On a day-to-day basis, living in Israel is great. The weather is beautiful, as is the country itself. Israel has a lively cultural and restaurant scene, and in short, it’s a pleasure to be part of. But it also requires forgetting about the country’s geopolitical situation since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack and the on-again, off-again wars that have followed.

Then I remind myself that, when the country was founded in 1948, it was surrounded by enemies and its survival was in doubt. It was struggling to absorb masses of Jewish immigrants and to integrate them into a relatively new Hebrew-speaking society. It also struggled to provide even basic necessities to the population. Fast forward to 2026. Despite everything, Israel’s survival isn’t in doubt. Its economy has weathered the war better than expected. Its diplomatic standing is in the doldrums, but it’s still vastly better than in 1948, when the Arab and Muslim world, and many other countries, didn’t even recognize its existence.

Today, Israel has diplomatic relations with immediate neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, and beyond, including the United Arab Emirates. My daughter and son-in-law and their baby flew on vacation from Tel Aviv last month on an Emirati airline, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Inside Israel, one of the major challenges from my standpoint has been shaping a national identity that is democratic and Western but also rooted in Israel’s Jewish past. The revival of the Hebrew language is the most wildly successful contribution to that effort but it’s only part of the task. When I arrived in 1999 as a secular Jewish immigrant to Israel, I was particularly conscious of the alienation that I saw among some secular Israelis from their Jewish heritage, including their religious heritage. In some respects, that has even worsened due to the ultra-Orthodox community’s evasion of military service.

On the other hand, since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the Israeliness and the Jewishness of the population seem to be more naturally coming together. That was fully on display at a wedding that my wife and I attended north of Tel Aviv this month. It also showed that Jews from all over the world are developing a shared identity here in Israel.

The groom’s father was born in Morocco and raised in Montreal. The groom’s mother is from Toronto. The bride’s parents are from the former Soviet Union and her father served in the Russian army. The crowd was overwhelmingly secular but they seemed at home with the obligatory Orthodox wedding ceremony, which is a topic for another column.

It also helps that they speak Hebrew, so unlike weddings that I have attended in the United States where the couple haltingly recite Hebrew vows that they don’t understand, here it comes effortlessly and is completely understood. The songs preceding the ceremony were in Hebrew and after the ceremony were in English, beginning with Imagine Dragons’ “On Top of the World.”

Israeli pollster David Chassid described the coming together of Israel’s Jewish and Israeli identities in a recent op-ed in Haaretz. “It’s fueled by an identity crisis in the Western world, and by the feeling that Israeliness alone can’t provide a complete answer to the question of belonging. Therefore, the connection to Judaism does not replace Israeliness, but becomes one of its components,” he wrote.

In a reference to the Oct. 7 massacre, he added: “It may be, ironically, that the greatest trauma in the history of the state has given rise to something that governments, parties and education systems failed to create: a new melting pot that combines identities together. Perhaps it will be Israel’s most important social revolution in the next generation.”

Cliff Savren is a former Clevelander who covers the Middle East from Ra’anana, Israel. He is an editor at the English edition of Haaretz.