As the old integrationist dream weakens, many Western Jews will increasingly need to rediscover the strength of family, community, and peoplehood — cornerstones of the Sephardic Jewish experience.
Mijal, there is a great deal in your article that I think is correct, especially the realization that many Ashkenazi Jews built their psychological identity around integration, acceptance, and elite approval in Western society, and October 7th was a brutal wake-up call showing how quickly that acceptance can weaken or even disappear.
I also agree that many Sephardic and Mizrahi communities historically developed stronger internal resilience because they never fully trusted outside societies permanently. That difference matters.
But honestly, while strengthening Jewish family life and community is extremely important, I do not think that alone addresses the deeper crisis Jews are now facing in the West. Stronger Shabbat dinners and tighter communities will not by themselves stop harassment, intimidation, physical attacks, or organized ideological hostility.
Where I think your argument becomes most important is actually in exposing how psychologically unprepared many Western Jewish institutions were for this moment. October 7th exposed not only rising antisemitism, but how bloated, fragmented, reactive, and strategically weak much of the Jewish organizational world has become.
What many Jews increasingly realize now is that we do not simply need warmer communities. We need leadership, strategy, coordination, preparedness, institutional courage, and physical confidence as well. We need Jewish organizations that think proactively instead of reactively. We need self-defense training normalized and institutionalized. We need younger Jews taught confidence, resilience, and preparedness, not simply dependence on elite approval or institutional protection.
And your deepest point may be the most important of all: no matter how integrated Jews believe they are inside a society, history shows that acceptance can change very quickly under social and political pressure. I think many Ashkenazi Jews are now waking up to that reality in a very painful way.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful response! I agree with everything you wrote. I didn’t mean for my prescriptions to be only about ‘warmth’ or more comfortable communities - i think they are meant to help us in precisely the ways you describe. Some of the Sephardic communities I’m familiar with are using their internal strength and coherence to activate and fight for their rights in America. I think all of us benefit when we learn from each other!
Mijal, I didn’t mean to take away from what you were saying at all — I was really just building on your point and adding my own thoughts to it. I enjoyed your article very much, and I think it touched on something many Jews are only now beginning to fully process emotionally after October 7.
And please consider supporting my free Substack as well:
Today we behave like outsiders begging for acceptance from American cultural institutions that American Jews created and sustained. Take the entertainment industry for example, the movie and music industries. Much of modern American culture was shaped by Jews.
Thanks for engaging Melissa. I do not agree that “one community’s historical experience produced stronger Jews than the other’s”. My contention is that our historical experiences shaped us to have different strengths that can help at different times, depending on what we are facing. In other words - I don’t think Ashkenazi Jews are weaker - I think certain core aspects from the liberal Ashkenazi historical experience was better suited for the challenges we used to face, and some core aspects from the MENA Sephardic historical experience are best suited for this current moment. But to be clear - I do not wish to rank or to create a hierarchy for the Jewish people. Much of my work has been to insist otherwise. I want us to learn from each other and a future article - if a Sephardic-facing journal invited me to write - would be what MENA sephardic Jews must learn from Ashkenazi Jews in this strange new era. Hag sameah - Mijal
This is a deeply important essay. Its strongest insight, to me, is that the crisis facing many Western Jews is not only antisemitism from outside, but fragility inside: too much Jewish confidence was built around acceptance, achievement, and recognition by elite institutions that no longer reliably accept Jewish peoplehood.
The Sephardic/MENA model you describe offers something more durable: family, continuity, obligation, reverence, and internal confidence. The point is not that every Ashkenazi Jew should imitate every Sephardic norm, or that either world is simple. It is that Jews need a source of belonging thicker than approval.
The family language is especially powerful. Jewish institutions matter, but they cannot replace the home, the table, the grandparents, the rituals, the stories, and the basic obligation to see other Jews as family. After October 7, that may be the central test: not whether Jews can remain acceptable to others, but whether they can remain responsible for one another.
