Our peoplehood was firmly established at Sinai – where the Jewish nation gathered “like one person with one heart” and where we received our Divine mission, and where all Jews became, in the words of the Talmud, “guarantors for one another.” Even as we were flung into exile, scattered across the globe, we remained – and have always been – one People, “am Yisrael”, one family, “beit Yisrael.”

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The modern State of Israel is the heir to all of this history, and to the national destiny, mission and purpose of the Jewish people which flows from it. It is a country that gives meaning and expression to an idea – it is not simply a political entity operating within designated borders.

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Israel’s founders understood this deeper significance, manifested it in practical ways – most vividly through the “Law of Return,” which grants any Jew on earth the right to move to Israel at any point and receive Israeli citizenship. From the extraordinary efforts to resettle Soviet Jewry after the breakup of the USSR, to the dramatic airlifting of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan and Ethiopia in the late 80s and early 90s, Israel’s message to Jews of any country who are in distress or in need has always been: We are here for you.

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And those feelings are mutual, that message has always been reciprocated. From the very beginning, the entire enterprise of the State of Israel has been a partnership with the Diaspora; a partnership in which Jews around the world have invested enormous resources – money, political capital, even blood.

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Again, I speak from the perspective of the South African Jewish community, but the same would apply to virtually any other Diaspora community. At the time of the War of Independence, South African Jews volunteered in droves to join the IDF and protect the nascent cou

We must repair the Israel-Diaspora breach caused by COVID-19

There’s a breach here. But it can be repaired.

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