On Aliyah, Yeridah, and Things in Between
Like many Israelis, since October 7th, there have been moments I’ve pondered leaving Israel. Sometimes those moments have focused on security concerns and sometimes they’ve focused on ethical concerns.
In recent months, I find myself engaged in a moral calculus: Are there red lines that if Israel crossed, I would feel obligated to leave? How would my leaving help the situation -would it just be an abdication of responsibility? Is my home country, the USA, really more ethical than Israel at the moment?
I go through a list of the USA’s flaws: structural racism that is resurgent, proposed tax cuts that cut food stamps and medicaid, deportations to notorious prisons in El Salvador – and if I take into account not just the current actions, but also the direction in which the country is headed, it is hard for me to make an ethical argument for moving back to America.
But then I think of the war in Gaza, price tag attacks in the West Bank that go unchecked (and possibly supported) by the army or the government, the cases of Arab citizens detained by police for social media posts -and I can’t really make a strong ethical case for choosing Israel, either.
Recently, I have decided that the question is less where one lives, and more what one does in the place one is living in. With all the different ethical factors, it is unknowable which country remains the most moral choice. So instead of focusing on the where, it’s time to focus on the what: What do we do with the life we have in the place we are in?
These times call for living a life in resistance to the forces of evil around us. We must actively oppose the government and certain social trends. I believe this is not only an ethical, but a religious obligation: We must ask ourselves, have I fulfilled my obligation, just as we would when performing any other mitzvah.
What does it mean to live a life in resistance?
It can look different for different people. For some, it means going to a job for an organization that does political activism, or going to daily protests after work. For others, it means raising kids with a different moral vision, or writing articles that present a clear moral voice. These ways can overlap; ideally we are all resisting in more than one way.
There are many ways to resist. Sometimes going on with our normal lives can be an act of resistance, choosing to function and to hope when we feel despair, or choosing to smile and be kind to a stranger on a bus instead of giving in to the cruelty of this moment. But because inertia is built into the rules of the universe, and because complacency is the easiest choice, it is imperative that we set aside time to study our lives to see if we are resisting and how we can do better. This should be done with the rigour with which we set aside times for studying Torah, but here, the goal is to study our lives to ensure those lives live out the ideals of Torah.
I am still figuring out what a life of resistance looks like for me, and I am sure you are still figuring it out for you. I wish us both better times, may we live in an era where our goal is to amplify the trends of love and blessing around us, instead of fighting the forces of hate.
