I have been living in Israel for the past year watching History unfold……

The War continues in Israel.
Jews around the world facing rising antisemitism.
People we once called friends sharing things about us that don’t even feel human.
And somehow…yet again…the world is focused on a tiny nation, a tiny people.

Throughout history, Empires far greater than us have disappeared without a trace. Entire civilizations…gone. Languages…gone. Identities…gone.

But somehow the Jews are still here…

After exile.
After the destruction of the First Temple and Second Temple.
After being scattered across continents with no land, no army, no sovereignty.
After forced conversions…being told to abandon everything or die.
After expulsions from country after country…England, Spain, France, and more.
After centuries of ghettos, discrimination, and legal restrictions.
After pogroms that wiped out entire communities overnight.
After the Holocaust…systematic, industrialized genocide meant to erase us completely.
After being a minority everywhere, often hated, often blamed, often targeted.
After thousands of years of pressure to assimilate, disappear, or become someone else.

By every rule of history…by every pattern we see with other nations…we should not be here.

And yet… we are.

In the Holocaust the Nazis didn’t care if you were religious or atheist, observant or assimilated. If your grandfather was Jewish, that was enough.

Let that sink in.

We can identify however we want.
But the world has always reminded us of something deeper:

A Jew is a Jew.

And that should make us stop and ask a harder question:

What is it that has kept us alive?

It wasn’t power…we didn’t have it.
It wasn’t land…we lost it.
It wasn’t safety…we never had it.

It was something else.

It was Shabbat.
It was the Torah.
It was parents teaching their children who they are.
It was a chain that refused to break.

Not just some “religion”…identity, memory, purpose.

And here’s what I think matters right now…….

This isn’t about being “religious” or not.
This isn’t about politics.
This isn’t about labels.

This is about whether that chain continues with us.

Because if we lose that…if we fully assimilate, forget, disconnect…then even if we’re still here physically… we’re gone.

And maybe that’s why, even today, the world is still watching us. Still reacting to us. Still unable to ignore us.

So instead of just reacting…maybe it’s time to reconnect.

Ask questions. Learn something. Open a page. Have a conversation. Sit at a Shabbat table. Not because someone told you to…but because something inside you knows this story is yours.

We’ve made it this far.

The question is…what do we do with that now?