I Told You When I Came I Was a Stranger

“Wait, you’re moving where?”

That is, almost universally, the response I receive when I announce that I am moving to Israel. 

My family has been in the United States for roughly 130 years. We started as laborers, making the hats and dresses, driving the trucks, selling the penny candy. We became lawyers and doctors and businesspeople. Along the way we served in the armed forces, supported unionization, marched on Washington. 

I was raised under the assumption that antisemitism was a thing of the past. When incidents arose, we treated them as isolated throwbacks. We looked past them because times were, quite frankly, pretty good. I considered myself an American. I planned to live and die here, in America. 

So when I tell people about my own personal Exodus, they have many, many questions. Here, I’ve condensed them into four.

The Cautious Ones ask “But isn’t it a war zone?”

To them I reply: At least Israel knows it’s at war and takes measures to protect its citizens. 

I visited Israel as recently as July. I haven’t felt that safe in years. 

The US isn’t at war, yet it feeds hate and inequity while removing protections against violence. We defund care for the mentally ill and kick them into the streets. We pardon insurrectionists and set our law enforcement to work rounding up innocents who simply want to earn a living. We distribute guns like Pez. So when the Cautious Ones say, “Won’t your daughter be traumatized if she has to shelter from a rocket attack?” I invite them to experience a hard lockdown in one of New York’s public schools. She’s had three in the past year. She already lives with the threat of violence. 

That threat has become particularly acute for American Jews living in ostensibly more “liberal” cities. Every time we leave the house, we see antisemitic graffiti. Jewish businesses in my neighborhood have been vandalized. In my local coffee shop, I sit beside people who wear Palestinian keffiyeh purchased soon after October 7. Our business colleagues casually drop “Free Palestine” into their social media feeds. So to say “Israel is at war” is to deny that American Jews are in an increasingly perilous position in this country.

As for the large number of Israelis who have been moving abroad? To them I say: You deserve it. And by that I mean, you deserve a break. Israel has been fighting for its existence for 80 years. Perhaps Diaspora Jews with fresh energies can carry the baton for a while.

The Practical Ones ask “But what about all the bureaucracy?”

To them I reply: I’ll take a little democratic socialism. Gladly. 

They note that Israel is bogged down by convoluted administrative processes. Individuals pay high taxes and see fewer options for high-paying work. And there’s truth to this. 

However, I would encourage them to join me in a conversation with a customer service representative from United Healthcare. One such conversation – and this is real, I swear – concerned a ride in an ambulance that was deemed “medically unnecessary” and therefore, not covered. I might have refused the ride had I known it was not covered. And, had I been conscious at the time. The ambulance in question took me from the site of a near fatal car crash to a hospital.

If private industry is supposed to breed efficiency, it is doing a lousy job of it. Ever try to book a flight with frequent flyer miles on an American airline? Or take your luggage with you? Ever try to make Alexa play a song from your iPhone? Apply for a job? Watch television? Talk to a living human at an American company? Every process is festooned with layers of poorly designed technology that frustrate the delivery of goods and services, often intentionally.

This increasingly perverse landscape is a place where purportedly “innovative” companies are rewarded with high stock prices for forcing Americans to pay more for less ( while paying them less to work even more). The promise of economic and social mobility, once the hallmark of American society, is a thing of the past. 

So give me a little slow moving bureaucracy, with its agonies of free healthcare and its ridiculous presumption that government and industry should serve people, not exploit them. I’m ready to give it a try.

The Idealistic Ones Ask “But don’t you want to stay and fight for Democracy?”

To them I reply: With whom would I fight? 

With the Right, which is actively seeking the demise of democracy while only instrumentally supporting Jews? Or with the left, which insists upon democratic norms and empathy for all (except Jews)? 

I can take antisemitism from the Right. As a Jew you expect it. When Trump courted white-nationalists, his tolerance for avowed Jew-haters was clear. As for those on the Right who claim to support Israel, their motives are transparently selfish. Jews are a cudgel to beat back the Muslim horde, or a pawn in some sort of evangelical end-of-times game. None of this is surprising. If this were the sum total of the danger, I would stay.

But then there’s the Left. Perhaps the most painful part of this past year was watching the progressive left wholeheartedly buy into the virulently anti-semitic, settler-colonial narrative. These are people, some of them former friends, with whom I had shared common cause: LGBTQ rights, support for unions, equal opportunity for people of color. There are plenty of Americans who are not antisemites. But the whole political spectrum is now riddled with those who are.  

Israel is a flawed state. What nation isn’t? But there I can fight for democratic values and human decency assured that those I march with will not recoil from a fundamental part of my identity.  At least Israel offers me a point of entry into the political debate that doesn’t require me to disavow my Jewishness. 

And for those who don’t know what to ask . . .

To them I say: In the past couple of years I have become a stranger here. 

We made the fatal mistake of generations of diaspora Jews before us – the delusion that now, history will be linear, not cyclical. Time and again they have risen up against us, but now, we thought, things would be different. What arrogance – to think we could escape history itself. So, I’m going. At least this time there’s a place that will welcome me.

And ultimately, after I’ve explained myself to these people, they tend to soften. Their fear and apprehension yield to a kind of understanding. Yes, they say. It is not so good here. Yes, they say, that seems like a good decision for you. 

And it leaves me feeling fortunate that I am in a position to make this change. To begin again. A stranger in a strange land, but a land that will at least accept me for who I am.