How Do We Relate to Israel Right Now? A Rabbi’s Honest Reckoning | Neshamah Institute

A rabbi’s honest reckoning for Jewish adults navigating love, grief, and complexity

I want to tell you something honest before we go any deeper.

There are mornings when I wake up and the weight of what is happening in Israel and in the region is the first thing I feel. Before coffee, before the day begins, before I have figured out what I think or what to say. There is grief. There is fear. There is love. There is rage at the senselessness of it. There is a longing for something that feels very far away.

I am your rabbi. I am also a human being who loves Israel and does not always know what to do with that love when the news is what it is.

So this post is not coming from a place of having it all figured out. It is coming from the same place many of you are: standing in front of something immense and complicated and trying to figure out how to stay in relationship with it.

Because that is the question, isn’t it? Not which political position to hold. Not which argument to win. But how to stay in relationship with Israel when staying feels costly, confusing, and sometimes exhausting.

What We Are Actually Feeling

Let me name some of what I am hearing from members of our community, and what I suspect many of you are carrying.

Grief. For Israeli families whose lives have been shattered. For the ongoing loss and displacement that extends across the entire region. For the sense that something that was supposed to be a refuge has become, again, a place of unbearable pain.

Fear. For what this moment means for Jews everywhere, not just in Israel. The rise in antisemitism is real and documented and frightening, and many of us feel it in our daily lives in ways we did not a few years ago.

Pride. In Israel’s resilience, its culture, its impossible, improbable existence after everything the Jewish people have been through. That pride does not disappear because things are hard. For many of us, it deepens.

Confusion. Because the narratives are competing and contradictory and loud, and it can be genuinely hard to know what is true, who to trust, and what a loving, thoughtful, morally serious Jewish response looks like.

Isolation. Because talking about Israel feels like stepping into a minefield, and many of us have simply gone quiet. And going quiet is its own kind of loss.

All of these feelings are legitimate. None of them cancel the others out. We are allowed to hold all of them at once. In fact, holding all of them at once might be the most honest thing we can do right now.

What Judaism Asks of Us in Hard Moments

Our tradition does not ask us to feel good about difficult things. It does not ask us to pretend. It does not ask us to perform a certainty we do not have.

What it does ask of us is to stay engaged. To keep showing up. To resist the temptation of either blind loyalty or wholesale rejection, and instead to do the harder, more Jewish thing: to hold on and keep wrestling.

The name Israel itself means one who wrestles with God. Not one who has won. Not one who has all the answers. One who wrestles. That is our inheritance. Wrestling is not a failure of faith. It is the practice of it.

The great medieval commentator Rashi taught that we learn Torah by asking questions, not by receiving answers. The Talmud is a record of arguments that never fully resolve. Our tradition enshrines disagreement as a form of holiness when it comes from a place of genuine seeking.

So if you are wrestling with Israel right now, if you are sitting with questions you cannot answer, if you are holding love and grief and confusion all at once, you are not failing at being Jewish. You are doing something very Jewish indeed.

The Case for Staying Connected

I want to make a psychological argument for why staying connected to Israel matters even now, maybe especially now.

Disconnection feels like relief but it is not. When we pull away from something we love because it has become painful, we do not actually put the pain down. We carry it differently, more privately, more alone. The grief does not go away. It just loses the container that gave it meaning.

For me, my connection to Israel is not just a political position. It is part of the fabric of my Jewish identity, woven in through prayer, through history, through the stories of my family and my people. When I sever that connection, even temporarily, even understandably, I lose something essential to my identity.

So, I am not asking you to ignore the hard things. I am asking you to stay. To keep reading, to keep asking questions, to keep feeling what you feel about Israel while remaining in relationship with it. The relationship is the thing worth protecting.

Practices for Staying in Relationship with Israel

Tend to your information

Be thoughtful about where you are getting your news and analysis about Israel. Social media is not a reliable guide. Find sources that offer depth, context, and multiple perspectives. Read Israeli voices directly, not just coverage of Israel. The people who live there have something to say that does not always make it into international headlines.

Pray toward Jerusalem

Jewish prayer has always been oriented toward Jerusalem. The Amidah. The conclusion of the seder. The words of Hatikvah. Whatever else is true about this moment, these ancient words are still true. Praying toward Jerusalem is one of the oldest ways Jews have stayed in relationship with the land, and it still works.

Talk about it, in community

The isolation is real and the solution to isolation is community. Find people you trust to talk with honestly about what you are feeling. Not to score points or reach consensus, but to not be alone in it. The Neshamah community exists for exactly this. Bring your questions, your grief, your confusion. You do not have to arrive with answers.

Give

There are organizations doing extraordinary work in Israel right now: supporting families who have been displaced, providing mental health care for survivors, building bridges between communities, funding coexistence work. Find one that aligns with your values and give. Action is one of the most effective antidotes to helplessness.

Mark Yom Ha’atzmaut

Every year on the 5th of Iyar, we mark Israel’s Independence Day. Mark it this year. Not as a political statement but as a Jewish one. Light a candle. Say a prayer. Cook Israeli food. Listen to Hatikva and let yourself feel whatever you feel when you hear it. Staying in relationship with Israel means showing up for its milestones, even when it’s complicated.

A Word About the Political Noise

One more thing before I close…

The loudest voices about Israel right now, on every side, tend to be the ones with the least room for complexity. They are certain. They are forceful. They will tell you exactly what you should think and feel and say.

I am asking you not to let those voices crowd out your own.

You are allowed to love Israel without endorsing every decision its government makes. You are allowed to grieve Palestinian suffering without abandoning your Jewish identity. You are allowed to hold the complexity of a situation that has no clean resolution. You are allowed to not know, and to say so, and to keep searching anyway.

That is not weakness. That is integrity. And in a moment this loud and this binary, integrity is a radical act.

Love for Israel that holds complexity honestly is not a contradiction. It is the most Jewish kind of love there is.

We Are Here

The Neshamah Institute holds Israel with that kind of love. We do not demand conformity of thought. We do not offer easy answers. We offer community, learning, and the belief that staying in relationship with the things that matter, even when it is hard, is always worth it.

If you want to talk, to learn, to sit with others who are wrestling too, please reach out. That is what we are here for.

Visit niboca.org or contact me directly.

Chag Ha’atzmaut Sameach. May this year bring more light than darkness, more healing than harm.

Rabbi Amy Rader | The Neshamah Institute | niboca.org