One of the highlights of a conference held in the US last week was a panel discussion featuring three of the most distinguished and influential figures in American Jewish life.
Their conversation surveyed the complex challenges facing American Jewry today: the recent election of Mamdani as mayor of New York City; the rising antisemitism and anti-American rhetoric promoted by prominent media personalities; the troubling growth of extremism on both the political right and left; and the broader cultural shift from a politics of responsibility to a politics of resentment.
Recognizing how these developments threaten the next generation, the moderator asked the panelists what Jewish ideas and Jewish leadership can offer in response. The answers were thoughtful. They emphasized the need to help our students reconnect with the Bible, to encourage them to reclaim their Judaism, and to deepen their engagement with Jewish practice. One panelist cited Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s observation: “People respect Jews who respect Judaism.”
They also stressed the centrality of Jewish education—especially day-school education—and insisted that Zionism and Israel be taught as essential elements of Jewish identity.
Finally, they argued for cultivating in our children, through lived experience, the dual commitments of being patriotic Americans and proud Jews, making clear that “Americanism and Judaism” are “completely fused.”
I wholeheartedly agree with much of this vision. Teaching our children the central ideas of the Bible, encouraging them to embrace Jewish observance, and strengthening Jewish education—all these are absolutely critical. As someone who has spent his entire career in Jewish education, I affirm these passionately. And as someone who made aliyah over thirty years ago, I welcome their insistence that Zionism be integral to the Jewish educational mission.
Yet I respectfully, but firmly, disagree with one major assertion: the idea that Americanism and Judaism are fully “fused,” and that we must teach our students to be both patriotic Americans and proud Jews. Here is why.
For the Bible, Israel is not a distant place for which we express support from afar or visit on occasion, but where we are meant to live and realize God’s vision.
God’s very first command to Abraham is, “Go forth from your native land… to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1–3). Embedded in this command is God’s plan to create, through Abraham, a great nation—one that would bring blessing to all humanity.
To be a “nation” implies a political and territorial identity, defined by sovereignty, governance and land. It is for this reason that God repeatedly promises Abraham both offspring and the Land of Canaan (Genesis 12:7; 13:14–15; 17:1–8; 22:17–18), a promise later reaffirmed to Isaac (Genesis 26:2–5) and to Jacob (Genesis 28:3–4, 13–14; 35:10–12).
This week’s parasha, Vayeitzei, underscores the centrality of the Land. Jacob flees the Land both for his safety and to find a wife, spending 14 years in Haran building his family. When those years end, he chooses to remain an additional 6 years to secure material provisions (Genesis 30:30). Since Jacob is not meant to build his life outside the Land, God intervenes and tells him, “Arise, leave this land and return to your native land” (Genesis 31:13).
The Book of Exodus begins with the fulfillment of God’s first promise—abundant offspring (Exodus 1:7)—and immediately moves toward the second promise: the Land. God instructs Moses to tell the enslaved Israelites that He will bring them “out of the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites…” (Exodus 3:16–17). After the Exodus and the revelation at Sinai, the people set out on the long-awaited journey to the Land (Numbers 10:11–33).
Though their journey is delayed forty years, and though Moses himself will not enter, the Book of Deuteronomy is his final charge: preparing the people to live faithfully, morally, and religiously in that Land.
But the Land is not simply a narrative backdrop—it is embedded in the very structure of the mitzvot. Numerous commandments are inextricably linked to life in the Land: the Sabbatical year, agricultural tithes, laws of gleanings, and many others. The festivals reflect the rhythms of the Land’s agricultural cycle (Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16:9-17). Even tzedakah is presented within the social realities of the Land (Deuteronomy 15:4–11). The Torah’s laws of warfare, kingship, justice, and governance (Deuteronomy 7, 16–17, 20) presuppose a sovereign people living in their homeland.
Moreover, the Torah repeatedly links observance of all the commandments to dwelling in the Land (Deuteronomy 4:5; 6:1; 12:1), and it describes exile from the Land as the ultimate punishment for abandoning God (Leviticus 26:33-38; Deuteronomy 4:25-27, 28:63-68).
Though history forced us into exile and transformed us into a predominantly diaspora people, we never ceased yearning, praying, and striving for return. And to the best of my knowledge, nothing in the Bible—save perhaps the Book of Esther—or in the traditional Jewish liturgy, suggests that Jewish life in the diaspora is intended to be permanent or ideal.
Rabbi Sacks captured this truth succinctly:
“Judaism is the code of a self-governing society… a religion of redemption, not salvation. It is about the shared spaces of our collective lives, not an interior drama of the soul… because Judaism is also the code of a society it is also about the social virtues: righteousness… justice… loving-kindness… and compassion… These structure the template of biblical law, which cover all aspects of life of society, its economy, its welfare system, its education, family life, employer-employee relations, the protection of the environment and so on… Judaism is the constitution of a self-governing nation… Without a land and a state, Judaism is a shadow of itself. In exile, God might still live in the hearts of Jews but not in the public square, in the justice of the courts, the morality of the economy and the humanitarianism of everyday life.”
(Future Tense, 135–36)
If we truly want to teach our children to value the Bible, to embrace Judaism, and to live proudly as Jews, then we must not offer them an exile-based Judaism that is, in Rabbi Sacks’s words, “a shadow of itself.” Instead, we should teach them—and model for them—that the past and the future of Judaism and the Jewish people lie not in the diaspora but in Israel, the one and only Jewish homeland.
Shabbat Shalom.
