What Makes Israel and Jews Different: The Light in Our Hearts
This fall, my son joined the Me’ever Youth program at the Safra Center in New York City.
Me’ever is focused on building teen leadership skills. In stark contrast to millennial stereotypes, GenZers are eager to learn how to become Maccabees, especially right now.
“We teach high school students how to become their best selves,” according to Me’ever’s mission statement. “We believe that Zionist Youth Movements are — and have always been — the engine of change in the Jewish world. We take the same foundational ideology that built the State of Israel and apply it to transforming youth’s relationship with their Jewish values and identity.”
Last month, we learned that the beloved founder of the group, Asher Katz, had been called back to Israel to serve in the war against Hezbollah.
The news felt like a bullet to my heart. Asher is one of those rare souls of beauty who is preternaturally wise, kind, and strong. There have, of course, been hundreds of bullets to the heart this past year, but this one was personal: Asher had steered my son through his bar mitzvah project.
There was an immediate outpouring of notes to Asher from parents, praying for his safe return. Many of us finally felt the raw intensity Israelis are forced to feel every single hour.
I will never fully understand, from a spiritual perspective, why Judeans have had to suffer this type of anguish for nearly 3,000 years. But unlike Israelis, I didn’t grow up with this incessant sadness and fear, and my grandparents prayed that my brother and I never would.
I’m angry, yes, but I know that to be able to live up to Asher’s incredible role model, I need to turn that anger into strength. Perhaps because he’s dealt with antisemitic incidences all of his life, my son is already better at this than I am.
“Swords are forged in fire,” says my Israeli friend Forest Rain Marcia.
Still, I will never forgive those in the Arab world who took our souls of beauty away from us, and I will never forgive the leftists here who have allowed them to do so. At least in the 1930s and 40s, most of the world recognized evil — even if, early on, they didn’t have the courage to fight it.
In 2024, evil has become just another noun. After the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, his Washington Post obituary claimed his followers viewed him as a “moral compass,” and “father figure.”
Fortunately, these descriptions soon had to compete with photos of Syrian children holding “thank you Netanyahu” signs, and Iranians expressing gratitude outside of the Israeli embassy in London.
As George Orwell put it: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
In the midst of all of this, I went to see a screening of White Bird, a beautiful film starring Helen Mirren about the kindness of (some) French people during the Nazi occupation.
Sitting next to me was a seasoned Black film critic. When the film ended, I was caught up in a river of tears, but managed to eke out: “What did you think?”
He then gave me a highly professional critique of the film. By that time, the lights had come on, and he saw the tears still streaming down my face.
“All Jewish films end sadly,” he said gently.
We then walked out into a morass of keffiyeh-garbed millennials screaming absurdities. He shook his head and looked me in the eyes. “Stay safe, OK?” I thanked him, trying to adjust from the horror of the 1940s to the horror of today.
But what he said is in fact the message of the film. There will always be people who have the courage to be kind, even in the face of evil.
“Evil will only be stopped when good people decide to put an end to it,” says the French mother in the film. “It is our fight, not God’s.”
The “white bird” represents hope — Hatikvah. We will get through this evil, too. But only with the resilience of young men like Asher and the bravery of those not willing to accept today’s universal deceits. Perhaps most important, we will get through these times by strengthening the Judean soul.
“Why do they hate us?” the young Sara asks her father in the film.
“All people have a light that shines inside of them,” he responds. “This light allows us to see into other people’s hearts, to see the beauty there. The love. The humanity. Some people, though, have lost this light. They have darkness inside them, so that is all they see in others: darkness.”
“Why do they hate us? Because they cannot see our light. Nor can they extinguish it. As long as we shine our light, we win. That is why they hate us. Because they will never take our light from us.”
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article was originally published in The Jewish Journal.
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