The World Has Gone Crazy. It’s Official.

Within days of each other, I came across two stories that left me shaking my head in absolute disbelief.

First, non-Jews around the world began proudly declaring on social media, “I’m not Jewish. I’m a Zionist.”

People from different countries, religions, and backgrounds were publicly expressing their support for the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.

Then came the story of Arielle Angel and a gathering in Brooklyn, where more than 100 Jews came together to develop Jewish institutions without Zionism or an institutional attachment to Israel.

Excuse me?

Non-Jews are proudly identifying as Zionists, while some Jews are actively organizing to build Jewish life without Zionism?

The absurdity is almost beyond comprehension.

And frankly, I’ve had enough.

But as angry as this makes me, what I feel even more deeply is disappointment.

At a time when antisemitism is already creating tremendous hostility toward Jewish communities around the world, we are witnessing the creation of yet another division within our own people.

And for what?

In her June 2025 essay, We Need New Jewish Institutions, Arielle Angel describes the alienation experienced by anti-Zionist Jews within mainstream Jewish institutions. She calls for alternative religious, educational, and cultural spaces where they can build communities reflecting their convictions.

But her vision goes further. She raises questions about rethinking Jewish liturgy, theology, peoplehood, and even the biblical relationship to the Land of Israel.

That is where I find this movement particularly disturbing.

Israel is not an accessory to Judaism. It is not a political fashion statement we embrace when convenient and discard when the world becomes hostile.

Israel is woven into the very heart and soul of Judaism.

Open the Torah. Open the Tanakh. Study the Mishnah or the Gemara.

Our connection to the Land of Israel is everywhere.

Hashem’s promise to Avraham. The Exodus from Egypt. The journey to the Promised Land. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Beit Hamikdash in Jerusalem. Our exile and the longing to return.

For thousands of years, Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem. We remember Jerusalem beneath the chuppah, even at one of the happiest moments of our lives.

And now we’re entertaining the idea of reconsidering that sacred relationship to accommodate a contemporary political ideology?

What exactly are we supposed to do? Rewrite our prayers? Reinterpret our history? Pretend our connection to the land was some modern political invention?

You cannot remove Israel from the Jewish soul. It would be like physically removing the heart from a living body. Remove the heart, and life ceases. The body may still be there, but what gave it life is gone.

You may preserve the rituals, celebrate the holidays, and maintain the outward appearance of Jewish life. But if you deliberately tear away its historical and spiritual connection to Israel, what exactly are you preserving?

Our connection to Israel did not begin with modern Zionism. It existed thousands of years before the political movement emerged.

Remarkably, this very point was reinforced on Friday, October 16, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video responding to remarks by former U.S. President Barack Obama about Israel’s founding.

Netanyahu stated:

“This is our homeland. It’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years.”

You cannot rewrite thousands of years of Jewish history to accommodate your political agenda. History does not change simply because it no longer suits your narrative.

Governments come and go. Our connection to the land predates every modern political party and every Israeli government.

The modern State of Israel is not identical to the biblical Land of Israel. But for me, the restoration of Jewish sovereignty represents an extraordinary chapter in the history of a people who never stopped longing for their ancestral homeland.

And this is precisely what troubles me about Angel’s vision.

I see the creation of a variation of Jewish communal life that risks diluting the very essence of the Judaism we inherited.

There is a profound difference between practicing Judaism differently and reconsidering foundational beliefs to accommodate contemporary politics.

And let us not forget what that inheritance cost.

This is not simply the Judaism we inherited. This is the Judaism our ancestors fought to preserve with blood, tears, and unimaginable sacrifice.

Through expulsions, through the Inquisition, through pogroms, through centuries of persecution in which Jews were forced to choose between their faith and their very survival.

They lost their homes, their communities, their livelihoods, and far too often, their lives. Yet generation after generation, they preserved their Torah, their traditions, and their longing for Zion.

They did not endure all of that so future generations could casually dismantle the foundations of the faith they struggled to keep alive.

