I don't know why, but as young as I can remember myself, as a yong girl living an assimilated life in the Chicago suburbs, I felt a connection to Israel so powerful that I knew I'd move there one day. And I did, almost 25 years ago, and since October 7 I feel pulled to connect to the diaspora Jewry I left behind and do what I can to bring you all here. It really is our place, and with all its hardships (and they are real)- there's really no other place to be a Jew. I used to resist that idea, but it really is true. And it is like a marriage- when you really love someone/someland--you don't leave them just cause its hard.
And there is really is so much beauty, and miracles are daily here. The country's existence is a miracle, and the "unseeable" is tangible.
Gorgeously said. I will never understand my connection. I don't consider myself religious or even know if I believe in god but the first time I was at the Wailing Wall I burst into tears. It's unexplainable.
Extraordinary. I don't know Matthew, so who am I to say this is honest and authentic. I'll say as a writer that it reads from a voice that couldn't sound more honest and authentic and deeply felt, beyond the local and personal, to reach into the soulful history of peoplehood, and that's both real and beautifully artful. Look how it resonates with other commenters, and with me, who has felt so much of it, who will at this point for multiple reasons never live in Israel but who still dearly hopes to someday get there.
I enjoyed reading your words. I loved it! Please come visit Israel and all of us here. It will be life changing and really pull together all those wonderful feelings you have expressed. It's just "Only in Israel," can you really get it. Thank you for writing this warm and honest piece.
Wonderful! This created an unseen connection to my life and the diaspora.
I left the US 40 years ago at the age of 23 to visit my parents and brothers who had made Aliya. Despite going to reform temple at least once a week and Hebrew school Wednesday afternoon and Sunday school, I never thought much about being Jewish, I just was along with the majority of people in my small Long Island town. I left for the University of Florida the summer before my 18th birthday and was assigned a room in an all girls dorm with no Jews on my floor. They became my people and life went on. My family moved to Israel in my sophomore year, and life went on as usual with Jewishness Unnoted, incidental. At 23 I became am Israeli, got married, had kids built a career, The First Gulf War, The Second Gulf War, two intifadas, life went on. October 7th came and changed everything, but that is a different story. This is a story of Diaspor and identity. After 40 years my short diaspora experience came down to Deli food and leaving Sunday school to buy potato knishes.
Reading this created a retroactive bond with the long lost diaspora Jew I was. I can see me at 12 after spending the summer in Israel for my Bat Mitzva at Temple when news of The Yom Kippur war arrived.
It was there all along, a deep Jewish Diaspora life I had not noticed while living it then shed as I grew up and made my Israeli life. After reading this, I see it clearly and love it.
Thank you so much, Dibbie. I am so glad to read your note and your story. These are some hard days and we must find peace and love in community. Jewish community
How beautiful. This resonates strongly with me and I found tears forming several times while reading. Thank you for including this piece in Judith. Ahava Israel
Late to the party. This reaches me where I live, as a rebellious wandering New York Jew who has never been to Israel and who, for various reasons, might never be able to go. But I love my Jewish community and the large tent of my very hippy-ish California temple with my whole heart. My love and longing for home reaches around the world and is also right here. It is indeed a mystery and a miracle. Thank you, Matthew, and thanks also to Howard for publishing this beautiful piece.
"What I did understand was that the land was everything for him, that he wanted to be back inside of the land, with his people that were my people and not my people. It’s true, I will always have so much love for Ya’akov, and, at the same time, I will never know what to do with it even though we are that far apart and maybe that is what Israel is. Loving something so deeply because it has always been inside of you even though you’ve never been there."
