{"id":56376,"date":"2026-04-07T20:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/56376\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T20:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T20:32:11","slug":"the-blogs-a-break-from-jewish-history-in-the-holy-land-cori-shalit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/56376\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blogs: A Break from Jewish History in the Holy Land | Cori Shalit"},"content":{"rendered":"

I made Aliyah from a place of ideological Zionism. In the few years before I moved to Israel, Zionism became the essence of my identity.\n<\/p>\n

In Der Judenstaat, Theodor Herzl argued that Jews in the diaspora cannot escape being defined\u2014by themselves or by others\u2014primarily as Jews. When I read it in my final year living in the diaspora, I couldn\u2019t help but relate. My identity was defined by my Jewishness: my Zionism, defensive and headstrong. It felt both intense and necessary.\n<\/p>\n

Shocked by a world that boasted tolerance but proved otherwise, I felt my time had come. To leave the country I was born and raised in, move to Israel, and serve in its army. I haven\u2019t looked back. But after five years here, I can see how much that certainty has shifted.\n<\/p>\n

And this wasn\u2019t just Herzl. Ahad Ha\u2019am argued that life in the diaspora was a kind of historical pause from Jewish national life. He believed that without a cultural and spiritual center in the Land of Israel, Jewish life was disconnected from its full historical expression. Diaspora existence, in this view, was not the active unfolding of Jewish history, but something suspended, even stagnant. Making Aliyah, by contrast, was stepping into the Jewish national story in its fullest form.\n<\/p>\n

David Ben-Gurion went even further, emphasizing that \u201conly in Israel do Jews live a full, normal historical life.\u201d That implies that the diaspora is something less\u2014almost outside of \u201creal\u201d history.\n<\/p>\n

Reading these thinkers played a major role in shaping my belief that life as a Jew could not be wholly lived anywhere but Israel. And I internalized that belief deeply. I looked down on those who didn\u2019t make the same move, as if they weren\u2019t ascending to something higher\u2014the literal meaning of the word \u201cAliyah.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

In my experience, the Jews around me in the U.S. either assimilated completely or lived in isolated Jewish bubbles\u2014summer camps, synagogues, or the Jewish Greek life I saw in college. I saw Jews thriving only within those bubbles\u2014which, to me, wasn\u2019t really thriving.\n<\/p>\n

(Similarly, Daniel Gordis writes that the purpose of Israel is not just Jewish survival\u2014something the U.S., for all its safety and opportunity, seemed already to provide\u2014but the flourishing of the Jewish people.)\n<\/p>\n

Growing up, these Jewish bubbles bothered me. When we had standardized tests in school, my quiet rebellion was to bubble in \u201cAtheist\u201d instead of \u201cJewish\u201d for religion. (And even though I marked \u201cWhite\u201d for ethnicity\u2014because I wasn\u2019t Black, Hispanic, or Asian\u2014something about labeling my Jewish Yemenite ancestry that way felt intrinsically wrong.)\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

That sense of division was reinforced in everyday life. Kids at school told me I wasn\u2019t Jewish because I didn\u2019t fast on Yom Kippur. The girl next to me in third grade refused a birthday cupcake because it wasn\u2019t Glatt kosher. I was confused, so she explained that Jews eat a certain way, and I figured that if I was Jewish, I couldn\u2019t eat it either. So I passed on the cupcake\u2014until I asked my mom that night, and she told me I could still be Jewish and eat whatever I wanted.\n<\/p>\n

Because of experiences like these, I came to see Judaism as an unnecessary division\u2014a wall between \u201cus\u201d and the rest of the world. I saw a plethora of rules that felt arbitrary, an identity that seemed to create distance, isolation and detachment\u2014rather than connection. It felt like an active avoidance of what was right in front of us\u2014the non-Jewish world, which I was sure I wanted to be part of. To me, it was an \u201cotherness\u201d that didn\u2019t look appealing\u2014and didn\u2019t seem to serve any real purpose.\n<\/p>\n

And yet, when I stepped outside of it, I found joy in non-Jewish spaces\u2014in extracurriculars, in friendships, in college life\u2026 until. (There was always an \u201cuntil.\u201d Always something that broke the illusion.)\n<\/p>\n

So the choice felt clear: what seemed like a partial life there, or a full life here, in Israel.\n<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the mindset I arrived with.\n<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m here, and I have a full, healthy identity\u2014interests that have nothing to do with my nationality.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

And for my first four years here, I was completely immersed in Israeli news. I felt I had to catch up for my time not living here: my first 21 years. I worked constantly on my Hebrew and on my understanding of Israeli politics and culture. I wanted to take an active role in this country, to be a full member of society\u2014someone who understood references in conversation and on the news.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps it came from a place of insecurity (I envied the born-and-raised Israelis, their Hebrew fluency and the ease with which they played with the language, dancing with words in ways I could only dream of), but it also came from a genuine belief that this is how a responsible citizen behaves. A responsible citizen should know his country, understand its language, stay up-to-date on its news, believe in its future, and work towards its improvement.\n<\/p>\n

