There Is No Such Thing as a Regular Israeli Family |
In the comfortable boardrooms and lecture halls of the West, a dangerous, slanderous narrative has taken root: the idea that Israel is a European colonial project, an alien imposition on the Middle East. From my recording studio in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, I recently spoke with someone whose very existence dismantles this myth.
Eden Achituv is a mother of four living in Retamim, a small religious community in Israel’s Negev desert. To many in my community in Tucson, Eden and her husband Netanel are dear friends—former shlichim (emissaries) who taught our children and brought the soul of Israel to our desert. Today, they live in a different kind of desert, one overshadowed by what is often called a “ring of fire”—the constant threat of missiles from Gaza and Iran and the shifting loyalties of neighbors.
When the world screams that Jews should “go back to Poland,” they are not just being antisemitic; they are being historically illiterate. While Eastern European Jewry were not considered European, even more so, Ashkenazi Jews do not share DNA with non-Jews in Europe, rather with their fellow Middle Eastern Jews who........