I stumbled across Judith Mag and right to this beautiful essay on your inexplicable draw to Israel. I’m so grateful I had this draw as a young mom. My husband and I (casually observant Jews, though he did go on to become a chazzan and I the ED of a synagogue) took the kids on a big trip to Israel in the early 2000s. And like your grandad, my first memory is still the one that makes the hair on my arms prickle: from
my window seat inside a dark plane on our midnight descent to Ben Gurion - my first glimpse of the familiar contour of the Levant all lit up with pockets of urban lights, wandering down from Beirut, to Haifa to Herzylia to Tel Aviv. Since then I have made Aliyah, though I don’t live in Israel because my husband and I still work, but I go back and forth a few times per year now. I was en route to Israel on 10/7 from Berlin. My flight was cancelled but I decided to go anyway and found a last seat on a El Al flight and got there two days later. The post 10/7 days in Tel Aviv are some of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I’ve been back four times since. And despite a effin war going on, every time I land I feel a sense of relief. Why? Because life in the Diaspora is hell. Keep your head on a swivel.
What a marvelous exploration of the complex connections. Howard, I so see why you chose the essay by Matthew for publication. I, too, as Jew raised by orthodox Jews and who has not been to Israel and with a daughter who is a professor of Jewish History and Literature at the U. of Chicago and has been many, many times, teaches and lectures there—I have complex feelings about Israel and a deep connection at the same time.
I recall this comment by Elie Weisel that I’ve quoted elsewhere: “As a Jew, I need Israel. More precisely, I can live as a Jew outside Israel but not without Israel.” —Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), American author born in Romania, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
And now we are faced with the continuing and intensified threat to Israel, the anger over Gaza, anger from all directions for the Israeli hostages and, indeed, for the enormous loss of those who live in Gaza.
I don't know why, but as young as I can remember myself, as a yong girl living an assimilated life in the Chicago suburbs, I felt a connection to Israel so powerful that I knew I'd move there one day. And I did, almost 25 years ago, and since October 7 I feel pulled to connect to the diaspora Jewry I left behind and do what I can to bring you all here. It really is our place, and with all its hardships (and they are real)- there's really no other place to be a Jew. I used to resist that idea, but it really is true. And it is like a marriage- when you really love someone/someland--you don't leave them just cause its hard.
And there is really is so much beauty, and miracles are daily here. The country's existence is a miracle, and the "unseeable" is tangible.
Thank you so much. Such power in your words and I agree, The miracle is the mystery and everything.
Gorgeously said. I will never understand my connection. I don't consider myself religious or even know if I believe in god but the first time I was at the Wailing Wall I burst into tears. It's unexplainable.
Thank you, Laurie. So appreciate your kind words. The mystery is everything. THe beauty
Extraordinary. I don't know Matthew, so who am I to say this is honest and authentic. I'll say as a writer that it reads from a voice that couldn't sound more honest and authentic and deeply felt, beyond the local and personal, to reach into the soulful history of peoplehood, and that's both real and beautifully artful. Look how it resonates with other commenters, and with me, who has felt so much of it, who will at this point for multiple reasons never live in Israel but who still dearly hopes to someday get there.
So appreciate your words, A. Jay Adler. I am so glad for your note and that you read the piece.
I enjoyed reading your words. I loved it! Please come visit Israel and all of us here. It will be life changing and really pull together all those wonderful feelings you have expressed. It's just "Only in Israel," can you really get it. Thank you for writing this warm and honest piece.
I will. And thank you for your words, Allyson. I appreciate them deeply.
Wow. I felt this one in my bones.
Wonderful! This created an unseen connection to my life and the diaspora.
I left the US 40 years ago at the age of 23 to visit my parents and brothers who had made Aliya. Despite going to reform temple at least once a week and Hebrew school Wednesday afternoon and Sunday school, I never thought much about being Jewish, I just was along with the majority of people in my small Long Island town. I left for the University of Florida the summer before my 18th birthday and was assigned a room in an all girls dorm with no Jews on my floor. They became my people and life went on. My family moved to Israel in my sophomore year, and life went on as usual with Jewishness Unnoted, incidental. At 23 I became am Israeli, got married, had kids built a career, The First Gulf War, The Second Gulf War, two intifadas, life went on. October 7th came and changed everything, but that is a different story. This is a story of Diaspor and identity. After 40 years my short diaspora experience came down to Deli food and leaving Sunday school to buy potato knishes.
