Are my reasons for living in Israel still good enough?

In the months since October 7th, I have repeatedly asked myself why I remain in Israel.

I have ready answers, of course

• My community and my friends
• Socialized healthcare (which to me represents the original socialist Zionist spirit)
• A love of Hebrew and of Israeli music and of many things about Israeli culture
• A career that is Israel-based
• The random conversations I have with people in the mall or at a bus stop
• The Israeli ethos of volunteering and hospitality
• Free religious education via the Israeli public school system

The things is, if you look at this list, none of the items on it are ideological. They are all practical. They are all indicative of the fact that I have built my life here -and to me, that makes me a successful aliyah story. It means that I am staying for the reason most Israelis stay: It’s just… where you live, where your life story is located, so you would need a very good reason to leave it all behind.

Before I made aliyah, when Israelis asked me why I wanted to make aliyah, I often countered by asking them why they lived in Israel, and they gave me some variation of this answer-that it’s just where their lives are, so what did my question even mean?

Now, after over a decade in Israel, I am honored and humbled to think that in many ways I have reached a point in life where this Israeli answer to why I live in Israel is my answer as well.

The problem is, that it is not enough — at least, not when there is a war ongoing, with real security threats that I fear are being mishandled by our leaders.

So I go back to my other reason: a basic Zionist belief that without a State of Israel, Jews world-wide would be in danger of Crusades, pogroms, Inquisition, and Holocaust, just as they were for 2,000 years.

When I look at it that way, living in Israel and contributing to its survival is the best step I can take to ensure the long-term safety of myself and my family, despite the ongoing security threats in Israel right now.

We live in a moment of great upheaval around the world, and while my evidence is anecdotal, I have seen shifts in Jewish migration: People moving to Israel because they feel unsafe as antisemitism rises across the Western world, fueled both by the extreme right and the extreme left; People who moved to Israel moving back to their countries of origin because Israel feels unsafe; People moving to different countries within the Diaspora because whatever country they are in right now feels less safe than the country they are moving to.

In some ways, this is a throwback to millennia of Jewish history, where Jews constantly migrated as the place they were living in became unsafe for them as Jews. The problem is that the State of Israel was supposed to solve this problem. It is unfathomable that we find ourselves once more stuck in a moment of Jewish history that we thought we had overcome: The moment where it feels like there is no place where it is truly safe to be a Jew.

This of course, lends itself to the argument that with no place truly safe, you might as well be in the place you enjoy/have a career in/have family in/jive with ideologically. For many, this becomes an argument to make aliyah or, like me, to stay in Israel.

The problem is that the fact that the State of Israel has not solved the one issue it was supposed to solve, of providing a safe haven from antisemitism, calls my Zionism into question. This is especially the case because I believe that many of the security failures are caused in part by the negligence, political self-interest, and incompetence of the current government.

I don’t have the answers.

But I do have a 45-minute walk to the Old City of Jerusalem from my house, and a road where I once encountered a nun trekking on-foot from Bethlehem as part of a pilgrimage, with a bus stop where I wait next to women in hijabs and men in black hats.

I guess that will do, for now.