Not Another Place

People of good will sometimes speak of Israel as a country one might choose the way one chooses a city for a job. Climate, salary, schools, the friend who already lives there. Those factors matter. They are not the category. Israel is not a preference. It is a clause in the definition of this people.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg wrote, “Israel is not just another place; it is not where others go to live or visit. It is core, central, and fundamental to what it means to be a Jew, to who we are, and how we identify.” Core is a strong word. It means that a Jewish identity arranged as if the Land were optional has already begun to edit the self. The edit can look sophisticated. It can even look pious. It remains an edit.

The psalm does not treat Jerusalem as a theme one may retire. “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget!” The right hand is work, writing, blessing, touch. Forgetting the city is imagined as a loss of competence in the world. That is not sentimentality. It is a vow that memory and agency are bound together. Aliyah is one fulfillment of the vow. So is a life that refuses to forget even when the body is still far. The first fulfillment is fuller.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook wrote in Orot, “The concept of Judaism in the Diaspora will only find true strength through the depth of its involvement in Eretz Yisrael.” He was not scorning the communities of exile. He was describing their source of stamina. Involvement is a spectrum: study, attachment, defense, gift, and presence. Depth increases along that spectrum. Residence is the deep end. A Diaspora that treats the Land as a distant charity will eventually find its own concept thinning, because the concept was never meant to float free of the place.

Senator Tom Cotton stated the political plainness that matches the psalm: “Israel is and always will be the home of the Jewish people.” Always is a word politicians usually fear. Here it is accurate. Home is not a hotel with good reviews. It is the place the people answer to when asked where it belongs.

To say Israel is not another place is not to insult the countries that gave Jews law, livelihood, and safety. Gratitude can stand beside orientation. A person may love the street where they grew up and still know it is not Zion. The right hand can work honorably in many lands without forgetting the city that governs the vow.

What follows for aliyah is a change in tone. The move is not an upgrade in lifestyle, though for some families it may also be that. It is a return to the center that already organizes Jewish speech. Rabbi Goldberg named the center. The psalm bound it to the body’s skill. Rabbi Kook described how even Judaism elsewhere draws strength from involvement here. Senator Cotton named the home without embarrassment.

A practical life will still count costs. Housing is not poetry. Schools are not psalms. The column’s claim is only that the costs should be weighed inside the right category. One does not weigh a core identity as if it were a transfer between offices. One asks how to live nearer the core, and then one is honest about pace.

Forgetting Jerusalem does not always look like hostility. It can look like a full calendar that never leaves room for the question of return. Remembering can begin as study, as a visit planned for the sake of decision rather than nostalgia, as a career choice that keeps the door open. For some, remembering will become a flight number.

The call home does not need to raise its voice. It needs to keep the category clean. Not another place. Core. A right hand that refuses amnesia. A Judaism that grows strong by going deeper into the Land. A home that was never a metaphor, even when it had to be sung from far away. Aliyah is the moment the song and the keys are allowed to meet.