And following Oct. 7, this belief became a compulsion. I began watching the news obsessively. I simply had to hear the story of every fallen soldier. It felt like a national responsibility\u2014if you died protecting us, I had to at least know your name, look into your eyes\u2014from the photo your loved ones chose\u2014hear a part of your eulogy, learn about your passions and aspirations, and comment on how young you were\u2026 or how handsome\u2026 or how you were just about to propose to your girlfriend. Even though it didn\u2019t matter what your life had looked like\u2014it was always a tragedy.\n<\/p>\n

But over time, something shifted. We\u2019re now nearing three years of almost constant war\u2014and I\u2019ve stopped watching the news. And I have trouble saying it, but it feels\u2026 great.\n<\/p>\n

It feels amazing not to know about every missile, every death. (I hear the sirens warning of the missiles coming right at me\u2014isn\u2019t that enough?) Not to follow every attack\u2014here and abroad\u2014every threat, every vow to destroy us\u2026 before even getting to our internal turmoil.\n<\/p>\n

I no longer carry every story, every headline, every detail.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

It means I am, in some sense, living in a bubble\u2014menuteket (Hebrew for disconnected, isolated, or detached). And it stands in direct contrast to everything I once believed a responsible citizen should be. But I can\u2019t deny the relief that comes with protecting my own consciousness, at the cost of being the antithesis of what I had strived to be.\n<\/p>\n

So when the war began, and I found myself in Mitzpe Ramon\u2014the quietest<\/a> place in the country, suddenly an oasis\u2014I felt the contrast sharply. For two weeks, I was surrounded by desert, by its stillness and the beauty of its vastness. By a kind of spiritual calm shared by artists, religious families, and small communities who chose to live in this haven<\/a>, with its slower pace and refuge from the chaos of the city\u2014and now specifically from the noise and stress of the war.<\/a>\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\"\"And there, the question of national responsibility became unavoidable for me.\n<\/p>\n

As I enjoyed this unexpected break from reality along with other Israelis who had come there seeking refuge from the war,<\/a> I couldn\u2019t help but wonder\u2014should I feel guilty? Had I become what I once judged? Was it enough to know we were at war, or did I have to know everything? I knew we were at war with Iran, but did I have to also know if Hezbollah and the Houthis joined in?\n<\/p>\n

This tension isn\u2019t just personal\u2014it\u2019s everywhere. A friend in the film industry told me about a film set for release in October 2023 that was postponed after Oct. 7, like most things\u2014with an abruptness only catastrophe can bring. It would have been inappropriate, even tactless, to release it as planned.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Life here moves with a national rhythm, where grief and memory shape what is acceptable. Abroad, he argued, this wouldn\u2019t be the case\u2014life is more individualistic. But here, living with a national calendar\u2014Memorial Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, now also Oct. 7\u2014there is no shortage of days shaped by grief.\n<\/p>\n

And that rhythm seeps into everyday language. We don\u2019t just \u201ccelebrate\u201d birthdays anymore\u2014we \u201cmark\u201d them. We don\u2019t wish each other a happy holiday, but a quiet one. Joy is supposed to be tempered, reframed through the reality we\u2019re living in.\n<\/p>\n

The question of guilt followed me. I was enjoying myself\u2014meeting people, spending time in nature, allowing myself moments of peace. And I kept thinking about something we discussed in a class on emotional history during my MA at TAU in Jewish History: that societies don\u2019t just shape what we do, but what we feel we are allowed to feel.\n<\/p>\n

\"\"Maybe we don\u2019t need a formal authority to be policed emotionally. Maybe we internalize it. Maybe we believe we are supposed to feel existentially anxious, alert, and consumed right now. But is that a choice? And if it is, do we have the right to choose differently while still belonging to the collective we identify with?\n<\/p>\n

Maybe I don\u2019t have to constantly catch up on the news and politics, trying to become Israeli. Maybe I can just be\u2014with Israelis, in Israel. Learn the land through its people, through conversations, through hikes in nature. Through its rocks and trees. Could that, too, be a kind of wartime contribution?\n<\/p>\n

\"\"These thoughts kept circling: when you take a break from Jewish history\u2014from that constant engagement\u2014do you also step away from the world? A friend who works in the Israeli news once told me that when he needs to disconnect from our reality, he watches news from other countries. I found that almost impossible to relate to. Nothing feels farther from me right now than what\u2019s happening elsewhere. It feels like it\u2019s either what\u2019s happening here\u2014or complete hitnatkut, disengagement.\n<\/p>\n

And yet, there really is a whole world out there. It\u2019s just easy to forget.\n<\/p>\n

So did I go from looking down on those who took a break from Jewish history\u2026 to taking a break from it here\u2014from history altogether?\n<\/p>\n

Can you be a responsible citizen and still choose not to carry everything?\n<\/p>\n

\"\"\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I made Aliyah from a place of ideological Zionism. In the few years before I moved to Israel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[2336,37,1421,6019,16712],"class_list":["post-56376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-israel-at-war","tag-jewish-history","tag-personal-history"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116365331260147769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}