In the span of a few weeks, the Jewish calendar moves through one of its most compressed and revealing stretches.

Pesach. Yom HaShoah. Yom HaZikaron. Yom HaAtzmaut — this year marking 78 years of Jewish sovereignty restored in our homeland.

Not just a sequence of commemorations. A narrative arc. And one worth paying attention to this year more than most.

Pesach reminds us where we began: leaving Egypt, where we sojourned and were eventually enslaved for 400 years. But Chazal adds something uncomfortable to that story. Only a fraction of the Jewish people actually left. The Midrash tells us that 80% chose to stay — too settled, too embedded, too uncertain about what waited on the other side of the desert. They removed themselves from the unfolding Jewish story not through persecution, but through inertia.

We don’t hear about them again.

The story moves forward without them — into the desert, toward Sinai, toward nationhood. The ones who left didn’t know where they were going either. They left anyway.

Yom HaShoah reminds us what happens when the world turns on the Jews, and when we have nowhere to go. Not just the horror of what was done, but the particular vulnerability of a people entirely dependent on the goodwill of other nations — nations that, when tested, mostly looked away. The lesson isn’t only about hatred. It’s about what happens when a people has no sovereign address, no army, no land to return to.

Yom HaZikaron reminds us that the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty wasn’t free. It was paid for — continuously — by people who believed enough in the Jewish story to fight and die for it. Many of them were survivors, or children of survivors, who understood viscerally what statelessness had cost. They built anyway.

And then Yom HaAtzmaut.

Seventy-eight years of independence in the Land of Israel. Not a creation — a rebirth. A return. A continuation of something far older than the modern state. A living chapter of Tanach unfolding in real time, in the same land, in the same language, among the same people. Whatever one thinks of Israeli politics on any given day, that fact deserves to be held with some awe.

But it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And neither do we.

Because while we move through this narrative every year, the world around us is moving too. And increasingly, it’s moving backward.

Mark Twain wrote that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. What we’re experiencing now is not a repeat — it’s a familiar pattern re-emerging. Recognizable, even if the language has changed. The accusations are newer. The institutions carrying them are different. But the underlying logic — that Jews are the problem, that Jewish power is inherently suspect, that Jewish safety is conditional — that logic is back, and it’s gaining ground.

Less than a century removed from the Shoah, the conditions that made it possible are beginning to reassemble. Not in the same form. They never come back the same way. But antisemitism rarely announces itself clearly at the start. It gets normalized first — in language, in institutions, in what people feel comfortable saying out loud.

We’re watching that normalization happen in real time.

It’s entering universities. It’s finding political expression on both ends of the spectrum. It’s appearing in spaces — progressive coalitions, nationalist movements, mainstream media framing — that would have, not long ago, recognized the danger of going down this road.

Here in Michigan, it isn’t abstract.

Following the recent Democratic convention, we saw a political environment that openly positioned itself against Jewish candidates. Activists who had marched under the banner of inclusion drew a line, and Jews who didn’t pass a particular ideological test found themselves on the wrong side of it. That’s a new thing. It should be named as such.

And on the other side of the aisle, antisemitism hasn’t disappeared — it’s wearing a different uniform. Conspiracies about Jewish or Israeli control. Nationalist rhetoric that edges into familiar territory while presenting itself as something new. The packaging changes. The content doesn’t.

This is not a left-wing problem or a right-wing problem. Both sides have found their version of it, which tells you something important: this isn’t about ideology. It’s about Jews. It always has been.

Which means it’s a Jewish problem. And it’s a moment that doesn’t ask for commentary. It asks for clarity.

For decades, diaspora Jewish life in America has operated on an assumption of stability. That if we integrate, contribute, participate, and keep a low enough profile, we’ll be accepted. That the systems around us will hold. That the social contract is durable.

That assumption is cracking.

And when it does, a question emerges that is far less theoretical than we’d like to admit: why are we here?

Not as an accusation. As an honest question. If we are choosing — and for most American Jews, it is a choice — to remain outside of Israel, there has to be an answer that goes beyond comfort, inertia, or familiarity. There is only one justification that holds up in a moment like this: you are actively strengthening the future of Jewish life where you are. Not passively. Not symbolically. Actively.

Building communities that are proud, visible, and resilient. Creating environments where Jewish children don’t feel the need to shrink, hide, or apologize for who they are. Ensuring the next generation can live with dignity — not quietly, not cautiously, but openly. Doing the hard work of making diaspora Jewish life something worth sustaining, not just something worth remembering.

Because we can already see what happens when that work isn’t done.

Kids are hiding their identities. Families are reconsidering where to send their children to school. People are weighing whether mentioning a trip to Israel — or a bar mitzvah — comes with social cost. Jewish students on college campuses are making calculations about what to wear, what to say, what to post.

That isn’t a distant future scenario. That is now.

The counterarguments come quickly, and they’re not unreasonable. It’s not that simple. Israel needs the diaspora. Not everyone can just pick up and leave. Communities here matter. Connections matter.

Maybe. But we’ve heard versions of this before — just in different language, in different cities, in different centuries. And historically, those arguments don’t shape the future. They explain why someone chose not to be part of it. At a certain point, they stop being arguments and start becoming statistics.

So the question becomes a simple one:

If you’re not waking up every morning asking what you’re doing today to strengthen a Jewish future here — what is keeping you here? And if you don’t have a real answer to that, there’s another question worth sitting with: what is your next step toward making aliyah?

This isn’t a guilt trip. It’s a reckoning with where we are in the story.

Jewish history has never been shaped by those waiting for certainty. It has moved with those willing to act before the picture was fully clear — to leave, to build, to fight for the next chapter. The ones who left Egypt didn’t have a map. The ones who built the state didn’t have guarantees. They moved anyway, because the alternative was to stay and hope the world would eventually be fair to the Jews.

It wasn’t. It isn’t. And hoping harder has never changed that.

If you’re not ready to make that move yet, then at the very least, hold the door open. For your brothers. For your sisters. For the ones who see what’s coming and are ready to move. Be the kind of community that doesn’t make people feel crazy for leaving. Be the kind of Jew who takes the question seriously.

We’ve seen this part of the story before.

Some leave — and carry the future forward.

Some stay, certain it won’t come to that.

And eventually, they disappear from the story altogether.

The question isn’t whether we’ve been here before.

The question is whether we’re paying attention this time.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)