“Everything depends on how we live in our land and how we behave here. Our brethren in the Diaspora want to see here what is missing there in the cultural and spiritual and moral life of Galut [Diaspora]; … If they do not feel that our values here are unwavering, we will not find a path to their hearts … Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] must give the Diaspora something more than Jews of any other country can give: something with a spirit of holiness, above and beyond the usual and commonplace.”

So said Chaim Nachman Bialik in Tel Aviv in January 1926 as he prepared to tour the United States and raise money for the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Bialik’s aspirations for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel beg the question: Has Israel lived up to Bialik’s and the founders of the Jewish state’s expectations and dreams?

In many ways it has. Israel remains a parliamentary democracy, though Israel needs a constitution that delineates clearly the separation of governmental powers and that spells out human rights for all its citizens and inhabitants.

Israel absorbed millions of Jews from around the world, built great universities and a thriving modern culture. It is a world center of innovation in medical, communications, environmental, and agricultural technologies; pharmaceuticals; computer software development; and start-up companies of every kind. Israel claims more PhDs per capita than any other country in the world, and despite multiple wars and terrorism, Israel’s economy has attracted international companies and businesses to build there. After the murderous Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 Israel re-established itself as the most powerful and strategic military in the Middle East.

Despite these significant accomplishments, Israel today is not the source of pride and inspiration for a portion of US Jews. Why?

Part of the answer has to do with what North America has become for Jews. Here we are beneficiaries of a vibrant and multicultural society that respects religious and minority rights despite the dramatic rise in antisemitism in recent years and the fact, according to polls, that American Jews are feeling increasingly unsafe. Nevertheless, many Jews no longer feel they need Israel as an anchor for their Jewish identity. Some feel that Israel has taken them for granted and that their voice and concerns are not heard by the Israeli government. Others have turned away because of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians there, and Jewish settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

I was born a year after the state was established and raised on “the crisis narrative” of Jewish history. The Holocaust hovered as a dark shadow over my childhood and has been a defining existential experience that taught Jews that when we are powerless, we are vulnerable to destruction. I was raised with the understanding that Israel could not lose a single war and that it had to fight for its existence over and over again. It had to have the strongest military and maintain its qualitative military and technological edge over every other Middle East nation. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, its survival has been the number one priority for Israelis and world Jewry and the need for security the number one policy requirement of every Israeli ruling coalition government.

We come to this crisis mode honestly. We Jews are a traumatized people from experiences ancient and modern. Our wounds are deep and our memories are long. Our closets are filled with ghosts of antisemites past and present. We understand that Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Palestinian extremists are foes committed to Israel’s destruction.

The crisis narrative has served to unify world Jewry and propel us to activism on Israel’s behalf. However, the crisis model is no longer adequate by itself to assure the loyalty and commitment to Israel of many diaspora Jews who do not respond well to traditional aggressive Israeli advocacy. They are less worried about overt military threats and delegitimization, and are more concerned with social justice, equal rights, religious pluralism, and the compassionate treatment of those on the periphery of Israeli society: the Palestinians of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Israel’s poor, its Arab citizens, women, and immigrant workers.

Dr. Tal Becker, an associate at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, has written:

“The conventional [crisis-based] narrative is both narrow and shallow. Narrow, in that its focus is on the physical existence of the Jewish people in their homeland, not on the breadth of what this sovereign project might offer for the collective Jewish experience. Shallow, in that it pursues Jewish survival for its own sake but tells no deeper story as to why that survival is important and worth fighting for.”

Dr. Becker argued for a values-based conversation about Israel that differs in four ways from the crisis narrative that has dominated discussion about Israel since 1948.

First, the values-based conversation asks what it will take to address Israel’s challenges and build a moral and just society that reflects in policies our liberal values as a people and the democratic Jewish state. In a crisis-driven narrative, how minorities are treated is unlikely to be addressed unless these minorities are a threat to Israel’s survival or a propaganda weapon for Israel’s opponents. But in a values-based conversation, the way a Jewish society relates to its minorities is an independent question that commands our attention.

