This week in Washington, at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), I led a session called “the Peoplehood Paradigm.” Our session was based on recent JFNA research which suggests that increasing numbers of American Jews and Israelis describe one another as extended family. The research also highlights places where American and Israeli Jews agree and disagree about their relationship and the voice American Jews should have in decisions that shape Israel’s future.
To open our session, Rabbi Doron Perez, president of the World Zionist Organization, shared the thesis of his new book, Smallest Nation, Largest Family. After losing his son Daniel on October 7 and feeling the love and support from across the Jewish world, Rabbi Perez realized that “before [Jews] were a religion, we were a people — and before we were a people, we were a family.”
I haven’t stopped thinking about that line. It may be the best way to understand who we are. Family dynamics are baked into the human condition, and they’ve been part of the Jewish story since the sibling and parent-child relationships of Genesis.
This helps to explain why Jews argue with one another so fiercely: we care so much, there is so much at stake, and nothing angers us more than vehement disagreement with the choices, values, or behaviors of the people closest to us. We feel bound up with them and responsible for them — the actions of our family affect us and reflect on us, whether we like it or not.
This also explains why the State of Israel, and the outcome of the Israeli elections, not yet determined, matter so much to us here in Greater Boston.
On Tuesday, as I watched the swearing-in of Israel’s 26th Knesset, I felt both trepidation and a sense of possibility. Trepidation that some of the most problematic figures from the most recent coalition might return to positions of power; or that Israelis might again find themselves stuck and unable to form a government at all. And hope that a new Knesset means things are not fixed, that new alliances can be formed, that there can be an opportunity to reset relationships — within Israel and between Israel and the U.S.
As the two great centers of Jewish civilization in the 21st century, our futures — as Israeli and North American Jews —are intertwined. My vision of a strong, joyful local Jewish community necessarily includes connection to, and responsibility for, a thriving Jewish, democratic state and our family who live there. My Zionism is aspirational: the work of building a sovereign Jewish state did not end in 1948. It began.
Zionism doesn’t ask us to love Israel only when it makes us comfortable. It has always been characterized by diverse viewpoints about how best to realize the promise of a Jewish state. Zionism asks us to hold up the vision of Israel’s Declaration of Independence: a safe, secure homeland for Jews around the world, and a state grounded in freedom, justice, peace, and equality for all its citizens.
This requires courageous, values-driven leaders, and that is my hope for Israel’s new government. In Kol Dodi Dofek, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik distinguished between brit goral, the covenant of fate, and brit yeud, the covenant of destiny. Fate is what happens to us, the shared suffering that binds us whether we choose it or not. Destiny is what we choose to build together. These past few years have proven that we are still bound together by the covenant of fate. The question now is whether we — Israeli and North American Jews — can recommit to the covenant of destiny: not only shared suffering, but shared purpose; not only a shared past, but a shared future we build together.
That will take work. The same JFNA research shows what helps: Israelis who have real contact with American Jews are far more likely to feel a sense of commonality. We need more real contact and authentic relationships. We will have to be curious about each other and learn from each other. And we will have to learn to argue productively, from a place of love and concern—just the way family should.