Erika Dreifus

“Is Israel mired in a dragging, depressing conflict? Yes. Does Israel conduct that conflict as some of us might like it to? No. Is Israel’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews reprehensible? Yes. Is this society, like every other Western society, replete with challenges, problems and failures? Yes.

And are those issues what Israel is all about? No.

(Can you sum up the United States by discussing its wars?)

Watch Israel’s PM head to the Kremlin on Shabbat. Watch him return and take kids off the plane. Watch a nation gear up (and tear up, frankly) to welcome what may become tens of thousands of immigrants. And if you speak Hebrew, and keep your ear near the tracks, listen to the press and the news and the talk on the sidewalks and what you’ll hear is a sense of purpose being rekindled.

Here’s what we really ought to be asking: If the purpose of Israel was to change the existential condition of the Jews, has Israel succeeded?

That, too, is an entirely rhetorical question. In fact, it’s not a question at all.”

Source: Daniel Gordis