“Nefesh B’Nefesh has done something very important. It has made aliyah easier, more accessible, and more stable for those who have already decided to come.”

“Every empirical measure we have says the same thing: Jews who spend time in Israel as teenagers, who meet Israeli shlichim, who learn Hebrew in an immersive Jewish setting, are vastly more likely to come on aliyah.”

“He proposes that the Chief Rabbinate declare, starting in 2031, that Diaspora Jews will no longer be counted in the halachic reckoning of rov yoshveha aleha, the calculation of whether the majority of the Jewish people lives in the Land, which affects certain Torah commandments tied to the Land.”

“The Jews of Babylon did not make aliyah after the rebuke. They stayed. They built the Babylonian Talmud.”

“Zionism itself was not a five-year project. Theodor Herzl died 44 years before the state was declared.”

“In his recent column after a tour of American Jewish communities, [Rabbi Eliezer Melamed] described what he saw: “a Zionist community” for whom the war had deepened the desire to make aliyah, communities where Psalms were recited for IDF soldiers, and a process in which “many people are seriously considering aliyah” because “the investment in education is bearing fruit.””

“Melamed also offers a deeper principle. In another column, he wrote that it is forbidden to boycott the leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements, calling it a matter of “national life and death” and quoting the Netziv of Volozhin: “swords in the heart of the nation.””

“Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu, now serving in Israel’s government as heritage minister, said it with disarming honesty in an interview with me: “In my community, there is contempt for Jews who do not come to Israel.””

“Rabbi Yaakov Medan, co-head of the Har Etzion yeshiva in Gush Etzion, put it in sharper terms. In an interview with journalist Yair Sheleg, he described being horrified by a message Diaspora Jews were receiving from Israel: “We don’t need you anymore.””

“The relationship with world Jewry belongs to the very definition of Israel as a Jewish state.”