We have always had different interpretations and traditions. But when opposition to Zionism becomes a defining feature of Jewish communal identity, while even our biblical relationship to Israel is opened for reconsideration, I question whether this is Jewish continuity or the construction of an entirely new ideological framework.

I cannot help thinking about Neturei Karta, whose rejection of modern Jewish sovereignty comes from an entirely different theological position. The reasoning differs, but I find the parallel in defining Jewish communal identity through opposition to the Jewish state deeply troubling.

And I find the timing especially painful.

The Jewish people are already facing hostility from so many directions. Yet rather than concentrating on what connects us, we are watching the development of institutions organized around another ideological divide.

Do those building these movements recognize how easily their message can be used?

I can almost hear those already hostile toward Israel declaring:

“See? Even the Jews don’t support Israel. Even they reject Zionism. Why shouldn’t we?”

A particular Jewish community’s political position can suddenly be presented as though it represents the Jewish people as a whole, becoming ammunition for those already seeking to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

Antisemites are already doing a good enough job attacking and dividing the Jewish people. We do not need to hand them additional ammunition.

And if anyone believes that distancing themselves from Israel will somehow make Jewish identity more acceptable to a hostile world, I reject that thinking completely.

Our convictions cannot be determined by whether the outside world approves of us. Our history is not something to negotiate away in exchange for acceptance.

This is not the Judaism I recognize, nor is it the Judaism my parents and grandparents passed down to me.

I believe in Hashem’s promise to our forefathers. I believe our relationship with the Land of Israel is sacred. Treating that relationship as politically dispensable feels like a slap in the face to everything our people endured to preserve it.

Perhaps what makes all of this so deeply personal is my own journey.

I spent most of my life in the Diaspora, and every year, upon completing the Pesach Haggadah, we recited those familiar words:

L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem.

Those words are not simply a tradition we repeat because they appear at the end of the Haggadah.

They are our prayer. Our hope. Our longing. A yearning carried through generations of Jewish history.

When we say those words, we are not merely wishing for a visit to Jerusalem. We are praying for something far greater: the coming of Mashiach, the ultimate redemption, and the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash.

And yet, what an extraordinary privilege it is to already be living here.

To wake up every morning in Jerusalem, in the land Hashem promised our forefathers, while still awaiting and preparing ourselves for the coming of Mashiach.

Today, I have the privilege of living in the very city I spent years praying for, while continuing that same prayer for our ultimate redemption.

I do not take that for granted.

I did not become connected to Israel because I made aliyah. I made aliyah because Israel was already part of who I was.

That connection was never dependent on a government or political party.

It was, and remains, a matter of faith.

We are Am Yisrael. One people, connected by a history that reaches across generations and continents.

We come from different countries, follow different traditions, and hold different religious and political views. We have always disagreed, sometimes fiercely.

But our differences should not make the foundations of our shared heritage expendable.

What will future generations understand about Jerusalem, the longing for Zion, and the covenant between Hashem and our forefathers if these connections are continually reinterpreted through the politics of the present?

Will they inherit the spiritual depth of our history, or merely fragments of it?

I am angry, yes.

But more than anything, I am disappointed.

Disappointed that at a time when Jewish unity is so desperately needed, we are creating new ways to divide ourselves.

Disappointed that the spiritual inheritance our ancestors struggled to preserve is being treated as something that can be reconsidered to suit the political climate.

And disappointed that this is being presented as a vision for Jewish renewal.

You do not strengthen a people by disconnecting them from their own history.

The irony of the two stories that prompted this article has not escaped me. Non-Jews publicly embracing Zionism while some Jews are building institutions around rejecting it.

Enough already.

The world has spent centuries trying to separate the Jewish people from their homeland, their history, and one another.

And after everything our ancestors endured to preserve that connection, we’re now expected to watch fellow Jews dismantle it and call that progress?

You don’t tear the heart out of Judaism and call it renewal.

Am Yisrael Chai.