We Love the Same Land. So Why Don’t We Understand Each Other?

Tomorrow, my daughter leaves for Israel.

She grew up in Miami, Florida. Sunshine, comfort, opportunity. She has always been an exceptional student, with the kind of academic future that could open doors almost anywhere. Georgetown had been a dream, and she had earned her place there. And yet, she chose Israel. Not because she had nowhere else to go. Quite the opposite. She had every reason to stay.

She chose a country at war. A country where young people her age wear uniforms, where parents live with the unbearable uncertainty of sending their children into combat, where the future can feel as fragile as the present. And tomorrow, I will watch her leave for that country.

As a mother, I am afraid. As a Jew, I understand her.

And somewhere between those two feelings lies a question I have been asking myself for years. Why do Jews in Israel and Jews in the diaspora sometimes seem to understand each other so poorly, when so much of what we feel comes from the same place?

I have heard the argument countless times, sometimes spoken in frustration, sometimes in anger: It is easy to have opinions about Israel when you are not sending your children into the army.

And there is truth in that. There is something profoundly different about discussing military decisions from a comfortable living room in Miami, Paris, or New York and discussing them while your son is stationed in Gaza or your daughter is serving near the Lebanese border. There is a difference between fearing for a country and fearing for the life of your child in uniform. I would never pretend otherwise.

But there is another truth, one that I sometimes wish Israelis understood better. Being Jewish outside Israel comes with fears that many Israelis have never experienced in quite the same way.

The unease of walking into a synagogue and instinctively looking for security. The hesitation before wearing a Star of David in public. Or the realization that sometimes, even your last name is enough to identify you as Jewish. The quiet exhaustion of having to think twice about things that should never require a second thought.

The knowledge that your Jewish identity, which should be a simple and natural part of who you are, can suddenly become something you are expected to explain, justify, or defend.

In Israel, Jewish identity is woven into the ordinary fabric of life. The language, the calendar, the holidays, the streets. In the diaspora, it can make you feel exposed.

We do not send our children into the Israeli army. But that does not mean we send them into a world free of danger. Our fears are different. They are not imaginary. And they should not have to compete.

I sometimes feel that we have developed a strange hierarchy of Jewish legitimacy. Those who live in Israel believe they have earned the right to speak because they bear the consequences. Those who live outside Israel believe they have earned the right to speak because Israel’s actions, and the world’s reactions, inevitably reach them, too.

Both have a point. Neither has the whole picture.

Of course, loving Israel from afar is not the same as living there. And criticism delivered without humility, knowledge, or an understanding of the human cost can feel unbearably arrogant to those who live with that cost every day. But geography should not determine the depth of someone’s Jewish identity, nor should it automatically disqualify their concerns.

I have spent years interviewing Holocaust survivors. Men and women whose lives were shattered because the countries they called home stopped considering them part of the nation. Perhaps that is why I cannot dismiss the anxieties of diaspora Jews as exaggerated, or the attachment of Israeli Jews to their homeland as something outsiders can easily understand.

History has taught us that belonging is never something to take for granted. And yet, here we are, sometimes speaking to one another as though one side must prove that its Jewish experience is more authentic than the other’s. I find that heartbreaking.

Because beneath the disagreements, I see so many similarities. Israeli parents want their children to grow up without fear. So do Jewish parents in Paris. Israeli families want to live openly, proudly, without having to justify their existence. So do Jewish families in London, New York, and Miami.

We want our children to inherit a Jewish identity that is a source of joy rather than anxiety. We want them to know where they come from. And we want them to have a future.

Perhaps the deepest misunderstanding is that we sometimes mistake different experiences for different loyalties.

My daughter reminds me how misleading that assumption can be. She is American. She was born and raised in Miami. Her childhood was shaped by the freedoms and opportunities of the United States. Yet she feels a powerful connection to a land thousands of miles away.

She did not inherit that connection as a political slogan. She made it her own. For her, Zionism is not an abstract debate on a university campus. It is a personal choice, one that has changed the direction of her life.

And I find myself wondering what it means that a young woman who could have chosen almost anywhere has chosen to build part of her future in a place so many others see only through the lens of conflict.

It does not mean she agrees with every Israeli government decision. It does not mean she is indifferent to Palestinian suffering. It does not mean she is blind to the complexities, contradictions, or painful questions surrounding Israel.

It means she feels she belongs there.

And belonging, I have come to understand, is not always rational. Sometimes it is stronger than comfort. Stronger than distance. Sometimes, even stronger than fear.

Tomorrow, when I say goodbye to my daughter, I will not be thinking about the arguments between Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews. I will be thinking about the thousands of Israeli mothers who have watched their children leave home with a fear far greater than mine. I will be thinking about Jewish parents across the world who wonder what kind of future awaits their children.

And I will be thinking about how desperately we need to understand one another before we judge one another.

Israelis do not need diaspora Jews to lecture them about the price of living in Israel. Diaspora Jews do not need Israelis to dismiss the price of being Jewish elsewhere.

We need to listen. Not because our experiences are identical. But precisely because they are not.

Tomorrow, my daughter will fly thousands of miles away from me. She will be going to a place I love, a place I fear for, a place that has shaped my identity even though I have never called it my permanent home.

And perhaps that is what I wish we could all understand.

We do not have to live on the same land to feel that we belong to the same people. And we should not have to share the same fears to recognize each other’s.