There was a time when we were homeless.  Yes, we had a homeland.  For more than 3,000 years we’ve had a homeland, a continuous presence in our ancestral homeland, but scattered across the globe, most Jews were homeless.  And we suffered the consequences of being largely displaced from our ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael: centuries of discrimination, marginalization, persecution, expulsion, forced conversions, pogroms, genocide, antisemitism.  The Holocaust.

In the 18th century, Jewish thinkers pondered and wrote about the “Jewish Question.” How can Jews live freely, securely, with the ability to work, own property, practice Judaism, without facing exclusion and persecution?  By the late 19th century, with conditions worsening for European Jews, Theodor Herzl proposed a solution to the Jewish Question, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, an independent state where Jews could live safely and securely, free of antisemitism, and with this solution was born the modern Zionist movement.  For 23 World Zionist Congresses, from 1897 through 1947, establishing a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael was the goal, finally achieved in 1948.

Thank G-d, for 77 years we have had the State of Israel, but is the Jewish Question resolved?  In view of October 7th and the horrific, inexhaustible eruptions of antisemitism in the immediate wake of the barbaric attack, the answer is a resounding no, not entirely, not nearly enough.  With antisemitism........

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