Reading this created a retroactive bond with the long lost diaspora Jew I was. I can see me at 12 after spending the summer in Israel for my Bat Mitzva at Temple when news of The Yom Kippur war arrived.
It was there all along, a deep Jewish Diaspora life I had not noticed while living it then shed as I grew up and made my Israeli life. After reading this, I see it clearly and love it.
This is what good writing can do.
Thank you so much, Dibbie. I am so glad to read your note and your story. These are some hard days and we must find peace and love in community. Jewish community
How beautiful. This resonates strongly with me and I found tears forming several times while reading. Thank you for including this piece in Judith. Ahava Israel
I am so glad, Susan. Thanks for reaching out.
Late to the party. This reaches me where I live, as a rebellious wandering New York Jew who has never been to Israel and who, for various reasons, might never be able to go. But I love my Jewish community and the large tent of my very hippy-ish California temple with my whole heart. My love and longing for home reaches around the world and is also right here. It is indeed a mystery and a miracle. Thank you, Matthew, and thanks also to Howard for publishing this beautiful piece.
"What I did understand was that the land was everything for him, that he wanted to be back inside of the land, with his people that were my people and not my people. It’s true, I will always have so much love for Ya’akov, and, at the same time, I will never know what to do with it even though we are that far apart and maybe that is what Israel is. Loving something so deeply because it has always been inside of you even though you’ve never been there."
This says it all.
Thank you so much for the note, Rosa. Means the world.
You're very welcome, Matthew. I will remember how you phrased it because it's exactly how I feel about Israel.
Matthew: I get it.
I, too, cry in synagogue.
Thank you for this. I am passing it on.
Let's cry forever into joy. Thank you for your kind words, Natania. It means the world.
I stumbled across Judith Mag and right to this beautiful essay on your inexplicable draw to Israel. I’m so grateful I had this draw as a young mom. My husband and I (casually observant Jews, though he did go on to become a chazzan and I the ED of a synagogue) took the kids on a big trip to Israel in the early 2000s. And like your grandad, my first memory is still the one that makes the hair on my arms prickle: from
my window seat inside a dark plane on our midnight descent to Ben Gurion - my first glimpse of the familiar contour of the Levant all lit up with pockets of urban lights, wandering down from Beirut, to Haifa to Herzylia to Tel Aviv. Since then I have made Aliyah, though I don’t live in Israel because my husband and I still work, but I go back and forth a few times per year now. I was en route to Israel on 10/7 from Berlin. My flight was cancelled but I decided to go anyway and found a last seat on a El Al flight and got there two days later. The post 10/7 days in Tel Aviv are some of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I’ve been back four times since. And despite a effin war going on, every time I land I feel a sense of relief. Why? Because life in the Diaspora is hell. Keep your head on a swivel.
Thank you so much for your note, Mary. These are some hard times and community is everything. Faith. I appreciate you reaching out. Means the world.
What a marvelous exploration of the complex connections. Howard, I so see why you chose the essay by Matthew for publication. I, too, as Jew raised by orthodox Jews and who has not been to Israel and with a daughter who is a professor of Jewish History and Literature at the U. of Chicago and has been many, many times, teaches and lectures there—I have complex feelings about Israel and a deep connection at the same time.
I recall this comment by Elie Weisel that I’ve quoted elsewhere: “As a Jew, I need Israel. More precisely, I can live as a Jew outside Israel but not without Israel.” —Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), American author born in Romania, survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
And now we are faced with the continuing and intensified threat to Israel, the anger over Gaza, anger from all directions for the Israeli hostages and, indeed, for the enormous loss of those who live in Gaza.
I feel overwhelmed and yet deeply connected.