This weekend, millions of Americans will gather in backyards, at beaches, and beneath fireworks. We’ll wave flags. We’ll sing patriotic songs. We’ll celebrate the Semi-quincentennial, the 250th birthday of this remarkable country.

And if you’re anything like me…you may do so with a mixture of gratitude and anxiety.

As I sat down to think about these words, I asked myself what seemed like it ought to be a simple question: When was the last time I remember feeling especially proud to be an American? I expected an answer to come quickly. It didn’t.

And that realization made me a little sad. Not because there is no goodness here. There is. But because the arguments have become so loud, the fear so present, the cruelty so visible, that sometimes the pride feels more fleeting than it used to.

Maybe some of you feel that way, too.

As Jews, many of us have discovered over these last few years that assumptions we once took for granted about belonging, about safety, about how quickly neighbors can become suspicious of one another, feel less settled than they once did.

And of course, we are hardly alone in that feeling.

Which is why, over the past few weeks, I have found myself smiling at an unexpected display of American pride.

The World Cup has brought visitors to the United States from around the globe. And, no doubt, many of them arrived with a picture of America they had absorbed from headlines, movies, and social media. America as polarized. Angry. Unsafe.

Instead, many of them found something else. They found strangers who stopped to help. People who struck up conversations with them while they were standing in line. Neighbors eager to recommend a favorite barbecue place. American families inviting foreigners to join their tailgate.

And then there were the delights that no travel guide could have prepared these visitors for. Self service ice machines. Free refills. Oversized pickup trucks. Taco Bell. John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ Scottish people wandering through Buc-ee’s as though it were a national monument. (ok, it actually is!)........

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