In Hebrew, womb is רחם, rechem, and mercy is רחמים, rachamim, and both words grow from the same root, ר-ח-מ, as if the language knew from the beginning what reason is still trying to prove, that compassion is not born in the mind, but in the body, in the same place where life begins before it has a name. It is a truth about human nature embedded in the grammar of my people, the idea that loving and protecting and showing mercy are gestures of the same muscle, the oldest one there is. Israel was born with this word in its mouth, in prayers, in the poems of Leah Goldberg, in Golda’s speeches before she learned she no longer needed it. I grew up believing that a country carrying compassion in its religious grammar was a country that could not, structurally,........

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