April 22, 2026
On Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day, many Israelis and Jews around the world celebrate the establishment of the State of Israel. There is much to celebrate in the revival of Hebrew, the flourishing of Jewish culture, and a place that has offered refuge to many Jews who were seeking safety.
But eating falafel and wearing white and blue aren’t going to cut it this year — not when there is so much to mourn and so far to go before Israel lives up to its highest ideals.
We are in a moment of reckoning. PM Netanyahu has dragged Israel into yet another war that has already caused thousands of deaths including Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, and American troops. At the same time, his government continues to dismantle democratic protections and to greenlight new settlements. The occupation continues, depriving Palestinians of their human and civil rights, and settler violence has exploded with state support. Meanwhile, 2 million people in Gaza are still deprived of basic infrastructure and sufficient aid. With elections thankfully on the horizon, the country continues to be beholden to Netanyahu’s forever-war mentality and the catastrophic vision of the messianic settler movement.
Where does this leave American Jews? How do we relate to Israel in 2026?
Most fundamentally: Is the State of Israel a religious entity?
This question is essential to understanding how criticisms of Israel or criticisms of Zionism relate to our Jewish identities. Too often, when we talk about Israel in the American Jewish community, we collapse several distinct entities into one category: Medinat Yisrael (the modern State of Israel), Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), and Am Yisrael (the People of Israel). Yet while the latter two are religious entities, the State of Israel is decidedly not.
To prove that the State of Israel is a religious entity, some religious Zionists will point to God’s promise to Abraham that his descendents will inherit the land, and the journey of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom and sovereignty in the Land of Israel, as God promised them. They see a direct line from Abraham to 1948 to today, calling the State of Israel the fulfillment of this ancient promise.
On the far other end of the spectrum are those who deny any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and claim that modern Zionism grew solely out of colonial interests, or was imposed from the outside by Christian Zionists.
Both of these simplistic stories are dangerously inaccurate. Judaism has always been tied to the land, from the time of Abraham through the millennia in which Jews prayed to return to the land.
Sovereignty, though, comes with strings attached.
From God’s perspective, we are all gerim — temporary inhabitants who can never fully own the land, which belongs to God — “ki li ha’aretz, the Land is Mine.” (Leviticus 25:23) If we defile the land — that is, if we do not use it for the purpose of worshipping God and following God’s laws — it will literally spit us out. (Leviticus 18:28) Freedom does not mean the power to do whatever one wishes, but rather the freedom to serve God: “Ki li b’nei yisrael avadim, for the people of Israel are My servants” (Leviticus 25:55) “v’lo avadim l’avadim, and not servants to servants.” (Kiddushin 22b)
The Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael goes back to the beginning. And Jews’ connection to Am Yisrael — to the entirety of the Jewish people — goes back to our formation as a people under slavery. As Jews, we have fundamental responsibilities to all Jews, including the half of the Jewish people who live in the State of Israel. That responsibility includes duties of care, as well as the obligation to push both ourselves and other Jews to do better and to live up to God’s demands to build a community based in dignity and justice for every person.
The innovation of Zionism was to say that rather than wait for divine intervention, we could use modern political means to achieve autonomy in our national home — just as other nations that were trying to create their own nation-states in the late 19th and early 20th century were doing.
Still, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 — the event we celebrate on Yom HaAtzma’ut — is not a religious redemption. This is why we continue to pray for a return to Jerusalem, even when there is Jewish sovereignty and access to Jerusalem. We are praying for a rebuilt — mythical — perfected Jerusalem.
Others have warned against the danger of conflating the State of Israel with the Land of Israel. “Zionism as an aspiration to political-national independence is a legitimate Jewish aspiration… but it must not be given a religious aura,” wrote the scientist and religious Jewish thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz. “The state fulfills an essential need…but it does not thereby acquire intrinsic value–except for a fascist who regards sovereignty, governmental authority, and power as supreme values.” Or, as he wrote elsewhere, referencing the golden calf with which the Israelites sinned in the wilderness: “A calf doesn’t necessarily need to be golden; it can also be a people, a land, or a state.”
Which brings us back to Yom HaAtzma’ut.
As we commemorate the founding of the State of Israel, let’s remember that our relationship to it should be as one has a relationship to a state. A state has responsibilities to protect its residents, to follow international law, and to ensure the human rights of everyone over which it has jurisdiction. We can and should push Israel to do what is right, just as we push the United States or Canada or any other state. This is an expression of love, more so than standing back as a state tramples on human rights, initiates wars, and descends into fascism.
What we can’t do is confuse categories and conflate Medinat Yisrael with Eretz Yisrael. We can continue praying for a return to Eretz Yisrael and the coming of the messianic era, while in the here and now devoting ourselves to ensuring that Medinat Yisrael follows the same laws that govern all members of the United Nations, and to ensuring that Palestinians, too, soon can realize their own national aspirations in a state of their own.
In solidarity,
Rabbi Jill Jacobs (she/her)
CEO, T’ruah