“If Judaism mattered to you, why not in Israel?”

Day 2 – Chanukah 2025 – תשפ״ו כ”ו בכסלו , Kislev 26, 5786

December 16, 2025. 15:30

My Crazy Israeli Kids Laugh at my Hebrew Accent, They Echo Sarah’s laughter heard in eternity….- and I love it!

(with just an added touch of Israeli chutzpah)

I am raising two children who were born in the Jewish state. In Jerusalem, nonetheless.

That fact alone answers more questions than I ever could.

One Thursday afternoon, 10 years ago, sitting on a beach in Netanya—with the sea quiet and, admittedly, one glass of Pinot Noir too many—I found myself thinking about a question I once assumed my children would ask me someday:

“If Judaism mattered so much to you, why didn’t you raise us in Israel? Clearly you took the wrong path”

It turns out that children raised in Israel don’t ask questions like that. They don’t ask questions softly at all. They are prickly, probing, more than I ever was. And trust me, I was a pain in the arse to my parents and teachers.

My six-year-old daughter, Hodaya, recently announced she was getting a haircut. I responded, as fathers do, “Sweetheart, I love your hair.”

She looked at me and said, plainly:
אין לך בעלות על השיער שלי — you don’t have ownership over my hair, Abba.

Conversation over. She was right. (Read that one more time!)

My son, Ophir Naftali—still under four—has his own assessment. “Abba,” he says, “what do you know about Israel? Nebach. Your accent is funny.”

When I ask them for patience, Hodaya delivers the final verdict: “It’s true, Abba. You weren’t born here. Your resh sounds funny.”There is no disrespect in this. No rebellion.
Only certainty. 100% Chutzpah.

But I love that.

I fought for that.

Our grandparents dream of it!

Israeli children do not experience Jewishness as something to be explained or defended. They experience it as air. As language. As posture. They do not seek validation or passports of every colour.

Belonging, for them, is not an aspiration—it is a starting point. It is in their kiskes, it is their modus operandi. 

Diaspora Judaism survives through memory, transmission, and argument. Israeli childhood survives through presence. Through Hebrew spoken without apology. Through a confidence that does not ask permission from history. Through the confidence to tell a father—lovingly—that he is outmatched by his own children growing up in this land.

My children are not questioning me. They are asserting something older and simpler: that identity, sovereignty and confidence begins long before politics.

It begins in the mouth of a child who knows who they are, where they stand, and where they are going. And who doesn’t give a flat fuck for whoever challenges that. “Bring it on” – they say. I am an Israeli Jew, they say.

And they are right, their existence, our existence is no fluke.

This is the deeper meaning of raising children in Israel.

They do not ask whether they belong to the Jewish story.
They assume it.

And I am grateful they laugh at my accent. Grateful they mock me. Because children growing up in the land of Israel are not just candles in the Chanukah.

They are flames that will never be extinguished. As Shai Agnon once wrote, now tattooed in my left arm. Menachem Begin said said something similar

“At all times I consider myself as one who was born in Jerusalem” . [and] “We were all born in Jerusalem”

Yes, From generation to generation.

Certainly, From eternity to eternity.

And below my crazy, messy, and cheeky Chanukah candles.

This is who we are.

Now let’s get a move on and make “more Jewish homes, Jewish babies”(, and increase the chutzpah that brings light into the world, and fulfil every prophecy (and dream) we have for them.

My beautiful friend Yocheved Kim Rottenberg answered the above last week when I congratulated her in her engagement to the awesome Sammy Yahood. And she is so on target. That is called fucking “perspective” – heavenly perspective I must add. Mazal Tov to both of you and your families.

Also, complete serendipity we see the Bet HaMikdash* on the back of this picture hanging on my wall.

Shout out to Avigail Wieder, one of the most talented artists I have ever met. You should buy her paintings. Chanukah Sameach.