L’Shana Habaa….Anywhere but HERE! |
Each year on Yom Yerushalayim, our community hosts a breakfast where our rabbi shares his memories of being in Israel during the Six-Day War. He and his friends were determined to get there—to help, to support, to stand with what he already called “his” country. Years later, that same deep love led him to make aliyah with his family.
I find myself returning to his story this year as, day after day, messages appear on social media from yeshiva and seminary students who are eager—sometimes desperate—to go home. They describe feeling stuck, anxious, uncertain, and longing for the familiarity and comfort of what they left behind.
One advertisement even offered transportation from Egypt to Warsaw. The irony is striking: leaving our own country and traveling through lands that once sought our destruction in order to feel safe again. It is an image that gives pause.
I will admit that my first instinct is often to judge—but I am learning to listen more carefully. These are young people, far from home, living through uncertainty and fear. Their reactions are deeply human. And still, their response invites us to ask difficult questions.
Where is the sense of connection to Israel—the feeling that being here matters, even when it is hard? Where are the voices helping them see that their presence is not incidental, but meaningful?
And where are the schools? Where are the efforts to guide students through this moment—not only by ensuring their safety, but by offering perspective, purpose, and opportunities to engage? There is so much that can be done: supporting families of מילואימ ניקים, assisting those who have been displaced, contributing in small but real ways to the society they came to experience. Some organizations, including Mizrachi and groups of dedicated rabbanim, have begun to step in—but there is still more to be done.
As we approach Pesach, these questions feel even more poignant. We are about to sit at the Seder and tell the story of leaving Egypt—not only a physical journey, but a movement toward identity, responsibility, and destiny. We celebrate becoming a people who walk toward a future, not away from it.
So it is hard not to wonder: as we prepare to relive Yetziat Mitzrayim, why does the instinct for some feel like running back there—toward comfort, toward the familiar, toward what feels safe?
Perhaps the challenge of this moment is not to criticize, but to teach—to help a new generation understand that love of Israel is not only felt in its easiest moments, but דווקא in its most complicated ones. That being here is not just an experience, but a relationship. And that sometimes, the deepest sense of home is forged דווקא when staying is hard.
“וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ” – You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Vayikra 19:18).
May this love extend not only to one another, but also to the land and to the people who call it home.