We arrived in the United States after a full year of studying, reading, discussing, and trying to understand North American Jewry up close—its history, its complexity, and the broad spectrum of identities, denominations, communities, and views that shape it.

But after all the books, lectures, and articles, one truth became clearer than anything else: there is no substitute for meeting people face to face.

No article can replace conversation.

No lecture can replace sitting across from another Jew and hearing the fears, hopes, frustrations, and questions that shape his or her world.

That is precisely why the Ruderman Program matters so deeply.

For the past 13 years, the Ruderman Family Foundation has been sending Israeli opinion leaders to encounter North American Jewry in a serious, direct, and personal way. Not through slogans. Not through headlines. Not through social-media arguments. But through people, communities, and real conversations.

After this journey, I understand more than ever why that mission is essential.

Because the encounter was important.

At times, it was even jarring.

As the conversations continued, one difficult feeling became increasingly clear: a significant part of American Jewry simply does not understand what it means to be Israeli.

It does not understand what it means to grow up in a country where an exploding bus is not a history lesson, but a childhood memory.

It does not understand what it means to be a mother accompanying her child to the IDF induction center, knowing that from that moment on, her heart no longer fully belongs to her.

It does not understand what it means to wear a uniform, stand at a checkpoint, enter Gaza, serve on the northern border, or live in a country where every generation is called upon, again and again, to defend with its own body the very existence of the Jewish people.

It does not understand what it means to be Jewish not merely as a cultural idea, a communal ritual, or a comfortable moral position on a college campus, but as a living, bleeding, demanding national reality that requires decisions.

And that is where the rupture lies.

The gap between Israel and parts of American Jewry is not merely political. It is not only a debate over one government or another, over settlements, Netanyahu, Trump, Biden, or the two-state solution.

The gap is much deeper.

It is a gap of identity.

Not only the identity of the State........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)