Across dinner tables and in living rooms, something has shifted. Conversations about Israel that once felt natural now feel tense, fragile, or are avoided entirely. Parents and grandparents worry about saying the wrong thing. Children and grandchildren feel pressure to defend a position, or to choose sides. Too often, the result is silence.

And silence carries a cost.

The real danger is not that we disagree about Israel. Jews have never been strangers to disagreement. The danger is that we stop talking altogether. When Israel is reduced to a political argument, we lose something far more important than consensus. We lose the opportunity to pass down understanding, pride, context, and belonging. We risk weakening the chain that links one generation to the next.

At a time of heightened polarization, we must remember that Israel is not simply a topic in the headlines. It is part of a 3,000-year story. Our story. And stories are not sustained through debate alone. They are sustained through memory, ritual, and shared experience.

If we approach conversations about Israel as battles to be won, we have already lost.

Our children and grandchildren do not need perfectly crafted talking points. They need a relationship. They need to understand why Israel mattered, and still matters, to the people who came before them. And that understanding does not begin with policy. It begins with love.

Tell them about the first time you visited Jerusalem. Or, if you have not, tell them what Jerusalem meant to your grandparents when they sang “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the Seder. Share what it felt like to hear Hebrew spoken on the street, or what it felt like to whisper Hebrew prayers in lands where Jews were not always safe. Talk about the relative who kept a blue-and-white tzedakah box on the kitchen counter, or who planted a tree in Israel decades before they ever boarded a plane.

And then ask a different kind of question: What do you want to know?

Curiosity opens doors that persuasion often closes. When we shift from “Here is what you should believe” to “Help me understand what you are thinking,” we create space for real conversation. The goal is not agreement. The goal is connection.

That connection is already embedded in our traditions, if we allow it to surface.

When we cook together, we are not simply preparing food. We are telling a story. The challah our grandparents braided in Europe. The kubbeh simmered in Iraqi kitchens. The shakshuka perfected in North Africa and later embraced in Tel Aviv cafés. The matzah ball soup that anchored American Jewish homes. These are not separate cuisines competing for authenticity. They are chapters of one people’s journey, flavors carried through exile, migration, rebuilding, and return. Israel did not replace those traditions; it gathered them.

The same is true of our music.

The melodies of ancient liturgy. The haunting strains of piyutim sung in Middle Eastern synagogues. The Yiddish songs that once echoed through Eastern Europe. Contemporary Jewish musicians in America. Modern Israeli artists blending Ethiopian rhythms, Mizrahi influences, and Western pop. This is not “Israeli music” on one side and “diaspora music” on the other. It is one shared soundscape, a people singing across continents and centuries, sometimes in longing, sometimes in joy, always in continuity.

Even our celebrations reflect this seamless thread. The Hora danced at a wedding in New York carries the same energy as a wedding in Jerusalem. The prayers on Yom Ha’atzmaut flow from the same siddur that traveled with Jews through Spain, Poland, Morocco, and Yemen. The Seder table in Miami and the Seder table in Tel Aviv ask the same Four Questions.

Israel is not an isolated chapter of Jewish history. It is part of the ongoing expression of who we are.

Headlines flatten Israel into a single narrative — idealized or condemned. But just as Jewish life in the diaspora has never been one-dimensional, neither is Israel. It is religious and secular. Old and new. Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Sephardi, Ethiopian, Russian, and more. It contains argument within it,just as our tradition always has.

When we present Israel as layered and human, we make space for nuance. We model the idea that one can love something and still wrestle with it. That pride and critique are not opposites. That belonging does not require uniformity.

Hard questions are not a threat to our tradition. They are central to it.

We are a people shaped by questions, at the Seder table, in the Beit Midrash, in centuries of commentary layered upon commentary. It is not weakness to say, “I do not have all the answers.” It is honesty. Disagreement does not mean disconnection. Curiosity and commitment can coexist.

If we respond to questions with defensiveness, we close the door. If we respond with openness, we keep the relationship intact.

The goal is not to produce ideological replicas. It is to nurture connected Jews.

What we pass down is not a position paper. It is a sense of peoplehood. A feeling of belonging. An understanding that whether our ancestors prayed in Baghdad or Berlin, Addis Ababa or Brooklyn, they turned toward the same Jerusalem. Israel and our traditions are not separate threads. They are one continuous tapestry.

If we lead with culture, compassion, and curiosity, we preserve connection. If we share stories instead of slogans, we strengthen identity. If we show our children that Israel is woven into the broader fabric of Jewish life, not apart from it, we help safeguard not just a conversation, but our continuity.

The Jewish future will not be secured by winning arguments at the dinner table. It will be secured by ensuring that the story continues to be told, in our kitchens, in our songs, in our questions, and in our love for one another.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)