Unified Without Being Uniform

We are living through a strange and painful moment, when the people we love most have become the people we can least talk to. Ask almost anyone and they’ll tell you some version of the same story: the relative they no longer bring up Israel with, the friendship that cooled over a social media post, the dinner table where certain subjects are now simply off-limits.

Three years after October 7, the work of connecting young Jewish families to Jewish life and to Israel has never been harder, or more important. October 7th was a watershed moment in Israel’s history, and indeed all of Jewish history. Israel and Jewish communities around the world were shocked at the horrors of October 7th and the brutality of Hamas. 1,200 people killed. 3,400 people wounded. And 251 people captured and brought to the tunnels of Gaza as hostages. And the destruction of Gaza and so many civilians killed. We still don’t even know the full damage there, but we know that no matter your politics there have been way too many deaths.

Then there has been the damage to the Israeli psyche, the ongoing trauma that colors every aspect of the country today. We were all shocked by the vulnerability of the country to such an attack and our inability to prevent it.

The couples we serve feel this directly. They are deciding what kind of Jewish family they want to be in an environment where that question has become harder to answer. Rising antisemitism at home and ongoing conflict abroad mean they arrive with higher emotional stakes, more polarized views, and urgent questions about Zionism and what Israel means for the Jewish people

In today’s world, far too many people cannot have a real conversation about Israel with the friends, relatives, and people they otherwise hold dear.

I want to describe a place where the opposite is happening.

In city after city, Honeymoon Israel brings groups of twenty young couples from the same community to Israel together. HMI is not usually a couples’ actual Honeymoon. It’s their Jewish/Israel Honeymoon. HMI couples are in the first years of a lifetime commitment, and mostly on the margins of Jewish life: couples who have never quite found their way in, interfaith couples, couples where one partner is converting and many couples where both are Jewish as well. Couples pay $2,900 for the whole experience including flights.

For nine days they travel, eat, argue, and wrestle with the hardest questions a person can ask about Israel, identity, and belonging. And then they come home, to the same city, as a community that lasts.

I’ve come to think of this as a laboratory. It is the practice of a different way of living together, and what happens inside it can be a model for our whole community.

Time and time again, I hear from HMI couples that the only place they can talk openly about Israel is with their HMI cohort. They are able to grapple with hard questions, push back on each other’s opinions, and feel held and understood — in ways they don’t get anywhere else.

Consider Claire and Tony, a couple from Boston. Claire is Jewish and Tony was raised Catholic. They came to HMI having honest, thoughtful discussions and, in their own words, didn’t shy away from hard questions about identity, family, faith, Israel, and their own values. But what struck me most was something Tony said afterward. He admitted that before the trip, he was worried the experience might lean heavily toward pro-Israel propaganda without much balance.

Instead, he felt he’d been given thoughtful, non-biased information that encouraged critical thinking rather than telling him what to believe. Being exposed to multiple viewpoints, he said, helped him understand the complexities of the region and what it can mean to be pro-Israel in a way that still allows for questioning, empathy, and openness.

That is the laboratory working exactly as it should. It does not manufacture consensus. It builds the capacity to disagree in good faith and emphasizes unity as a people even though we will never be uniform in our beliefs.

You can see the same thing in the experience of Zachary and Allie, a couple from Phoenix. On their trip, the group heard from Nivine, an Arab Israeli woman actively involved in peacemaking efforts. Her perspective was not comfortable for everyone in the room.

And yet his takeaway was this: her perspective was powerful and necessary to hear, and kudos to HMI for being brave enough to put forth that voice. As dismal as the prospects for peace may seem, he said, giving up is not an option. That is what it looks like when people can sit with discomfort instead of fleeing from it — when hearing a hard voice becomes an act of courage rather than a threat.

The Ripple Effect

The point of a laboratory is never the laboratory itself. It’s what the experiment proves is possible out in the world.

Jennifer and Bradley, an interfaith couple from Los Angeles, started couples counseling shortly after they met — they came in knowing their two strong faiths would be something to navigate for the rest of their marriage.

What they didn’t expect was that HMI would become the place that so beautifully championed those conversations. It gave them the space, the guidance, and the tools, Jennifer said, to see that their differences are not obstacles but actually strengths. They came home having learned something they now practice at their own dinner table, with their own daughter.

Multiply that by twenty couples. Then by every city. Then by more than 3,500 couples we’ve now brought together across 23 communities. Honeymoon Israel has 80 couples leaving for Israel in December, 40 more in January, 80 in March and a slew of trips planned for the next year.

What you have is thousands of people who have learned, by doing, that it is possible to hold hard questions in common — to push back on someone and still feel held by them.

This is the thing I cannot stop thinking about. The world is rife with people who can’t talk to one another because of differing opinions, or because of a slogan that sets them off. And here is a community quietly building the opposite muscle, one cohort at a time.

If we at Honeymoon Israel can ensure that everyone feels they can bring their questions, hopes, and beliefs into their new community — and do it in a generative, productive way — just imagine what an example that could be for our whole world. We could possibly become unified even though we will never be uniform. The ripple effects could be profound.