“מה נשתנה הדור הזה מכל דורים?”

“Why is this generation different from all other generations?”

This generation is the first to inherit a sovereign Jewish state at seventy-five years old. The first to come of age with a fully built Jewish institutional world. The first whose Jewish identity was sparked at scale.

Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Solomon, this generation, my generation, is different because of your generosity. We no longer talk of the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the son who does not even know how to ask in this generation. For centuries, the Haggadah’s four children described differences of temperament within a powerless people. But sovereignty changes the categories. When a generation inherits not only memory but power, the divisions are no longer between wise and wicked, but between those who will build and those who will drift. In this generation, our generation, four different types of children sit at the table of Jewish history: The Assimilated Child, The Defensive Child, The Cultural Child, and the Architect Child. 

The Assimilated Child: 

Jewish by ancestry, not by destiny. Israel was formative but not binding. To her Jewishness is a chapter, not a calling. Identity is additive to her life, not constitutive of it.

The Defensive Child: 

Jewish by threat response. His Judaism sharpens when antisemitism rises and softens when it recedes. Israel is a fortress, refuge, proof that Jews are not defenseless, but rarely a site of proactive moral imagination.

Jewish as aesthetic, network, belonging. She loves Tel Aviv, Shabbat dinners, Hebrew slang. Israel is a lifestyle: vibrant, energizing, but loosely held.

The Architect Child: 

Jewish as covenantal civilization; Israel as a shared responsibility. This child asks not how to feel Jewish, nor how to defend Jews, but how to design Jewish continuity for a century. They do not reject Birthright. They ask what comes after it: What institutions will my grandchildren inherit? What structures bind Jews across oceans? What obligations accompany sovereignty? This child thinks in generations like the Midrashic man who plants trees he will never see but his grandchildren will eat from. 

But planting trees is not enough. A civilization cannot live on inspiration alone. Birthright was an Exodus moment: powerful, necessary, transformative. It ignited Jewish identity at a scale not seen for generations. But Exodus is departure, not the destination.

If one counts not from 1948, as a flashpoint of the revival of Jewish sovereignty in the modern era, we are entering Year 104 of Zionism’s experiment. The Maccabees lost the nation at Year 103; they won the war but lost the peace. Their descendants tore each other apart in civil strife, gave way to corruption, and invited Rome into Jerusalem. Their courage built a kingdom and their disunity buried it.

But we are not the Maccabees. We are the Zionists. Whether we reach Year 104 intact depends not on battlefield strength, but on civic design. We have what the Maccabees had. We have a state. And Year 104 demands a return to Sinai.

If Year 104 demands Sinai, then Sinai must take institutional form. It demands concrete design. From there, we should be thinking about: A constitution that formalizes shared civic principles; A renewed aliyah movement rooted in purpose, not desperation; A national rhythm, a Shabbat,  that protects social cohesion; A new Zionist contract between state and diaspora; A pragmatic peace grounded in realism rather than fantasy. Additionally, we believe that there must be a reinvigoration of the Jewish Future View standing on 5 pillars: Tech, Peace, Tikvah, Torah, and Peoplehood. 

Sinai is not merely law. It is mutual responsibility between Jew and Jew, between diaspora and state. It is the architecture that turns memory into inheritance. If the first seventy-five years of Jewish sovereignty were about survival and return, the next century must be about responsibility and design. And this generation, our generation, the generation you helped to ignite, must now decide whether it is content to inherit a state, or prepared to build a civilization. We are prepared to build based on the many principles and more that us and you have described, and we are eager to do so alongside those who had the courage to ignite us in the first place.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)