This Sunday, we leave for Israel.
It will be Naama’s fourth trip. Leor’s second. But this one feels different. The world feels different. We feel different.
Since October 7th, I’ve questioned many things. I’ve wept in ways I haven’t wept before. I’ve felt grief that turned to rage, and rage that turned into prayer. I’ve watched the world shift beneath our feet — old certainties eroded, old friendships strained, and moral clarity suddenly in short supply.
And yet, in that churning storm of doubt and pain, some truths have only become more vivid. My love for Israel is one of them. Not a love built on slogans or simplicity. Not an easy, uncritical love. But a love as ancient as the land itself — stubborn, weathered, sacred. A love that does not wait for perfection. A love that is unconditional.
We are going to Israel because it’s not enough to speak from afar. It’s not enough to read the headlines or light a candle. Presence matters. Proximity matters. I want my children to see the faces, to walk the streets, to feel the pulse of a country that is theirs even if they don’t live there. Because Israel cannot just be a place we defend with our words — it must be a place we know in our bones.
For thousands of years — from the time of the Bible until 1948 — we prayed to return home. We asked God to “gather us from the four corners of the earth.” We broke a glass at every wedding to remember that our joy was incomplete without Jerusalem. We faced east when we prayed. We sang “Next Year in Jerusalem” even as we died in exile.
We were exiled, expelled, hunted, and humiliated. And through it all, we never stopped praying. Never stopped dreaming. Never stopped insisting that we belong somewhere — not as tolerated guests, but as a people with a home, a language, a government, and a future.
And then — somehow — the dream came true.
Naama and Leor, your great-grandparents lived through that miracle. On both sides of our family, they came to this country and to Israel with little more than memory and determination. They survived pogroms, poverty, and war. They worked harder than we’ll ever understand. They built lives out of dust. Because they believed in a future where their children and grandchildren would never again be at the mercy of others.
That future is you.
But here’s the danger of miracles: we start to treat them like normal. We forget what they cost. We take them for granted.
That’s why we’re going. Because Israel isn’t just another country. It’s a miracle with baggage. A dream with borders. A prayer made real — with all the messiness and pain that real life brings. And because it is real, it makes mistakes. Sometimes painful ones. But that doesn’t make it any less ours.
That’s the difference between loving a place and belonging to it. Belonging means you stay even when it breaks your heart. Belonging means you speak with love when you’re proud, and with honesty when you’re angry. Belonging means you don’t walk away. You lean in.
There are people — some on the left, some on the right, some even in our own community — who want to make love for Israel conditional. They will love it if it fits their values. If it aligns with their politics. If it behaves. But that’s not love. That’s ideology in disguise.
Real love is what you feel for family. It’s the kind of love that sits by a hospital bed. That weeps and fights and forgives. That insists, “Even if you fail, I won’t walk away.”
Naama, Leor — Israel is family. You were born into this relationship. And now, as you grow, you have to decide what to do with that inheritance. I’m not asking you to worship a country. I’m asking you to show up for your people. To understand that our survival — your survival — is bound up in the existence of a Jewish homeland. And to know that being Jewish in this world has never been easy, but it has always been sacred.
Since October 7th, there has been a terrible irony: even as Israel has suffered more than it has in decades, many Jews around the world have grown quieter. More cautious. More afraid. Some have questioned whether we can still defend Israel’s existence while acknowledging its pain and complexity. I understand that instinct — but I reject its conclusion.
Now is not the time to be silent. Now is the time to be present.
We’re going to Israel not to make a political statement, but a spiritual one. To stand with our people. To say with our feet what our hearts already know: We are not guests in the world. We are home.
I want you both to walk through Jerusalem and know that your prayers are echoing off the stones your ancestors touched. I want you to stand at the Kotel and feel the weight of 3,000 years of longing. I want you to breathe in the air and realize: this isn’t just a place on a map — this is part of who you are.
Because Israel isn’t just where Jews live. It’s where we remember who we are. And who we must still become.
So yes, we are going. Because history isn’t finished. And because love — real love — shows up.