After October 7, many a Jew is asking the question: Where should I live? It is a simple question that has within it the deepest of existential questions: Why do I live?
Our basic instinct pressures us to find the best way to survive. If someone is trying to kill us, we assess our fight/flight options to maximize our chances of survival.
When Muslim peoples are threatening our existence, a number of alternatives present themselves.
We could move to a democratic state that allows freedom of religion. However, today those countries have been inundated with Muslim fanatics fueling good old-fashioned antisemitism. No one really knows where this will end, but history has shown that comfortable places for Jews in the Diaspora do not remain so forever. Indeed, that was the very reason modern Zionism began (see Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat).
We could renounce our Judaism and become Christians or atheists. But this would only delay the Muslim wrath that has its eyes set on world domination in the form of forced conversion to Islam.
We could convert to Islam. But besides capitulating to a murderous death cult, we would be joining a benighted culture that seeks to destroy everything we hold dear about life – freedom, equality, opportunity, education – only to aid in their endeavor to return the world to a medieval fiefdom ruled by ayatollahs.
We could find some remote place in the world where Jews are not recognized and simply assimilate. But besides such places being few and far between, such a move could entail residing in a third-world economy, culture, and lifestyle.
What kind of life would we be living? And that really is the question. What kind of life do we wish to live? What, really, is life all about?
If it is just to survive physically, well, maybe converting to Islam or living in some third-world country is an option. But, as famed Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) taught, we cannot survive without meaning.
The answer to the question
It is precisely here that Judaism, and Zionism in particular, comes to answer our question. Judaism teaches that there is a purpose to creation – to make the world a better place (tikkun olam) and to make oneself a better person (tikkun hanefesh). Judaism comes with a program to do this, without imposing its religion on others.
For the peoples of the world, Judaism demands only fundamental morality – don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, establish just laws, and so on, as set down in the Seven Noahide Laws.
For the Jews of the world, Judaism comes with a program of self-actualization that teaches self-discipline, morality, and altruism. Ultimately, Jewish thought holds that the best way to bring about these lofty goals is by being a nation in its own land (Zionism). It is in our own land, and only in our own land, that we can fully live by our beliefs – and serve as an example of the goodness of those beliefs, as Eliezer Berkovits writes in Essential Essays on Judaism.
But these lofty goals demand self-sacrifice.
They demand of each individual Jew to take part in the “People of Israel.” For 2,000 years we have come together in our Diaspora communities and tried our best to carry the torch of these lofty goals. For 2,000 years the Jewish people talked, prayed, and dreamed about living in their land and living their beliefs. The dream has become a reality in our day.
It was a dream backed by the prophecy of a future reality (Isaiah 11; 43; 60; Jeremiah 30; Ezekiel 37; Amos 9). Today we are living the prophecy in our land and with it, the opportunity to fulfill it.
This is Zionism. It is the reason we live as Jews today. It is our reason for living.
Living simply to survive is not a reason to live, it is an animal instinct. Living to eat, drink, and be merry are not reasons, they are distractions. Of course, everyone wants to have a nice life, a fun life. But more than that, everyone needs to have a meaningful life. A meaningful life is one worth sacrificing for.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King: Without a reason to die, one has not a reason to live.
For over 3,000 years, Judaism has been the reason for which we lived and for which we died. In our day, Zionism is that reason. Living as a Jew is meaningful, but living as a Jew in the Land of Israel is even greater. And that is why early Zionist leader Joseph Trumpledor, who died defending Tel Hai, famously said: “It is good to die for our country.”
Not because it is good to die, but because it is good to live – with meaning – for our country.
The writer is an Orthodox rabbi and moral philosopher who holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy and lectures on the Ethics of AI at Ben-Gurion University. His work can be found at divreinavon.com.