Guest Column: Seeing Israel for the First Time, Again
By Rabbi Lindsey Danziger
“וְאֵלֶּה הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר תָּשִׂים לִפְנֵיהֶם”
שמות כא:א
“And these are the laws that you shall place before them.” (Exodus 21:1)
Kehillat haPardes began on October 7th, 2023, in the Northern Israeli village of Pardes Hannah, when Rabbi Naomi Efrat awoke to a nightmare. In the confusion and pain of that morning, her first instinct was to open her home. Neighbors, friends, and friends-to-be kept showing up. They brought food and musical instruments. They cried and prayed, and they didn’t leave. What emerged is a Reform congregation, hundreds-strong, in one of Israel’s fastest-growing communities. They gather wherever people need them most: living rooms, yoga studios, the woods. Kehillat haPardes is our new IMPJ sister congregation at The Temple Nashville, and on a recent community trip to Israel, we were blessed to spend time together. We welcomed Shabbat with melodies and fresh fruit, and got a taste of the creative Jewish expression emerging across Israel. Rabbinic pioneers in Reform and Progressive congregations are responding to Israelis’ hunger for Jewish connection and re-imagined Jewish practice following trauma.
This week, Parashat Mishpatim presents a guide on how to live: economics, agriculture, property, and social responsibility. These laws make little sense for a people wandering in the wilderness; they are meant for a society settling into their land and learning how to live together. From biblical times to now, our task has been to define and redefine, in every generation, how our sacred texts shape our lives. Nowhere is this more alive than in the Land of Israel, where a modern state and a modern people bring ancient wisdom into daily practice—wrestling with Torah in the public sphere, sometimes beautifully and sometimes painfully. How does a Jewish army defend itself while preserving life? How does a Jewish farmer maintain profitability while letting fields lie fallow every seven years? How does a rabbi gather her congregation for prayer and connection during national trauma?
When I first visited Israel as a Jewishly disconnected college student, this dynamic process caught my attention, hooked me, and changed my Jewish journey. After that first trip, I became an expert at finding every fellowship, gig, and program that included Israel. I felt most alive and connected to Judaism there. Then I became a mother and a full-time professional, and other obligations took precedence. I spent a decade away. That changed on October 7th. Like many who experienced “the surge,” I longed to be in Israel. When our family is hurting, we show up. We bring food, we run errands, we help. World Jewry understood this instinctively. Flight prices surged, donations poured in, and visitors who had never experienced dangerous conflict learned to recognize the sound of rocket sirens. I am now planning my seventh trip to Israel since October 7th—not because my responsibilities subsided, but because my priorities shifted. Showing up requires sacrifice. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and often uncomfortable. But it’s worth it.
For those who can’t travel, “showing up” looks like learning, donating, lighting Shabbat candles, connecting to community, attending synagogue, voting in the World Zionist Congress elections(!), or simply paying attention. Over the past two and a half years, every Jew has been asked—sometimes painfully, sometimes affirmingly—to make choices about their relationship with Israel. But what now? What happens as the war is (perhaps, tenuously, God willing) ending, headlines move on, and following the ultimate example of what it means to live out Jewish values in a Jewish state, every hostage is home from Gaza?
Last week, I traveled to Israel for the first time since the return of the body of Ron Gvili z”l for burial in Israeli soil, and the end of Israel’s painful hostage ordeal. I went with my home community through the Nashville Jewish Federation to visit our partners, such as Kehilat haPardes. As Jews living in the “belt buckle of the Bible Belt,” we know what it means to show up for our people and to prioritize Jewish identity. When the volunteer mission was announced, the bus filled quickly. Then Nashville was hit by a historic ice storm, bringing power outages, displacement, and uncertainty. Those who made the trip moved mountains to do so and brought their full selves.
We hit the highlights, from the Dead Sea and the Kotel to a sunset Havdalah on the Mediterranean. We explored religious pluralism and met with the Ethiopian community. We bore witness to the atrocities of October 7th alongside a bereaved mother at the Nova site and at Netiv HaAsara, a village on the Gaza border where residents are rebuilding and recommitting. We packed food boxes for the food insecure, picked cucumbers and strawberries in fields bereft of foreign workers since October 7th. We celebrated Tu Bishvat, our holiday of nature’s renewal, surrounded by blooming greenery—an experience that finally made sense compared to North America’s frozen landscape.
What set this trip apart was seeing Israel through my companions’ eyes. For many, it was their first visit; for most, their first in many years. I watched them fall in love with Israel’s beauty and its scars—not the idealized version from afar, and not the geopolitical abstraction, but a living, breathing, complicated Jewish state, just as Mishpatim anticipates. One participant returned to Kibbutz Holit, where she had lived as a teenager, and found her host family’s home burned on October 7th. Standing in the ashes, surrounded by people rebuilding, she felt both devastation and resilience. In our closing circle, we shared what we were “leaving behind.” A Jew by choice spoke of letting go of feeling “not Jewish enough.” A mother, whose child is facing antisemitism at school, said she was leaving behind fear—and would take up more space as a proud Jew.
Now is the time to show up for Israel. A country that has been holding its breath is beginning to exhale, assess the devastation, and decide who it wants to be next. If the last few years were about survival, the next can be about intention. If we’ve been embracing Israel in a bear hug, it’s time to walk beside her through healing. Recent days have seen Jewish and Arab Israelis taking to the streets together, demanding an end to the government’s inaction towards deadly violence in Palestinian towns. There is a demand for public accountability through an independent inquiry into the events of October 7th. Israelis will soon head to the polls for the first time since that deadly day – voicing their democratic vision for the future. If you visited Israel in the aftermath of October 7th and witnessed history taking place, now you have the chance to join our siblings in writing it.
Parashat Mishpatim ends with the Israelites’ accension to the commandments: naaseh v’nishma—“we will do, and we will listen.” Our sages teach that this order of words means taking a leap of faith rather than waiting to understand every detail. This is your invitation to do and to listen. Engage more deeply. Visit Israel and send your children for a summer or semester. Build a congregational partnership through the IMPJ Domim Program. Join an ARZA Action Team to fight for Jewish and democratic values. Our presence, our choices, and our willingness to stay engaged are how Torah becomes lived reality again and again.
Shabbat shalom.