There is much to consider in this piece, and reflect on. While I personally am an Ashkenazic Jew with light hair and blue eyes, the piece convincingly states that models for Jewishness dependent on the wider society’s approval are clearly failing in our time.
Excellent essay by pointing out how something that is so obvious by changing one’s view of it. As an Ashkenazi, I questioned why seeking acceptance was necessary, the excellence of one’s profession or craft created the satisfaction by itself.
Honestly, this piece reinforces something I’ve personally felt for much of my life around certain Sephardic communities and circles… an attitude that preserving identity somehow made them more authentic, more grounded, or more “real” Jews than those of us raised differently.
I fully respect the strength of family and community bonds described here. But too often the message received by many Ashkenazi Jews has not been “come join us,” but “you are not really one of us.”
That may create strong internal cohesion, but it can also foster separation, superiority, and tribalism… including toward other Jews.
And honestly, much of what’s being proposed here feels less like unity and more like an expansion of that same mentality… urging the broader Jewish community to adopt a more insular “do it our way” approach as the solution to today’s challenges.
You’re dividing us here, not bringing us together.
Thanks for engaging! 100% agreed that internal cohesion can develop into tribalism. Hope we can push against that and have an expansive notion of Jewish peoplehood!
Yes indeed… but sadly now there is such a vibrant split between those blindly supporting Israel (fully invested in the narrative and unwilling to see anything from any other viewpoint)… and those who are willing to open their eyes to the suffering, oppression, displacement, and moral consequences unfolding in real time, even when doing so is uncomfortable and challenges long-held beliefs.
"It means trading the integrationist ethos for a more preservationist one, no longer prioritizing approval from those who ask us to hollow out our Judaism, and instead finding strength in one another."
When a society says give up those things that make you distinctively you, they are not accepting you for who you are. They are demanding you give up your identity to be allowed to participate in society.
When an individual gives up those things which make him who ie is to be accepted by society, he is not integrating into that society, he is being assimilated into it.
“When organizations had no clear boundaries around Jewish peoplehood, they found themselves unable to respond coherently to antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”
Sorry, but if you are against Jews having their own historic, ancient homeland — anti-Zionism — but respect other peoples having theirs then, then you are a Jew hater, nothing less, except maybe a bigot to boot.
God is the last thing on Bibi's mind. He wars endlessly to keep his "stay out of jail free" card. Jewish legacy organizations each chase the same dollars with a mission to self-perpetuate rather than converse about something other than turf wars. Their obsolescence gets Jews killed. It also leaves an easy path for JVP to Kumbayah their way towards Jewish Annihilation, while they get high on Maui-Wowie while Carlos Santana's "Black Magic Woman" flows through the air from Galilee to Bethlehem
Ahem. Mizrashki who did not grow up in America here... first of all - either the image should be changed or the language should- Yemenite Jews are NOT Sephardic. They’re Yemenite - it’s a whole separate edah.
Second - how sure are you about what is “Ashkenazi” and what is “American liberal”?
That’s the big problem with this whole thing: There's a huge America-shaped hole in it:
1. America was (and is) a singular experiment of a country. It is truly the only one that - from its founding - sought Jews as Americans first, not as Jews. Intentionally. Right from the beginning. While there have been periods of antisemitism, the American Jew has enjoyed a level of safety and acceptance and integration for the entire life of the nation so far. That has never happened anywhere. There are American Jews who really are just that - American. They may be ethnically Ashkenazi, but the American Jew is a unique culture unto itself. You’re mixing these two like they’re one thing - they are not.
2. What's also really important about America in this story is its unique immigration policy. The huge group of refugees from Eastern Europe and Russia was the exception, not the rule. And the Mizrahi Jews who were able to immigrate to the US were almost all post-1948 (so even if they were running from their homes, they had at least one option), and subject to "normal" US immigration policy - that is, they were relatively affluent and educated and in much smaller numbers than that huge wave of Ashkenazim - who were refugees.
It’s those small numbers that are a much more likely cause of the non-“outsourced” nature of Jewish education. Go to Toronto or Montreal - large, wealthy Mizrahi communities start institutions the moment they can afford it - it’s just something that needs critical mass to do.
