I Know You

From a very early age, perhaps the age of nine or ten, I knew that when I grew up I would move to Israel. The beauty and warmth I experienced in Israel were unlike anything I encountered in America. The spectrum of color seemed wider, the musical scale longer. When I was 16, I went to my Israeli cousins for Passover for the first time. I had yet to understand the tribalist and brotherly love at the heart of Israeli Jewry. I showed up to Cfar Adumim, a village nestled in the desert hills outside Jerusalem, with a polo shirt, khaki pants and not a word of Hebrew. The family was simple and happy. Children ran in circles with boisterous laughter. Kids took care of their siblings and parents spoke to them with tremendous respect, their kind voices shimmering with wonder and joy. Following the holiday, I wrote in my notebook: I have concluded that Cfar Adumim, is the best place I know thus far in my life to raise Jewish kids. The community here is just…thriving, I felt it both in the air and inside me. I feel that raising them up anywhere else would be a sin…I hope to live here someday.

At 23, following four years at Brandeis University and one at Yeshivat Har Etzion, I fulfilled my dream, and the dream of countless ancestors who longed to bask in the red tint of Israeli sunsets. Whenever someone asked, isn’t Israel a war zone? I responded with incredulous confidence: no, it’s nothing like what you see on the news. After I moved to Israel during Covid in 2020, I caught myself complaining to my great Aunt who lived in Jerusalem about the difficulty of integrating during a period of social isolation. Andrew, I have friends who moved here during wars, she said with all the empathy in the world but not a shred of patience. You’ll be fine. Indeed I have been fine. In Israel the highs are higher and the lows are lower than America, and that’s an experience I prefer to the more stable, less volatile alternative abroad.

On the 2020 anniversary of Ezra Schwartz’s murder, a bunch of us from Boston walked half an hour or so to a forest in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, to paint rocks, celebrate Ezra’s life and mourn his death. There I met a middle-aged Swedish lady who had made aliyah a few years prior. I asked her about moving to Israel. If you want to live a private Jewish life, stay in America, she said. It’s more comfortable. But if you want to be part of the nation, we’re waiting for you.

Only in the intervening years have I begun to understand what she meant: not only in superficial ways, living in a place where Jewish holidays are national and the busses wish you a happy Hannukah; but also in deeper ways like the inclusive wedding culture and radical hospitality.

It is hard to articulate the exact relationship between ‘strangers’ in Israel. At the bus stop or coffee shop, the synagogue or movie theater, others are not ‘strangers’ in the usual sense: people with whom you have nothing in common besides basic human qualities like needing food and shelter. But neither is the relationship between ‘strangers’ in Israel ‘family,’ since family describes relations of blood and kin. I think the answer is tribe. We’re a tribe. These are members of your tribe.

It’s hard for Westerners to understand the category of ‘tribe’ because liberal democracies of the 21st century are avowedly post-tribal societies. While Americans busy themselves in self-identifying as Democrats or Lawyers or Graduates of Harvard College, Israeli Jews just call themselves…Jews and Israelis. I call the former categories of identity Thin Affiliation, which are temporary, individual and chosen, and therefore fickle. In contrast, forms of Deep Identity—like religion or nationality—are generational (vertically spanning time), group-based (horizontally spanning people), and received (unchosen). The Jewish People are a tribe—a very deep identity.

That’s why when someone asks me, do you have family in Israel? I can’t help but respond, yes, a few million. That’s why when someone asks me if I know anyone who was killed or kidnapped, I’m puzzled by the question, and can’t help but responding: I know all of them. If you still don’t understand, consider the tiny size of Israel and this brilliant post:

I don't know you, but I saw you at that bar. I don't know you, but you took my parking spot. I don't know you, but our parents are friends. I don't know you, but I can hear you playing volleyball at the beach. I don't know you, but your smile made me smile. I don't know you, but we argued in a Whatsapp group. I don't know you, but we ate together at Chabad. I don't know you, but you almost ran me over with your scooter. I don't know you, but you were once my waitress. I don't know you, but you gave me your seat on the bus. I don't know you, but I saved your placed in line at the bank or post office. I don't know you, but we learned Torah together. I don't know you, but we stood together at Mt. Sinai. I don't know you, but I know you. I don't know you, but I love you. I don't know you, but I will always remember you.

For me this statement encapsulates the visceral bond we Israelis, indeed Jews, share. I may not know you, but I know you. That’s why I feel dead inside for the 1,300+ blameless civilians slaughtered by Hamas, even if I didn’t ‘know’ them. That’s why I feel like my soul has be ripped out of my body, or worse, torched. It’s why I and so many other Israelis and Jews around the world will never be the same. These terrorist animals smelt Jewish blood. Their murderous eyes were bent on causing Jewish suffering. It could have been me. It could have been my family. It could have been any of us.