There is a question I kept turning over in my mind last week, walking the halls of the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem during the second annual JNS International Policy Summit.

Not what was said, though we did get to hear from some of the most consequential voices of our moment. The question underneath all of it was simpler, and harder. What does it mean when thousands of Jews and friends of the Jewish people choose to come together, unapologetically, in our own ancient capital, to learn, to argue, to plan, and to count our blessings out loud?

Because that is the part that doesn’t make the headlines.

We have grown so used to measuring ourselves by our enemies; the wars, the rockets, the resolutions, the campus mobs, the lies that travel around the world faster than we can respond, that we forget to notice the sheer improbability of the gathering itself.

Think about it. A people marched to the edge of extinction within living memory, gathering by the thousands in a sovereign Jerusalem, debating not whether we will survive but how we will lead. That is not a summit. That is a verdict on history. A visual representation of prophecy fulfilled.

I came to the summit from my home in the hills of........

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