From New Haven to Jerusalem: It’s Time for Diaspora Jews to Speak the Truth to Israel

Last night, as the sun set over the New Haven harbor, I found myself at a beautiful Lag BaOmer gathering hosted by the warm and vibrant Israeli community here. This community is led by Rabbi Eli Raskin, a native of Kiryat Malachi and a member of a distinguished international family of Chabad emissaries.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of joining this community at events, gatherings, and Shabbat dinners, and have come to deeply admire the strength, warmth, and quiet resilience of its members. Amid songs, shared meals, and conversations that ranged from the sacred to the everyday, politics would occasionally surface, often through my own questions or reflections. Each time, Rabbi Raskin would gently remind me that politics, by their very nature, lie outside the spiritual core of Judaism. Others in the community, while deeply devoted to Israel, often approached such discussions with a noticeable caution, a quiet restraint born perhaps of reverence, neaunce, or both.

This morning, still carrying the warmth of the celebration, I woke to the familiar rhythm of the newsroom cycle: Trump, Netanyahu, Tsangauker, the same names, the same headlines. But what struck me wasn’t the news itself. It was the cycle, the relentless loop that defines Israeli public life and clings tightly to anyone working in the business of covering it.

In Israel, there’s a kind of tired consensus: “everyone is to blame.” It’s said almost as an aside, a sigh of despair. But perhaps, as Rabbi Raskin suggests, that truth runs deeper than we care to admit. Perhaps the people of Israel are caught inside a system they do not fully control. And to understand that system from within - one must have, at the very least, the memory of a historian.

But from a distance, things become clearer. And so I wonder: why is it that the Jewish Diaspora, blessed with that very distance and perspective, does not offer us, the Israelis, a moment of reflection? That breath of clarity? A little healing, as they say; Instead of the traditional give-and-take of money for weapons.

Is it because they feel a certain guilt? That they are not in the land, dealing with the chaos on the ground that they do not offer us this spiritual prespective? I don’t believe so.

Even if you are not in Israel - that does not mean you have no right to speak. To say, that we, Israelis, too, need to pause and look inward.

Yes, the war with our external enemies is fought on Israeli soil. But the Diaspora faces its own battles - assimilation, anti-Semitism, erosion.

Hence, now is the time to create new kinds of forums - not those that simply serve Israel or flatter successful Diaspora Jews, but spaces for honest dialogue: spaces that challenge, examine, and reflect. And perhaps, only those who live by the Rebbe’s call are truly equipped to initiate such a process.

Who knows? Perhaps only through this kind of truth-telling - this shared spiritual introspection - can the soul of Israel begin to free itself from the prison it has built around itself.

As the Babylonian Talmud teaches: “A prisoner cannot free himself” - but perhaps, with a little help from abroad, we just might.

But first, it would take Israelis to admit - we have a problem, good luck with that.