I Love Israel More Than Anyone Can Hate It |
The truth about why I love Israel
Today I had an important interview. The interviewer asked if I plan to stay in Israel. I told him, ‘Yes. I prefer the culture, and my family is here.’
That is only part of the story.
I was born in Tel Aviv in 1992 and grew up in Florida. I call both places home.
My father was born in what became Israel in 1946, two years before the state was reborn. When people say, “My grandmother is older than Israel,” I get to respond, “Oh yeah? My dad is older than Israel. I exist because of Israel. Deal with it.”
Israel is the reason I exist.
It is where my family fled when antisemitism gained power yet again in Europe. In Lithuania, where part of my family briefly diaspora’d, more than 95 percent of the Jewish population was murdered. In Poland, where another branch diaspora’d, 90 percent were murdered.
In Israel there are cemeteries with headstones dedicated to entire villages where families were slaughtered. The bodies were never found. The victims share one memorial stone for the town they came from. There is nowhere else in the world where I can mourn that part of my family.
Jews are practical people. Infamously neurotic, perhaps, but practical. We saw most of our population wiped out whether they had lived in Israel for centuries or migrated here later.
As such, Israelis understand something very clearly: we built an oasis.
Israel was built so there would never again be Crusades, Farhud or pogroms wiping out Jewish communities. That angers those who want to wipe us out. Irony is lost on extremists who openly fantasize about nuking our country in the name of “peace.”
Judaism does not proselytize. But I do believe in proselytizing my countries and their values. I defend both Israel and the United States because they deserve defending. I defend them because I am blessed to appreciate secular rights and economic prosperity, in a world where those things are disappearing elsewhere.
So let me shift from the bittersweet reasons I love Israel to the sweeter ones.
Israel is........