Go Home Jacob vs. Come Home Jacob

“To all my friends and family in Chutz La’aretz, if the video attached has a small possibility of being a preview (chas vechalila) for what awaits the rest of the country, please be in touch with me today, and we will begin to pave the way to bring you home.”

Honestly, this is what the real, raw and straight-to-the-point ‘me’ feels like saying. But I can already hear the comments coming from such a post, which in my humble opinon, is exactly the problem with social media. We can’t hear each other’s voice, we just read each other’s words. We reach each other’s words in our own tone, or however we imagine the tone to be.

The Torah tells us ‘Shma (listen) Yisrael’, not ‘Tikra (read) Yisrael’.

Don’t get me wrong, the real work only begins once we come to the land where we belong. One of the things we will have to do is to create new schools, synagogues and culture centers, focused on the art of listening and hearing. We need each other to create such a country, and to grow in such a civilization. We can’t, nor do we want to do this alone.

So can you please do me a favor, reread my paragraph above, while picturing me smiling, and saying these words with nothing but genuine love and zero zero judgment?