3. While it's true that Mizrahi Jews came from places where they couldn't fully trust the society around them, the culture of Arab countries is not Western. They're very conservative societies in which religion plays a bigger role in identity, and in which the social hierarchies are extremely well-defined. They're also tribal and the way that diversity was expressed was with a level of physical separation (as it still is in that part of the world). If you look at the non-Jewish immigrants from those same countries, you'll see a lot of similarities in terms of how insular community building is the default.
4. There is another attribute of middle eastern culture that I think explains the Mizrahi response to antisemitism - but it also explains your proximate cause: I’ll call it superficial chauvinism. In middle eastern cultures, there’s no desire to mix tribes and it’s just how it is. It’s just how those societies organize themselves. This culture comes in handy when you’re facing antisemitism, but you can’t build a thing like America with that approach. Tribal societies have strong bricks but the building can’t scale.
5. Experience: American Jews have no experience of Arab culture and Arab antisemitism. Mizrahi Jews do. So they have no illusions about what many Muslims believe and they also don’t suffer from the Western soft bigotry of lower expectations. Most importantly, many (at least in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations) speak Arabic. They see Arabs as real, serious 3-dimensional people (not as cartoon victims who deep down want their country to be just like America), they take Arabs at their word - including when they’re threatening Israel. There is far less moral confusion about Israel's wars for Mizrahim because we have experience in Israel’s neighborhood. Americans don’t.
It seems that you’re essentially saying is American Jews should just be less American and more Middle Eastern. I have the same impulse. But that’s just not how culture works. It’s the same problematic thinking that leads to things like the JCPOA or the Oslo accords. Western culture and Middle Eastern culture are very very different - Jewish or not. You can’t fake the experience, language and memories that build your culture. And even if you could - what are we trying to do here - become better at being a persecuted minority? Maybe we should all be looking at Israelis for the reforms rather than spending energy on whether kitniot on pesah will be allowed in the ghetto.
Your very lengthy discourse will require more consideration. Briefly, my friend and I have discussed and admired how less conflicted Mizrahim are about their Jewishness. I see people like Jon Stewart, Mandy Patinkin, seth Rogan and more who find anti Israel postures as their sense of " Jewish values." I've read a few ....relatively few Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews who are "Arabs" And they are pretty dismissive of Ashkenazi Jewishness. I've been researching and enjoying my Mizrahi brethren all my life....truly since I'm a teen. I can enjoy the Yiddish stories of I B Singer and the Yemeni songs of Ofra Haza. When I'm in Israel I feel part of the family. I love the diversity of faces I see in Israel. And the diversity of Jewish cultures. It was a HUGE mistake for the early Israeli leaders to relegate the music and customs of Mizrahi Jews as "Arab" I think that today there is a lot more mixing in Israeli society.....and every American Jewish deli will offer humus or even falafel. No it is not property of the "Palestinians" The Mizrahi like the Ashkenazi is part of our shared experience. It's not the business of the Genitle world, the "Palestinians" They don't get to write our history or identity or culture. We're People of the Book ,,,writing since 3,500 BCE.
Genesis makes it clear that Zionism is central to Abraham’s new religious mission.
Abraham becomes a Jew and a Zionist at the same time. The first command he receives is “Go from your country [lech lecha], your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” Abraham’s religious journey begins with a pilgrimage to Israel. Israel is an ever-present theme in the text; when Abraham and Sarah abandon Israel in search of food, it is seen by some, such as the Ramban, as a “major sin.” Their entire lives focus on the dream of building a nation in the land. When Sarah dies, the Bible depicts the intense effort Abraham makes to bury her in Israel. As Ibn Ezra notes, the purchase of a burial plot for her marks the beginning of the future Jewish state.
Genesis makes it clear that Zionism is central to Abraham’s new religious mission.
