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I learned to love Israel after it disappointed me.
**I learned to love Israel after it disappointed me.** https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/i-didnt-really-love-israel-until ,
by Vanessa Berg, *Future of Jewish*, 2026-08-21.
> I fell in love with Israel before I fully understood Israel. Like
> many Jews, I first encountered Israel through its greatest hits: the
> ancient homeland, Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the Hebrew language
> resurrected after centuries, the desert blooming, the Holocaust
> survivors arriving on ships, the kibbutz, the soldiers, the
> technological miracles, the Entebbe rescue, the Six-Day War, the
> improbable story of a tiny Jewish country surviving against enemies
> vastly larger than itself.
>
> It is an extraordinary story.
>
> In fact, I would argue that the creation of the State of Israel is
> one of the most extraordinary stories in human history. A people
> scattered across continents for nearly 2,000 years maintained a
> memory of one land, prayed toward one city, preserved one language
> in prayer and scholarship, and somehow returned to build a
> functioning sovereign state in the same place from which their
> ancestors had been exiled.
>
> There is something almost romantic about it, which is exactly the
> problem, because Israel is not a romance. Israel is a country, and
> countries are made of people, and people are messy.
>
> The closer I got to Israel, the more the mythology gave way to
> reality. Israel has bureaucracy that can make you question the
> existence of God. It has politicians who embarrass me. It has
> religious extremists and secular extremists. It has corruption. It
> has tribalism. It has racism. It has arrogance. It has people who
> will cut you off in traffic and then scream at you as though you
> somehow inconvenienced them (and then invite you to Shabbat dinner).
> It has ideological camps that sometimes seem to hate each other
> almost as much as Israel’s enemies hate Israel.
>
> There are Israelis whose political opinions make me furious. There
> are government decisions I think are infuriating. There are moments
> when Israeli society behaves beautifully and moments when it behaves
> terribly. Israel is not always wise, moral, and certainly not always
> right.
>
> And that realization did not make me love Israel less. It made my
> love for Israel more real. Because Zionism, at least the Zionism I
> believe in, is not the belief that Israel is perfect. It is the
> belief that Jews deserve a country imperfect enough to be normal.
#local
source
**I learned to love Israel after it disappointed me.** https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/i-didnt-really-love-israel-until ,
by Vanessa Berg, *Future of Jewish*, 2026-08-21.
> I fell in love with Israel before I fully understood Israel. Like
> many Jews, I first encountered Israel through its greatest hits: the
> ancient homeland, Jerusalem, the Western Wall, the Hebrew language
> resurrected after centuries, the desert blooming, the Holocaust
> survivors arriving on ships, the kibbutz, the soldiers, the
> technological miracles, the Entebbe rescue, the Six-Day War, the
> improbable story of a tiny Jewish country surviving against enemies
> vastly larger than itself.
>
> It is an extraordinary story.
>
> In fact, I would argue that the creation of the State of Israel is
> one of the most extraordinary stories in human history. A people
> scattered across continents for nearly 2,000 years maintained a
> memory of one land, prayed toward one city, preserved one language
> in prayer and scholarship, and somehow returned to build a
> functioning sovereign state in the same place from which their
> ancestors had been exiled.
>
> There is something almost romantic about it, which is exactly the
> problem, because Israel is not a romance. Israel is a country, and
> countries are made of people, and people are messy.
>
> The closer I got to Israel, the more the mythology gave way to
> reality. Israel has bureaucracy that can make you question the
> existence of God. It has politicians who embarrass me. It has
> religious extremists and secular extremists. It has corruption. It
> has tribalism. It has racism. It has arrogance. It has people who
> will cut you off in traffic and then scream at you as though you
> somehow inconvenienced them (and then invite you to Shabbat dinner).
> It has ideological camps that sometimes seem to hate each other
> almost as much as Israel’s enemies hate Israel.
>
> There are Israelis whose political opinions make me furious. There
> are government decisions I think are infuriating. There are moments
> when Israeli society behaves beautifully and moments when it behaves
> terribly. Israel is not always wise, moral, and certainly not always
> right.
>
> And that realization did not make me love Israel less. It made my
> love for Israel more real. Because Zionism, at least the Zionism I
> believe in, is not the belief that Israel is perfect. It is the
> belief that Jews deserve a country imperfect enough to be normal.
#local
source
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