Last night I watched the Prime Minister speak before the nation, and it was a strong speech. Every word was true. Every accusation answered. And still, something bothered me.
How can something be so right and leave me unsettled?
It took me a while to understand. And then, somewhere in the middle of the night, it broke through my sleep.
I was uncomfortable because it was still playing on their field. Defending our right to exist. Answering their charges. And you can win every argument on that field and end exactly where you started. The right to exist, confirmed again. Nothing yet built.
A wall defends what already stands. It does not build the house.
And here is the thing I could not stop thinking about. There is another field. On it, we defend nothing, because we are building.
While the UN argues over whether we are legitimate, quietly, in dozens of countries, there are men and women who are not Jewish and who have chosen the God of Israel and the covenant of Noah. No one pressured them. No campaign reached them. Something in the world is simply moving, from the ground up, where no camera in New York can find it.
The Prime Minister pointed at the darkness. Let us not answer darkness by shouting back. Let us to answer it with light. Even toward the Muslim world, the place that looks farthest of all, we did not come to accuse. We opened a door home, to faith, to human dignity. That is what Israel is for among the nations. Not to win the argument. To carry the light.
Yehuda HaLevi said it in the Kuzari: Israel among the nations is the heart among the limbs. The heart does not command the limbs. It sends them life.
And this week, we are not speaking in metaphors. We are standing inside this very idea. All through Sukkot, Israel brings seventy offerings for the seventy nations of the world. We do not gather to pray only for ourselves. We stand before God and carry the whole world in our prayer. The heart, sending life to the limbs, is not a poem this week. It is the work of the festival we are living in right now.
That is what we are gathering to continue. From November 2 to 6, for the first time in history, delegates of Noahide communities from every continent are coming to Jerusalem. Five days of building, together. The City of David, Shilo, the hills of Samaria, the Western Wall, and a reception at the home of the President of Israel.
This is the part they could not show last night. Not Israel the accused. Israel the source. The moment "a light unto the nations" stops being a verse on a page and becomes a room full of people, in Jerusalem.
So I will leave you with the only question that matters.
When the world argues over whether we deserve to stand, you can watch from your chair. Or you can come down onto the field and build it yourself.
Which one are you?
Register here: brit-olam.org/congress
Come and take your place.