Generations of Jews would follow in Abraham’s footsteps. Instead of offering hairsplitting arguments about “the spiritual essence of Judaism,” they turned their hearts toward Zion. Israel was a part of their prayers, part of their Tanakh, part of their studies and stories. At the Seder, they sang “l’shanah haba’ah b’yerushalayim,” “next year in Jerusalem,” with all of their hearts.
They simply couldn’t imagine a Judaism without Zionism.
Jews who knew little else still heard the call of “lech lecha,” and from the furthest reaches of exile would find their way home, just as Abraham and Sarah did so many generations before.
And they never let go of the dream of Israel, even in the worst of times.
"The Jewish people never really left the Holy Land. Certainly, many were killed or expelled at the time of Masada and later, but many Jews continued to live in “Palestine” (the name given by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt, 132-135 CE) for a considerable time afterward.
The evidence is clear from the extensive archeological sites visible today, such as those at Beit Alpha, Beit She’arim, Tzippori (Sepphoris), Baram, and many others. Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the fifth century CE, and an autonomous Roman-recognized Jewish patriarchate in Palestine existed until 429 CE.
Archeological ruins point to the establishment of more than 80 synagogues, particularly in the Galilee, during the six centuries after the destruction of the Temple. After Masada, the Jewish population was substantial enough for three serious revolts against Roman or Byzantine rule to occur; the last one, against the Emperor Heraclius, was in the seventh century."
"The essence of Eretz Yisrael transcends mere geographical borders, or increasing the population, or building cities and expanding commerce. Even the establishment of autonomous Jewish rule is not enough. You could vanquish the Canaanites and populate the entire territory, and still not appreciate that the land is your heritage. The true identity of Eretz Yisrael lies in its role as the spiritual epicenter and sanctuary of Jewish existence, and that is something that can only ever exist in the heart of a Jew."
Mijal, there is a great deal in your article that I think is correct, especially the realization that many Ashkenazi Jews built their psychological identity around integration, acceptance, and elite approval in Western society, and October 7th was a brutal wake-up call showing how quickly that acceptance can weaken or even disappear.
I also agree that many Sephardic and Mizrahi communities historically developed stronger internal resilience because they never fully trusted outside societies permanently. That difference matters.
But honestly, while strengthening Jewish family life and community is extremely important, I do not think that alone addresses the deeper crisis Jews are now facing in the West. Stronger Shabbat dinners and tighter communities will not by themselves stop harassment, intimidation, physical attacks, or organized ideological hostility.
Where I think your argument becomes most important is actually in exposing how psychologically unprepared many Western Jewish institutions were for this moment. October 7th exposed not only rising antisemitism, but how bloated, fragmented, reactive, and strategically weak much of the Jewish organizational world has become.
What many Jews increasingly realize now is that we do not simply need warmer communities. We need leadership, strategy, coordination, preparedness, institutional courage, and physical confidence as well. We need Jewish organizations that think proactively instead of reactively. We need self-defense training normalized and institutionalized. We need younger Jews taught confidence, resilience, and preparedness, not simply dependence on elite approval or institutional protection.
And your deepest point may be the most important of all: no matter how integrated Jews believe they are inside a society, history shows that acceptance can change very quickly under social and political pressure. I think many Ashkenazi Jews are now waking up to that reality in a very painful way.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful response! I agree with everything you wrote. I didn’t mean for my prescriptions to be only about ‘warmth’ or more comfortable communities - i think they are meant to help us in precisely the ways you describe. Some of the Sephardic communities I’m familiar with are using their internal strength and coherence to activate and fight for their rights in America. I think all of us benefit when we learn from each other!
Mijal, I didn’t mean to take away from what you were saying at all — I was really just building on your point and adding my own thoughts to it. I enjoyed your article very much, and I think it touched on something many Jews are only now beginning to fully process emotionally after October 7.
And please consider supporting my free Substack as well:
https://fredericktatala.substack.com/
Today we behave like outsiders begging for acceptance from American cultural institutions that American Jews created and sustained. Take the entertainment industry for example, the movie and music industries. Much of modern American culture was shaped by Jews.
