From Victims to Lions

The beauty of Eretz Yisrael

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

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Photo by Benjamin R. on Unsplash

Six years. It had been six years since I had been to Israel. That might not sound like such a long time. Many of my peers have been to Israel just once, on Birthright. My mother has only been once, when she was 60. My dad, who grew up in a proudly Zionist household and even had family in Israel, has been twice.

I, on the other hand, have traveled to Israel nine times so far. My first trip was in the summer of 2008, when I was 17. Along with a group of Jewish high school seniors from Colorado, I was blessed with the opportunity to visit the concentration camps in Poland and then spend a month traversing Israel.

Towards the end of the trip, we spent a day listening to Arab Christians and Arab Muslims speak about their experience as Israeli citizens. That night, I spent hours discussing the complexities of the land with others on the trip. I was glued to the bench. On that night—different from all the other nights—I fell in love with Israel: the power of its diverse peoples, the natural beauty from the Negev to the Galilee, and the significance of Jerusalem.

I grew up in a Conservative Jewish household in Denver, participating in every aspect of Jewish life. I went to camp every summer, had a bar mitzvah, and joined BBYO as soon as I could. But Israel was an abstract concept. My only connection was my father’s parents’ love for it, the Israeli counselors at my summer camp, and the knowledge that it was our “safe haven” from history’s next Hitler.

Until I traveled to Israel, I believed that Jews were history’s greatest victims—constantly oppressed, forced to wander until their welcome ran out. But Israeli Jews were no such victims. They shed the perception of the meek and feeble people asking permission to live. These Jews were courageous lions who demanded respect. Being in Israel brought this to life for me. It had been one thing to see my camp counselor wear his IDF uniform in Colorado; it was another to be 17 and meet a 19-year-old tank commander. Seeing black-and-white photos of disheveled women fleeing their shtetl filled me with sorrow; seeing women in full combat gear guarding the gate to the Kotel filled me with pride. Both the Diaspora and the homeland are critical to our identity as a people—one cannot exist without the other. For so long, I had only understood half of my identity. Now, the picture was finally complete. I was convinced that the Jews would never again be cast out from their land. But October 7, and every day since, has chipped away at that belief, like a sculptor cutting marble.

In March 2024, I was selected by my employer, Jewish National Fund-USA, to lead one of our volunteer missions. Due to the war, thousands of Thai workers, who are the bedrock of Israel’s agricultural industry, had returned home. Food shortages loomed. My organization rushed to bring volunteers, mostly Americans, to help farmers and local communities in the south.

On the final day of our four-day trip, we were scheduled to visit Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. But 15 of the 40 volunteers on my bus asked if they could do more agricultural work instead, and we were sent to a broccoli field northeast of Tel Aviv. For hours, we knelt on our hands and knees, using our fingers to poke holes in the dirt, preparing the ground for the broccoli seeds.

Taking a break, I stood up and gazed out across the broccoli field. I looked at these American volunteers, who had paid thousands of dollars to fly to a war zone on the other side of the world, and who had given up a physically easy day in Tel Aviv to help an Israeli farmer they didn’t even know. I breathed in the vastness, and the chisel suddenly stopped.

From the time we first controlled Jerusalem to the destruction of the Second Temple, we were united by our dedication to the land Hashem gave us, even when that land was controlled by a foreigner. For the past two thousand years, we have been dispersed throughout the world—united by a common belief system and a yearning to return to that land. No longer is there a foreign occupier and no longer are we dispersed, a blessing only possible due to our ancestors’ sacrifice. We are blessed with more than just the reestablishment of our ancient homeland, but with the reestablishment of ourselves as a nation, as a people.

As I looked out onto that vast broccoli field, I remembered that my own great-grandfather raised money for the very organization I work for today (something I only learned recently, when I translated Yiddish eulogies his friends wrote after his death). We never met in this world, but beyond being connected by blood, we are connected by soul—our neshema. It was then that I internalized that we all share the same soul. Whether by birth or by conversion, we are a tribe united not by the love for a single person but by the love for a single place: Eretz Yisrael, Judea, Jerusalem, Mount Zion. The despair that I had felt since October 7 began to lift.

This love for this place is the foundation not for our faith, but for our people—for our nation, a nation of Jews.

I am no longer Jewish. I am a Jew.

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Zibby and Zach discussed antisemitism and On Being Jewish Now at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Arizona—check it out HERE!

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Zach Silverman is a 33-year-old living in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife. He works for the Jewish National Fund-USA and she works for Hillel at ASU. They enjoy hiking, going to the farmers markets, pickle-ball, and playing gin rummy with a good cup of coffee in their hands.

Substack:

Z.E. Silver

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This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.