The Illusion of Safety Is Fading Fast

For generations, Jews in America have lived with a dangerous illusion: that comfort is the same thing as security. We built lives here, raised families here, educated our children here, and contributed to the success of this country. For many of us, that created the assumption that Jewish safety in America was permanent.

It was never guaranteed. And it is looking less guaranteed now.

Antisemitism is not only rising; it is hardening. Jews are being harassed in public, attacked on campuses, targeted in the streets, and in some cases killed simply for being Jewish. Jewish institutions are fortifying themselves because the threat is real. What was once dismissed as fringe hatred is increasingly finding expression in mainstream discourse, social movements, and political rhetoric. That should alarm every Jew who still believes history cannot repeat itself here.

We also need to be honest about another truth: antisemitism does not ask Jews whether they are religious, secular, observant, assimilated, politically liberal, politically conservative, Zionist, or anti-Zionist. It does not care how a Jew practices, or whether a Jew feels deeply connected to Israel or sharply critical of its current policies. A Jew is targeted because he or she is Jewish. That is the reality. And no amount of self-editing, distancing, or apology can change it.

No matter what Israel does, there will always be those who claim it has not done enough, not apologized enough, not retreated enough, not disappeared enough. The issue is often not policy at all. It is identity. That is why Jews outside Israel must stop pretending that hostility toward Jews can always be solved by perfect explanations or better behavior. It cannot.

The lesson of Jewish history is not that catastrophe announces itself all at once. It is that danger grows while people are still telling themselves they are overreacting. Before the Holocaust, too many Jews believed that Europe would remain their home, that the storm would pass, that civilization would hold. It did not. The tragedy was not only the hatred of others, but the delay in taking that hatred seriously enough.

Today, Jews have what our ancestors did not: sovereignty. We have the State of Israel.

That changes everything. Israel is not a symbolic project or a sentimental idea. It is the one and only Jewish homeland, the only place on earth where Jews govern ourselves, defend ourselves, and shape our own destiny. If the future in America is becoming more uncertain, then Jewish responsibility demands that we think seriously about the one place built to protect Jewish life rather than merely tolerate it.

This is why aliyah must be discussed plainly, without embarrassment and without apology. It is not a sign of weakness. It is not panic. It is prudence. It is the recognition that a people does not survive by assuming that present comfort will last forever. Jewish continuity requires foresight. A family does not wait for the house to catch fire before asking where the exits are.

And Israel is not only a refuge. It is also a responsibility and an opportunity. Jews who make aliyah bring with them skills, resources, discipline, creativity, and resilience. They strengthen the only country that exists to protect Jews as Jews. They add to the talent, stability, and dynamism of the Jewish state. In other words, aliyah is not just about saving oneself. It is also about helping secure the future of the Jewish people.

The sermon yesterday captured this truth with devastating force. A rabbi, after the Holocaust, pleaded with church leaders to return Jewish children who had been hidden and baptized. He was refused. Returning to his community, he wept over his failure. Then he asked the question that matters now: those children are lost to us, but you are not. What will you do for the Jewish people?

That is the question for our generation.

We cannot rescue everyone who was lost before us. But we can refuse to be lost ourselves. We can refuse to drift into complacency while our future grows more precarious. We can choose Jewish self-respect over denial, preparedness over passivity, and Jewish destiny over wishful thinking.

No serious Jew should pretend that the current trajectory in America is harmless. It is not. The responsible response is not fear alone, but action. And the most serious action is to begin planning, in a disciplined and realistic way, for a future in Israel.

Not because every Jew must leave tomorrow. Not because America is the same as Europe in the 1930s. It is not. But because Jews who care about the future of the Jewish people do not wait until it is too late to build a safer tomorrow.

Israel is not merely a place Jews can go.

It is the place where Jewish life has a future.