Yesterday, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I sort of cheated (not in the way I celebrated or didn’t celebrate the holiday, but in the way I treated the blog). Instead of writing something new, I reposted something I had previously put on the blog, something having to do with Israel and Jews, and how some conflate the two and the dangers which, in my opinion, that conflation increases.

I thought (and still think) that it was an appropriate post to re-issue on Rosh Hashanah. And, in fact, it was more appropriate than I thought. For two reasons – one having to do with the sermon I heard at services yesterday morning, the other having to do with a conversation that I had yesterday with one of our Israeli house guests and close friends, who are spending the week with us.

In order to explain this, we have to start with one group of facts with which everyone agrees. The governments of both Israel and the United States are far from what we wish they would be, and Jews in both places are facing unsettling, and dangerous (or potentially dangerous) circumstances.

Let’s start with Rabbi Alexander’s (Aaron Alexander, Adas Israel Synagogue) sermon. I can’t say that I understand exactly what he was trying to say, but in general I can describe in this way: if you are a Jew, you are a Jew, you are part of a historical community and a special one, you are proud of what Jews have accomplished, and you are sometimes embarrassed by how Jews act. And this description is an apt one, whether you are a Jew living in Israel or a Jew living in the United States. But, he said, describing a conversation he had with another rabbi, an activist rabbi, in Jerusalem in June, It may be possible to conclude, as the Israeli rabbi did, that, with all of the problems facing Jews in Israel these days (those caused by neighboring enemies, and those caused by misguided Israelis), it is more wrenching to be a Jew in the United States than in Israel. The reason, he was told, is that Jews in Israel know they are home, and the many Jews in America today wonder if they really are accepted American insiders, or if at some point, like Jews so many times in earlier eras, they will have one day pack up and move out and on. And Rabbi Alexander, I think, thought the Israeli rabbi might be right.

Well, if I heard Rabbi Alexander correctly (as I describe it above), I have to say that everything that he said was foreign to my way of thinking. I have been to Israel nine or ten times (something like that), I have many friends there, I have worked for and contributed to Israeli non-profits and institutions, I feel comfortable there, but I don’t feel “at home” there, and I don’t feel it is my country. On the other hand, having been born in America and lived here my entire life, with my entire family here, I feel as American as Donald Trump does or Charlie Kirk did, and I don’t feel insecure, even as I see the rising antisemitism. It is just one of the many problems in the Trumpian America that must be addressed.

And yes, the possibility of deciding to move elsewhere has been a topic of occasional conversation with friends for several years, and obtaining foreign passports, and especially passports which would give you EU citizenship, is a prized activity. And, yes, I have known many Jews over the years who have moved to Israel, or who have had children move to Israel, but I don’t see those moves as affecting my own thinking about my future and my family’s future.

Our houseguest friends, like most people I know in Israel, are politically to the left and have no warm feelings for Bibi Netanyahu or his government. They are an uncomfortable minority in Israel; they recognize that. And, as one told me, the actions of the Israeli government these days are often extremely embarrassing. This, by the way, is the same thing that Aaron Alexander said in his sermon.

I told one of our Israeli friends about Rabbi Alexander’s sermon. About his conversation with the rabbi in Israel who said that he thought it would be harder to be a Jew in America these days than to be a Jew in Israel, in spite of drones and rockets. She looked at me quite askance, I think in disbelief. Her reaction was the same as mine, although she had one additional reaction because she was an Israeli.

She told me that many Israelis now look at Israel the way Rabbi Alexander’s Israeli rabbi friend believes American Jews look at America. They, in the Zionist homeland, look at Israel as if it, with all of its changes, is no longer “their country”. It has changed so much. And they wonder how long they, or their children, will be able comfortably to stay there. And she pointed out the large number of Israelis (largely young, and largely well educated) who have left the country in recent years, either (in their own minds) temporarily or permanently. What worries some American Jews about their future in America is also worrying some Israeli Jews about their future in Israel. And she told me this as someone whose family has been in Israel long before Israel was a state.

I am not going to draw any conclusions here, or even hint at any. I am just reporting what I have heard, and how I feel. You can draw your own conclusions if you wish. Or you can wait and just see what happens,