I understand now some things my parents from Egypt did in my childhood..and I thought were nonsense
I had way too much to say to leave as a comment. Here is my Substack article response: https://melissabrodsky.substack.com/p/unity-doesnt-come-from-rankings-a
Thanks for engaging Melissa. I do not agree that “one community’s historical experience produced stronger Jews than the other’s”. My contention is that our historical experiences shaped us to have different strengths that can help at different times, depending on what we are facing. In other words - I don’t think Ashkenazi Jews are weaker - I think certain core aspects from the liberal Ashkenazi historical experience was better suited for the challenges we used to face, and some core aspects from the MENA Sephardic historical experience are best suited for this current moment. But to be clear - I do not wish to rank or to create a hierarchy for the Jewish people. Much of my work has been to insist otherwise. I want us to learn from each other and a future article - if a Sephardic-facing journal invited me to write - would be what MENA sephardic Jews must learn from Ashkenazi Jews in this strange new era. Hag sameah - Mijal
I look very forward to reading that!
This is a deeply important essay. Its strongest insight, to me, is that the crisis facing many Western Jews is not only antisemitism from outside, but fragility inside: too much Jewish confidence was built around acceptance, achievement, and recognition by elite institutions that no longer reliably accept Jewish peoplehood.
The Sephardic/MENA model you describe offers something more durable: family, continuity, obligation, reverence, and internal confidence. The point is not that every Ashkenazi Jew should imitate every Sephardic norm, or that either world is simple. It is that Jews need a source of belonging thicker than approval.
The family language is especially powerful. Jewish institutions matter, but they cannot replace the home, the table, the grandparents, the rituals, the stories, and the basic obligation to see other Jews as family. After October 7, that may be the central test: not whether Jews can remain acceptable to others, but whether they can remain responsible for one another.
Yes! the family metaphor is the most important thing for me - regardless of where it comes from!
There is much to consider in this piece, and reflect on. While I personally am an Ashkenazic Jew with light hair and blue eyes, the piece convincingly states that models for Jewishness dependent on the wider society’s approval are clearly failing in our time.
Excellent essay by pointing out how something that is so obvious by changing one’s view of it. As an Ashkenazi, I questioned why seeking acceptance was necessary, the excellence of one’s profession or craft created the satisfaction by itself.
Honestly, this piece reinforces something I’ve personally felt for much of my life around certain Sephardic communities and circles… an attitude that preserving identity somehow made them more authentic, more grounded, or more “real” Jews than those of us raised differently.
I fully respect the strength of family and community bonds described here. But too often the message received by many Ashkenazi Jews has not been “come join us,” but “you are not really one of us.”
That may create strong internal cohesion, but it can also foster separation, superiority, and tribalism… including toward other Jews.
And honestly, much of what’s being proposed here feels less like unity and more like an expansion of that same mentality… urging the broader Jewish community to adopt a more insular “do it our way” approach as the solution to today’s challenges.
You’re dividing us here, not bringing us together.
Thanks for engaging! 100% agreed that internal cohesion can develop into tribalism. Hope we can push against that and have an expansive notion of Jewish peoplehood!
Yes indeed… but sadly now there is such a vibrant split between those blindly supporting Israel (fully invested in the narrative and unwilling to see anything from any other viewpoint)… and those who are willing to open their eyes to the suffering, oppression, displacement, and moral consequences unfolding in real time, even when doing so is uncomfortable and challenges long-held beliefs.
"It means trading the integrationist ethos for a more preservationist one, no longer prioritizing approval from those who ask us to hollow out our Judaism, and instead finding strength in one another."
When a society says give up those things that make you distinctively you, they are not accepting you for who you are. They are demanding you give up your identity to be allowed to participate in society.
When an individual gives up those things which make him who ie is to be accepted by society, he is not integrating into that society, he is being assimilated into it.
“When organizations had no clear boundaries around Jewish peoplehood, they found themselves unable to respond coherently to antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”
Sorry, but if you are against Jews having their own historic, ancient homeland — anti-Zionism — but respect other peoples having theirs then, then you are a Jew hater, nothing less, except maybe a bigot to boot.
