For those who have not yet seen the video by Eli Lebowicz and Dovi Neuberger parodying two conflicting views on the nature and significance of Yom HaAtzmaut (or Yoim Ha’atzamos—the “Day of the Bones”), I strongly encourage you to watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSBwux4NgI
For me, the most striking—and humorous—moment comes when Dovi, portraying a representative of the Haredi perspective, quips:
“I don’t understand—these Modern Orthodox shuls I walk into, talking throughout davening (prayer)… talk, talk, talk. Laining (Torah reading)? They talk through the whole laining! Then suddenly, we reach the Mi Shebeirach for the Medina (The Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel)—everyone is silent! Halavai (I wish) David Ben-Gurion had written the Torah—you’d all be quiet during the laining!”
Like all effective comedy, the video succeeds because it offers insight into a serious issue through the medium of laughter. Humor, perhaps more than any other tool, has the power to open conversations that might otherwise remain suppressed—particularly when they touch on uncomfortable subjects, such as the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora and the question of Aliyah. Judging from the thoughtful—and sometimes heated—responses in the video’s comment section it seems that the conversation has already begun.
Yet the challenge is not merely how to initiate this conversation, but how to engage it with depth, clarity, and intellectual honesty. And here we encounter a formidable obstacle: widespread ignorance.
Consider, for example, my students at a prominent Zionist gap-year seminary in Israel—graduates of some of the most respected North American yeshiva high schools. In a course on the foundational ideas of Jewish thought, I ask them to summarize the Torah in one or two sentences, much as one would summarize a great book. Almost all mention God and the Jewish people. Very few mention the Land of Israel.
This omission is astonishing. From the very first divine command to Abraham—“Go forth… to the land that I will show you”—the Land stands at the heart of the biblical narrative. The twin promises of peoplehood and land shape the book of Genesis; the Exodus is directed toward entry into the Land; and the Torah’s narrative arc leads from Egypt, through the wilderness, to the Land’s threshold.
Moreover, the mitzvot themselves presuppose life in the Land. Entire categories of commandments—such as the Sabbatical year, agricultural tithes, and the laws of gleaning—are inseparable from its soil. The festivals are rooted in its agricultural rhythms (Leviticus 23; Deuteronomy 16:9-17), while the Torah’s vision of social justice presumes a society anchored in its land (Deuteronomy 15:4–11). Its institutions—kingship, courts, warfare, and economic order—likewise assume a sovereign people dwelling in their own homeland.
When I present these observations, my students are often stunned. How could they have studied Torah for years and yet missed so central a theme? It appears that while Torah is being taught, one of its most foundational ideas is too often neglected or marginalized.
But the gaps in knowledge extend even further.
How many students recognize that much of Tanakh (Bible) portrays life outside the Land as a condition of galut—exile and displacement—and that the exile of the Ten Tribes in 722 BCE led largely to their disappearance? How many know that the term yehudi originally meant “Judean,” a geographic identity tied to the land of Judea, and only later evolved into the broader religious-ethnic term “Jew”? Or that the word “Judaism” itself does not appear in the Tanakh, but derives from the Greek Ioudaismos, denoting a distinctive way of life in contrast to Hellenism?
Similarly, how many are aware that the origin of the word “diaspora” is Greek, meaning “scattering” or “dispersion”—and that while it originally carried a negative connotation akin to the biblical term galut, it eventually became a more neutral term for Jews living outside the Land?
Do students realize that biblical Judaism knew no synagogues or formal communal prayer, and that the earliest synagogues emerged only in the late Second Temple period in Egypt? Are they familiar with Philo of Alexandria, who famously described Alexandria as his “father city” and Jerusalem as his “mother city”? Or with the fierce rabbinic debates of the second and third centuries over whether Jewish life would remain centered in the Land of Israel or shift to Babylonia?
Do they know that after the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jews effectively abandoned aspirations of political sovereignty and large-scale return to the Land? Or that the Ramban later maintained that all the mitzvot outside the Land merely serve as reminders for their full realization upon our return? Or that strands of Chassidut have often interpreted the Land and the Temple in symbolic, spiritual terms rather than as concrete geographic realities?
And perhaps most fundamentally: do they grasp the monumental difference between Jewish existence as a faith community among other faith communities—as is typical in the diaspora—and Jewish existence as a sovereign nation, as embodied in the State of Israel?
The prevalence of such ignorance—even among the well-educated—regarding an issue so central to Jewish identity and destiny is deeply troubling. It is for this reason that I am currently writing a book entitled The Israel–Diaspora Idea: An Intellectual History from Biblical Times to Today, which seeks to explore these questions and many others, and to frame the critical challenges facing the Jewish people in our time.
In the meantime, it is my hope that educators, rabbis, influencers—and yes, even comedians—will continue to find creative ways to spark meaningful engagement and study on this vital topic.
Wishing you all a joyous Yom HaAtzmaut—or, if you prefer, Yoim Ha’atzamos.
For more articles, or to sign up for my newsletter, visit my website: https://davidharbater.com/
Rabbi Dr. David Harbater is a published author, Jewish educator and public speaker. His book “In the Beginnings: Discovering the Two Worldviews Hidden within Genesis 1-11” was described by the Jerusalem Post as “a work to be treasured” and by the Jewish Link as “ground-breaking, stimulating and one-of-a-kind”.
For more information, to sign up to his newsletter, and to invite him to speak in your community, visit his website: https://davidharbater.com/