-Zionism and the arguments that they will encounter. They need to know how to respond and they need to understand that defending Israel is not simply a political activity. It is part of assuming responsibility for the Jewish people. That too is part of Religious Zionism.

So, what should success look like for a Religious Zionist seminary or yeshiva? Yes, we should encourage Aliyah. Yes, we should teach its religious significance. Yes, we should expose our students to the beauty of life in Israel. Yes, we should speak clearly and proudly about the fact that there is a unique religious value in a Jew choosing to build a life in Eretz Yisrael. But burden is not education. Our job is not to decide where our students should live. Our job is to educate them so deeply that they can make that decision with seriousness, knowledge, commitment and responsibility.

Wherever our students end up, they should build a life in which Torah, Eretz Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael and Am Yisrael are not side interests but rather central to their value system. Maybe the goal is not simply that every student stays in Israel, but rather wherever life eventually takes our students, they never truly leave.