God is the last thing on Bibi's mind. He wars endlessly to keep his "stay out of jail free" card. Jewish legacy organizations each chase the same dollars with a mission to self-perpetuate rather than converse about something other than turf wars. Their obsolescence gets Jews killed. It also leaves an easy path for JVP to Kumbayah their way towards Jewish Annihilation, while they get high on Maui-Wowie while Carlos Santana's "Black Magic Woman" flows through the air from Galilee to Bethlehem
Ahem. Mizrashki who did not grow up in America here... first of all - either the image should be changed or the language should- Yemenite Jews are NOT Sephardic. They’re Yemenite - it’s a whole separate edah.
Second - how sure are you about what is “Ashkenazi” and what is “American liberal”?
That’s the big problem with this whole thing: There's a huge America-shaped hole in it:
1. America was (and is) a singular experiment of a country. It is truly the only one that - from its founding - sought Jews as Americans first, not as Jews. Intentionally. Right from the beginning. While there have been periods of antisemitism, the American Jew has enjoyed a level of safety and acceptance and integration for the entire life of the nation so far. That has never happened anywhere. There are American Jews who really are just that - American. They may be ethnically Ashkenazi, but the American Jew is a unique culture unto itself. You’re mixing these two like they’re one thing - they are not.
2. What's also really important about America in this story is its unique immigration policy. The huge group of refugees from Eastern Europe and Russia was the exception, not the rule. And the Mizrahi Jews who were able to immigrate to the US were almost all post-1948 (so even if they were running from their homes, they had at least one option), and subject to "normal" US immigration policy - that is, they were relatively affluent and educated and in much smaller numbers than that huge wave of Ashkenazim - who were refugees.
It’s those small numbers that are a much more likely cause of the non-“outsourced” nature of Jewish education. Go to Toronto or Montreal - large, wealthy Mizrahi communities start institutions the moment they can afford it - it’s just something that needs critical mass to do.
3. While it's true that Mizrahi Jews came from places where they couldn't fully trust the society around them, the culture of Arab countries is not Western. They're very conservative societies in which religion plays a bigger role in identity, and in which the social hierarchies are extremely well-defined. They're also tribal and the way that diversity was expressed was with a level of physical separation (as it still is in that part of the world). If you look at the non-Jewish immigrants from those same countries, you'll see a lot of similarities in terms of how insular community building is the default.
4. There is another attribute of middle eastern culture that I think explains the Mizrahi response to antisemitism - but it also explains your proximate cause: I’ll call it superficial chauvinism. In middle eastern cultures, there’s no desire to mix tribes and it’s just how it is. It’s just how those societies organize themselves. This culture comes in handy when you’re facing antisemitism, but you can’t build a thing like America with that approach. Tribal societies have strong bricks but the building can’t scale.
5. Experience: American Jews have no experience of Arab culture and Arab antisemitism. Mizrahi Jews do. So they have no illusions about what many Muslims believe and they also don’t suffer from the Western soft bigotry of lower expectations. Most importantly, many (at least in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations) speak Arabic. They see Arabs as real, serious 3-dimensional people (not as cartoon victims who deep down want their country to be just like America), they take Arabs at their word - including when they’re threatening Israel. There is far less moral confusion about Israel's wars for Mizrahim because we have experience in Israel’s neighborhood. Americans don’t.
It seems that you’re essentially saying is American Jews should just be less American and more Middle Eastern. I have the same impulse. But that’s just not how culture works. It’s the same problematic thinking that leads to things like the JCPOA or the Oslo accords. Western culture and Middle Eastern culture are very very different - Jewish or not. You can’t fake the experience, language and memories that build your culture. And even if you could - what are we trying to do here - become better at being a persecuted minority? Maybe we should all be looking at Israelis for the reforms rather than spending energy on whether kitniot on pesah will be allowed in the ghetto.
