Since October 7, the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora stands in sharper focus. Not because it fractured but because it was tested. In moments of crisis, rhetoric gives way to conduct, and solidarity reveals itself not in words but in action.
October 7 clarified commitment. When the test arrived, Jews responded with action rather than absence. They mobilized resources, showed up physically, spoke with clarity, and absorbed cost without retreat. By this measure, the bond between Israel and the Diaspora did not weaken. It strengthened.
A single story
In Jerusalem in December, Jewish leaders from across the world came together as the J50, convened by Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry amid war and uncertainty. The conversations were serious and direct. A shared sense of burden and responsibility emerged.
Israel and the Diaspora do not move along separate tracks. We form a single story, unfolding in different places, under different pressures, but shaped by the same obligations of nationhood and fate.
The evidence reaches far beyond meeting rooms. In November 2023, hundreds of thousands of Jews and allies filled the National Mall in Washington, DC, in the largest pro-Israel gathering in American history.
In the months that followed October 7, American Jews mobilized more than a billion dollars for Israel’s relief and recovery. These actions were not symbolic gestures. They reflected their seriousness of purpose. Jews across ideological, religious, and generational lines acted not because Israel stands beyond criticism but because Jewish security and Jewish destiny remain inseparable.
What mattered even more happened quietly. Diaspora Jews boarded planes to Israel. They worked farms. They staffed hospitals. They cooked meals for displaced families. They embraced victims, evacuees, and grieving family members, offering hugs of solidarity from world Jewry.
They supported traumatized children and helped rebuild devastated communities. They did not arrive as visitors. They arrived as partners. At a moment when Israel faced pressure on military, diplomatic, and moral fronts, the Diaspora did not retreat into commentary. It mobilized. The line between the home front and the frontline blurred. Together, we formed a single united front.
Mobilizing support
This mobilization took many forms. Diaspora Jews raised unprecedented sums for emergency relief and recovery. They opened their homes and institutions to hostages’ families, ensuring that their stories reached policymakers, media, and Jewish communities worldwide. They organized logistics networks to source protective equipment, medical supplies, and non-combat gear for IDF soldiers operating under strain. These efforts were not centrally directed. They emerged organically, driven by shared responsibility rather than instruction.
In Washington, we worked consistently to keep the hostages at the center of US engagement, in parallel with Diaspora Jewish leaders advocating in capitals around the world. Through sustained advocacy, direct engagement with officials, and close coordination with hostage families, we helped keep the issue front and center.
That sustained focus mattered. It helped concentrate attention at the highest levels of government, including sustained engagement by US President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration, and contributed directly to the pressure that led to the release of the hostages.
Cost of engagement
This engagement also carried real cost. Diaspora Jews faced professional risk, social isolation, campus intimidation, and heightened security concerns by standing publicly with Israel. Many absorbed personal and communal strain but continued to act. That response reflects the durable solidarity between Jews in Israel and Jews around the world.
This conclusion rests on a thin reading of Jewish history if one believes distance defines this moment. Jewish survival rests on the opposite premise.
For two millennia, Jews remained linked by obligation and memory rather than uniformity; this link endured via shared values in the political, spiritual, and cultural spheres. Israel and the Diaspora represent distinct and indispensable expressions of Jewish life. That pluralism does not weaken the Jewish people. It strengthens them.
Israel embodies sovereignty, responsibility, and risk. It is the place where Jewish power operates under historically unforgiving conditions. Decisions carry consequences. Errors carry cost.
The Diaspora embodies reach, creativity, and resilience. It is where Jewish life engages with the wider world, shapes public discourse, and confronts antisemitism wherever it appears. Neither one can substitute for the other. One without the other would be narrowed and weakened.
This relationship also carries strategic weight. Israel does not operate in isolation among nation-states. It exists within a global Jewish ecosystem that mobilizes resources, shapes opinion, extends diplomatic reach, and resists moral inversion. In an era of ideological warfare and rising antisemitism, Jewish communities abroad matter not as validators but as actors.
After October 7, antisemitism surged across continents. Jewish institutions have required protection. Jewish students have faced intimidation. Public spaces have turned hostile. These developments reinforce an old truth: Threats to Jews rarely remain local.
What begins in one place echoes elsewhere. Israel and the Diaspora confront the same forces, even when they appear in different forms.
October 7 clarified this reality with brutal precision. Jewish security is indivisible. Antisemitism respects no borders. Moral clarity cannot be outsourced. The Hamas terrorists who murdered residents of southern Israeli communities and the ISIS terrorists who targeted Hanukkah celebrants in Sydney shared a worldview. They did not care where Jews lived. They cared only that Jews live. That grim truth underscored something basic and enduring: History binds Jews to one another, across borders, with responsibility for one another’s future.
The future of the Jewish people will not be secured by pretending Israel and the Diaspora are identical, nor by wishing away the differences. It will be secured by accepting a harder truth: We need one another, not instrumentally but existentially. Israel without the Diaspora risks isolation. The Diaspora without Israel risks drift and defenselessness. Together, we form a whole that is stronger than our individual parts.
Predictions of estrangement make for easy copy. Reality demands more seriousness. The bond between Israel and the Diaspora did not unravel under pressure. It tightened. Jewish history shows that bonds endure.■
William Daroff is the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.