This — and it’s not just radical or anti-Zionist groups that feel this way.

It’s common and normal for millennials to feel that their Hebrew school or day school education about Israel was misleading — including among those who strongly identify as pro-Israel. https://twitter.com/aptly_engineerd/status/1290080032245682178

The thing about Israel is that it’s a real country.

And when Israel is taught as a mythos rather than a real country, of course people are going to feel misled when they eventually encounter concrete reality.

“If you will it, it is no dream” — and maybe a corollary we should consider is that Israel stopped being a dream when it became a country.

Only some of this has anything to do with Palestinians or the conflict.

It’s also that, if you learn to relate to Israel as an imaginary friend, things fall apart if you start having substantive interactions with Israelis.

And the Internet means that happens a lot more.

And — people can pontificate until they’re blue in the face about how Israel is a place where all Jews feel safe.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been harassed more for being visibly identifiable as a rabbi in Israel than anywhere else I’ve spent time.

I understand that Israel is critically important as a refuge from antisemitic genocide.

I also understand that Israel will not be able to save us if American democracy falls.

At some point, we have to get real.

You can’t have a relationship with a dream.