I just spent a week in Jerusalem at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Community Leadership Program, sitting with ancient and modern texts, wrestling with identity alongside extraordinary scholars. It was spectacular. Any learning worth taking seriously has the good manners not to insult you with easy answers, and Hartman offered none. Instead, it provided depth, argument, and the humbling reminder that Jewish tradition still has an astonishing amount to teach us about living in an increasingly complicated world.

Throughout the week, I listened to rabbis, educators, and lay leaders from a broad spectrum of political and religious thought. Yet every conversation was held with real respect—the kind that allows disagreement to surface without requiring people to perform outrage and permits discomfort without treating it as a failure.

That alone felt like a gift. But standing at Ben Gurion Airport waiting for my flight home, I found something more urgent: a sharper focus on one of the few crises we actually have the power to influence.

Like anyone invested in Jewish life, I have spent the past few years exhausted by a cascading list of worries: surging antisemitism, the wars facing Israel, the trauma of October 7, the hostages, and the fragility of democracy both in Israel and the United States. Much of this feels entirely outside our control. We cannot single-handedly dictate the decisions of the Israeli government or reverse online hate.

But I believe we can shape the relationship between the two largest Jewish communities in the world — Israel and North........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)