Your very lengthy discourse will require more consideration. Briefly, my friend and I have discussed and admired how less conflicted Mizrahim are about their Jewishness. I see people like Jon Stewart, Mandy Patinkin, seth Rogan and more who find anti Israel postures as their sense of " Jewish values." I've read a few ....relatively few Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews who are "Arabs" And they are pretty dismissive of Ashkenazi Jewishness. I've been researching and enjoying my Mizrahi brethren all my life....truly since I'm a teen. I can enjoy the Yiddish stories of I B Singer and the Yemeni songs of Ofra Haza. When I'm in Israel I feel part of the family. I love the diversity of faces I see in Israel. And the diversity of Jewish cultures. It was a HUGE mistake for the early Israeli leaders to relegate the music and customs of Mizrahi Jews as "Arab" I think that today there is a lot more mixing in Israeli society.....and every American Jewish deli will offer humus or even falafel. No it is not property of the "Palestinians" The Mizrahi like the Ashkenazi is part of our shared experience. It's not the business of the Genitle world, the "Palestinians" They don't get to write our history or identity or culture. We're People of the Book ,,,writing since 3,500 BCE.
Abraham, our Patriarch, was a Zionist
Genesis makes it clear that Zionism is central to Abraham’s new religious mission.
Abraham becomes a Jew and a Zionist at the same time. The first command he receives is “Go from your country [lech lecha], your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” Abraham’s religious journey begins with a pilgrimage to Israel. Israel is an ever-present theme in the text; when Abraham and Sarah abandon Israel in search of food, it is seen by some, such as the Ramban, as a “major sin.” Their entire lives focus on the dream of building a nation in the land. When Sarah dies, the Bible depicts the intense effort Abraham makes to bury her in Israel. As Ibn Ezra notes, the purchase of a burial plot for her marks the beginning of the future Jewish state.
Genesis makes it clear that Zionism is central to Abraham’s new religious mission.
Generations of Jews would follow in Abraham’s footsteps. Instead of offering hairsplitting arguments about “the spiritual essence of Judaism,” they turned their hearts toward Zion. Israel was a part of their prayers, part of their Tanakh, part of their studies and stories. At the Seder, they sang “l’shanah haba’ah b’yerushalayim,” “next year in Jerusalem,” with all of their hearts.
They simply couldn’t imagine a Judaism without Zionism.
Jews who knew little else still heard the call of “lech lecha,” and from the furthest reaches of exile would find their way home, just as Abraham and Sarah did so many generations before.
And they never let go of the dream of Israel, even in the worst of times.
"The Jewish people never really left the Holy Land. Certainly, many were killed or expelled at the time of Masada and later, but many Jews continued to live in “Palestine” (the name given by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt, 132-135 CE) for a considerable time afterward.
The evidence is clear from the extensive archeological sites visible today, such as those at Beit Alpha, Beit She’arim, Tzippori (Sepphoris), Baram, and many others. Jews formed a majority of the population of Palestine until at least the fifth century CE, and an autonomous Roman-recognized Jewish patriarchate in Palestine existed until 429 CE.
Archeological ruins point to the establishment of more than 80 synagogues, particularly in the Galilee, during the six centuries after the destruction of the Temple. After Masada, the Jewish population was substantial enough for three serious revolts against Roman or Byzantine rule to occur; the last one, against the Emperor Heraclius, was in the seventh century."
An Inconvenient Truth,
The Jewish People Never Left the Land of Israel
https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/10/24/an-inconvenient-truth-the-jewish-people-never-left-the-land-of-israel/
"The essence of Eretz Yisrael transcends mere geographical borders, or increasing the population, or building cities and expanding commerce. Even the establishment of autonomous Jewish rule is not enough. You could vanquish the Canaanites and populate the entire territory, and still not appreciate that the land is your heritage. The true identity of Eretz Yisrael lies in its role as the spiritual epicenter and sanctuary of Jewish existence, and that is something that can only ever exist in the heart of a Jew."
https://www.algemeiner.com/2023/09/01/the-land-of-israel-defies-any-borders/