Not Someday, Not If, Not Later: Choosing Israel Now

Six years ago, at my synagogue’s Kol Nidre service, I stood at the bimah and talked about being Jewish. About Zionism. About how antisemitism wasn’t limited to a political party and how it was already in our schools bubbling up, just waiting for the right opportunity to explode.

I’ve never wanted to be wrong more in my entire life. And if you know me, that’s really saying something. I love to be right.

So admittedly, October 7th was not the catalyst for the changes in my life. In 2019 the discomfort was already settling in. In May 2021, in the last big conflict with Hamas prior to 10/7, I was already pretty unhinged – my professional peers – supposed liberals – progressives – were calling Hamas “David” and Israel “Goliath.” By November of 2022, I was completely untethered.  After speaking at the JNF Conference in Boston, I came back to New York desperate to have my feet on the ground in our homeland. I needed real spiritual grounding. I was on a flight to Israel three weeks later. Because I was physically desperate to get “home.” I felt it in my body.

 Unsurprisingly, my week in Israel wasn’t enough. My husband and I went back for three weeks that summer – the summer of 2023 – as a way to hopefully fulfill some of what I was craving. Our son, Maverick, 18 at the time, was living in Israel for the second summer in a row, volunteering for Sar-El on three different IDF bases. As I am always planning my next visit “home,” I spent that summer preparing to take my Catholic in-laws back with us to Israel that December, it would be their first trip.

Fast forward three months. October 7th. That day cracked open a fissure in my soul that was already exposed. That fissure became a crater. I was a walking, open wound. But that wound  doesn’t need protection. That wound has scabbed over, scarred, and it is my armor. 

And we need armor. I am well aware that being an American Jew right now is, well, a lot of words, and none of them good. Perhaps you once thought that Israel needed us more than we needed her. Diaspora Jews don’t exist without Israel. You cannot separate Jews from the land. You cannot separate the land from Jews. We are one Mishpacha. A people. A tribe. An ethnicity. It is not how we practice, it is who we are.

So yes, this is lonely. It is exhausting. But it has awakened something in the Jewish people.

Since October 7th, I have been to Israel 11 times. That doesn’t make me better or braver or holier than anyone else; it simply makes me a Jew who cannot breathe without Israel. When it’s been too long, I start to twitch. I feel unmoored until I land at Ben Gurion. I am well aware that this is a privilege – to be able to get on a plane and leave my own family and come in and out while my Israeli friends have to stay and defend the place that I love. But this isn’t just a privilege; it’s also a choice. A deliberate, defiant choice to be there, to be counted, to say with my body: Am Yisrael Chai. Our children have done this, too. Maverick was living in Israel – for the fourth summer in a row –  during the war with Iran this summer volunteering as a First Responder with Magen David Adom through the Masa Volunteers program, and our 16 year old daughter, Memphis, was at Alexander Muss High School in Israel. Right before the trip was over she called and begged me to stay a little bit longer. What do you think I said? 

If you have never been to Israel, or if you have not gone recently, go. Not someday, not “when it feels safe,” not “when it’s convenient,” not when the media decides it’s going to present you with the truth rather than propaganda.  Go now. Especially now. When the world is telling you not to. Because the act of showing up is a statement of who we are and who we refuse to stop being.

Each time I return to the US, a new fissure opens, it is a yearning, but it strengthens me. Like Leonard Cohen said, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I return with renewed clarity: We are not just spectators. We are megaphones. We have to take what we experience – the joy, the grief, the unbreakable humor, the heartbreak, and the hope and bring it back. Because the war in Israel will end; the war in the Diaspora will not. Not anytime soon. 

Being an American Jew means sitting with my daughter on the subway in our IDF and Bring Them Home sweatshirts bracing ourselves for an insult or worse. It means teaching our kids to love being Jewish fiercely and still worrying about my loud and proud Zionist son who is currently studying abroad in Spain. It means speaking out and living boldly and also knowing that my family is constantly concerned about how vocal I am. It means loving this country for what it has given us, while knowing we cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that the hate here isn’t alive and kicking.

It means saying the hard things out loud, even when it costs you. Refusing to stay silent while others decide what justice is and who is entitled to it. Reminding anyone who will listen that loving Israel is not a political statement. It is a Jewish statement. It does not matter who is in power, or which party controls the Knesset: Israel is not her government. She is her people. She is the sound of Hebrew on the Tayelet. She is the dirt under your fingernails on a kibbutz. She is the magical and mystical landscape of Mitzpe Ramon. She is the stubborn, messy, miraculous fact of Jewish existence.

And so, as we step into 5786, as we beat our chests and confess our shortcomings and believe me, I have plenty, I now confess this: I will never apologize for my love of Israel. I will never pretend that the survival of our people is negotiable. I will never allow us to shrink so that others feel more comfortable.

This is what the moment demands of us.

So here’s my blessing and my challenge:

May this be the year we understand that teshuvah – return – isn’t just about turning inward, it’s about turning homeward. And for Jews, home has always meant Israel.

May this be the year we commit to tikkun – repair – not just of the world, but of our people. Of our courage and pride. Because showing up in and for Israel, especially now, is an act of repair.

May this be the year we embrace renewal – not as something abstract, but as a real renewed commitment to our peoplehood. To stand shoulder to shoulder with Jews everywhere, across oceans and borders, across politics and denominations, bound by a shared destiny that is bigger than any one of us.

May this be the year we stop allowing others to define and malign Zionism.

May this be the year we stop people from “All Lives Mattering” Jews.

May this be the year we remind the world that we are still here. That we are not going anywhere. That we have the blueprint for survival coursing through our veins. It is in our DNA. It is the spirit of the Jewish people. 

And may this be the year we look at one another and say: we will not just survive – we will thrive. Loudly. Unapologetically. B’Yachad. Together.

And may this be the day our hostages are returned, that our soldiers are safe, and that peace comes to Israel and to all of us. 

Am Yisrael Chai. Shana tova.