After two years meditating on the future of American Jewry, reflecting on faith, exile, and Jewish destiny, I say this with love and urgency: if you are in Israel now, stay. This is home.
To the young American Jewish couples now walking the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Beit Shemesh — studying, learning, and beginning your married lives together — this is a letter born of two years of meditation. Two years of reflection, heartbreak, and clarity about what awaits you if you go back “home.”
Because home, dear brothers and sisters, is not where your passport was issued. Home is where your soul is safe. And that home is here.
When I began this meditation, I wanted to believe that America — my America — was different. That the Jews had finally broken the ancient pattern of exile. That history had changed its tune.
But history never changes; it only repeats itself in more sophisticated language. The same pattern has returned — quieter this time, polite, “progressive,” even righteous in tone.
The universities where your parents proudly sent you now drip with hatred. “From the river to the sea” is not a debate — it is an indictment. The professional world, once a safe haven for Jews, is turning cold. Colleagues avert their eyes; friends grow cautious; your moral worth is questioned if you refuse to apologize for Israel’s right to exist.
October 7 tore away the mask. The slaughter of Jews was not met with outrage — it was met with excuses. When Jews were murdered, many of the “enlightened” explained why it was justified. The same society that wept for every other victim of violence found its empathy gone when the victims were us.
That day exposed the great illusion: America’s golden exile is dimming.
And so I turn to you — the newlyweds living in Israel for a year or two, planning to “go back” when life feels more stable, more practical, more predictable. I beg you: do not go back.
You are already standing on the only soil in the world that does not question your right to stand upon it. You are breathing the air of your ancestors. You are raising your voices in the land that remembers every word of your people’s story.
Yes, Israel is hard. It’s noisy, expensive, and often infuriating. But it is ours. The arguments here are family arguments. The chaos is Jewish chaos. And every frustration is still part of a miracle.
In America, your Jewishness must be managed — measured, softened, explained. Here, it is lived.
Aliyah is no longer a dream of idealists; it is the only rational conclusion of history. Exile is temporary by design. Every exile ends — not with a headline, but with a silence. You are living at the hinge of that ending.
My two-year meditation has made this clear: Jewish life in America is approaching twilight. It still glows — but it glows like the last light before dusk. Meanwhile, here in Israel, the sun keeps rising — bright, harsh, holy, alive.
So before you board that plane back to your “real life,” ask yourself one question:
Why would you leave the only place where being Jewish is not an act of courage, but an act of living?
Stay home. Because this is home.
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