Second, the crisis model always turns on the measures the Israeli government and military need to repel the dangers Israel faces. However, Judaism deals with values and reasoned argument. In a democratic society we have to be able to accept the Jew who questions the propriety of Israel’s forceful response against Israel’s enemies and its West Bank settlement policies and not presume that such a person is committing an act of betrayal against the Jewish people, any more than the Jew who supports these policies without a second thought is guilty of moral bankruptcy.  

A Jew’s intent, however, is a critical element in this conversation. Criticism of Israeli government policies from love of the country, its people, and respect for and support of the Zionist project is far different than criticism from hate and rejection of the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own in our historic homeland. The vast majority of North American Jewry, according to polls, believes that one can be loyal to Israel and critical of its government policies just as they can be critical of their own government and remain loyal to their country.

Third, a values-based conversation focuses on the meaning of one’s criticism of Israel. In a crisis model, any criticism of Israel and its policies is problematic. If the only focus of Israel’s policies is on confronting the external dangers, public Jewish criticism is regarded as demoralizing and fodder for Israel’s enemies. In the crisis model, the plurality of Jewish voices is regarded as a mortal danger to the survival of Israel and the Jewish people. A values conversation, to the contrary, supports the plurality of voices if criticism comes from love and not hate.

The love-based argument is nothing new to the Zionist project and Judaism itself. However, in recent years intolerance of diverse opinions has grown dramatically within Israel and has bled into discussions about Israel in North America.

Put in a different way, for those operating from a crisis-mindset, Jewish unity is defined narrowly by the common threats we face as a people and nation. A values narrative regards Jewish unity in terms of a common moral and social justice engagement that unites our people, not because we agree with each other or because the one overriding issue is survival but based on a shared commitment as Jews and supporters and lovers of the Jewish people and state to engage together in a complicated, divisive, agonizing, and exhilarating process of writing the next chapter of Jewish history in a way that is worthy of our tradition and experience as a people.

Fourth, the moral imperative of the values narrative is Kedoshim tihiyu – holiness. If the conversation shifted out of the crisis mode to a values mode, a new Zionist paradigm reflecting a new stage in Zionist, Israeli and Jewish history would emerge. This new stage, per Dr. Becker, is “Aspirational Zionism.”

Aspirational Zionism asks these questions:

How do Jewish values augment Israel’s democratic and pluralistic society? How do the moral aspirations of the biblical prophet and the compassionate impulse of the rabbinic tradition interface with contemporary ethical challenges? How do Jews in Israel and around the world fight the sinister intentions of our enemies bent on our destruction without sacrificing our moral sensibilities? How do we as a people genuinely pursue peace and diplomacy as a moral and quintessentially Jewish obligation despite the threat of war and terrorism? How does Israel respond ethically in an era in which the Jewish people have reclaimed sovereignty and power for the first time in two thousand years in our historic homeland? And how do we support our Israeli brothers and sisters while advocating on behalf of the equal rights and dignity of Israel’s minorities and the Palestinian people?

It is distressing that inside Israel, many pressing moral issues have been set aside by successive governments operating in the crisis mode. They argue that the crisis necessarily dictates the choices the government and security forces make. When the crisis subsides, they say, Israel will be able to deal with the growth in poverty, the second-class treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens, the abuse of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the soul-crushing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ironically, it seems that the Jewish world’s obsession with a crisis-based approach is creating its own crisis. The lack of sufficient attention to values is alienating many diaspora Jews, young and senior, and is harming Israel’s image and legitimacy on the world stage.

In reading the words of Bialik, I am struck by how true a statement it was when he uttered it in 1926. We need a new focus in Jewish life relative to Israel – a new kind of Zionism, aspirational, moral, liberal, and democratic that emphasizes Jewish values beyond crisis, beyond the vagaries of war, terrorism, and occupation, and beyond the exigencies of the moment that fulfills the raison d’être of the Jew in history, to be a just and compassionate people in our historic homeland.

This blog is edited from a chapter in my book Finding Your Moral Compass – Jewish Values for the 21^st Century (Toronto: University of Toronto New Jewish Press, 2026), 255-67.