By David Smigel, Staff Writer
Since I returned to America this past summer from my year in Israel, I’ve felt a growing feeling of “wrongness” as I’ve grappled with the guilt and discomfort that comes with leaving our homeland in a state as dire as we’ve seen over this past year. As with everyone around me, I had gone through so much trauma and triumph, engaging actively with the situation at hand at every opportunity while also personally feeling every blow as it came.
For me, the university’s October 7 memorial event was incredibly moving, leading me to relive every crushing moment of that day and reflect on the subsequent months that followed. Nothing could have prepared me for what came the morning after that memorial.
As I sat in my morning shiur, already anticipating bad news from reports I’d read earlier that day, I began receiving rapid alerts on my phone reporting nationwide ballistic missile attacks fired at Israel from Iran. I watched as my notifications were flooded with news cycles, messages from cousins stowing away in bomb shelters with their families and videos of my friends from yeshiva lying exposed on the side of the road as the strikes flew overhead. Seeing them going through that while I sat safe and unaffected in the States made me feel isolated and removed.
When Iran sent hundreds of drones over the border last April, my flight home from Israel was canceled, and I was left stranded (if such a word is even appropriate for being stuck in Israel) right before Pesach. While I felt reasonable worry and frustration, I also felt involved and empowered to be going through the pain of my people directly alongside them. I saw how the attack on our people was also an attack on me; it was personal. I seized that extra week to volunteer and make the most of the opportunity I had been given.
Now, for the first time since the beginning of the war, an ocean away, I felt helpless at the reality that I wasn’t there. I didn’t know how to cope in a place where I couldn’t fully understand the emotions of the day, where it feels like there’s so much less action one can take to fulfill one’s responsibility to contribute to our people in times of hardship. As the country was plunged further into struggle, facing difficulties far beyond what I had seen, I was not there.
Rushing out of shiur and watching masses of other students file into the beit midrash for an urgent recitation of Tehillim, I felt that familiar feeling of community and achdut we’ve all become accustomed to over the course of the year, yet I still couldn’t relate to what had happened in the way I knew I had to. Witnessing that gathering of YU students was powerful and moving, but it left me without a direction or plan going forward. I needed to find a meaningful way I could respond and contribute to the effort and the Israeli public. I was worried the experience could simply end there and I would do nothing about it.
Watching volunteers and continuous support pour into Israel from Jews across the world over the past year, I would often speculate the motivations of so many of these diaspora Jews. I pondered the perceived helplessness, frustration and longing to do more which drove so many of them to fly in and provide assistance in ways that perhaps helped them just as much as it did for Israel. I saw people who wanted to do everything in their power to support the country and recognized that there was no better way to do so than in person. In Israel, I was so involved in turning thought into action; I worked tirelessly and was satisfied knowing I was doing everything I could to play my part. That morning in the beit midrash, it occurred to me that I was no longer capable of making such an impact, no longer as empowered as I had once been to enact meaningful change, yet desperate to do so.
When I first returned, I expected to encounter an America with which I was no longer familiar, and in some ways I was correct. The United States and nations across the globe have, over this past year, become far less hospitable and welcoming to Jews as antisemitism has been allowed to run rampant in the public sphere with a significant increase in antisemitic hate crimes worldwide. I came back to an environment laced with tension and unease over the future of American Jewry. It felt like all anyone could talk about was the growing hostility toward us, the ticking clock on our time here.
Faced with this new reality, I convinced myself that while I wouldn’t be helping Israel directly, I would still be able to fight for my right to live and practice as a proud Religious Zionist Jew in the diaspora and garner support for my ancestral homeland. I told myself there were separate, unique opportunities to do my part from the United States. I hoped to find purpose and fulfill my role regardless of the circumstances.
That morning, it occurred to me that regardless of whatever routes may have been available for me to help, I was not utilizing them. Since returning to America, I had allowed myself to be placated by the relative safety and comforts of a land in which I do not belong. Meanwhile, our brothers and sisters in Israel, our rightful homeland, have continued to face war and discomfort as they battle tirelessly for all of us, for our nation’s right to exist.
Through Elul, the daily sounding of the shofar is meant to act as a “wake-up call,” rousing us to recognize what we are doing wrong and what we can do better. We are meant to evaluate our actions, see where our responsibilities truly lie and where we are failing to fulfill them. Throughout our lives, we are meant to take every experience as one to learn from, an opportunity to reflect and grow as people. A day before Erev Rosh Hashanah, sirens across Israel served as that wake-up call for me. In light of fears that my position was more helpless and selfish than ever, I realized my obligation had not left me.
We must all see that we are placed in our positions with deliberate purpose. This should serve as a reminder that wherever we are, there is something unique we must do to fight the war in which we find ourselves. It’s so easy to grow complacent and to feel helpless and frustrated as the events unfold around us. We must have faith that our struggle is not without purpose and must find our roles and fulfill our duties to our people in whatever ways we can. We have to be active participants as the authors of our history.
I don’t necessarily know exactly where this will take me and I’m still figuring out my next steps. However, we have no right to give up while our brothers and sisters are risking their lives on the front lines fighting for our tomorrow, while our family is hurting and fearing for its future. We must feel with our entire beings all that we are going through together, and we must channel our emotions into action that ensures a better, unified and safe future for our people.
This is our war too. We cannot forget nor deny our responsibility. We have no other choice.
Photo Caption: American and Israeli flags outside Capitol Hill at a rally in D.C. last November
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University