If, for whatever reason, you won’t come out in support of Israel, think of it as the center of the Torah world

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while ago, I had a fascinating online conversation with a Jew who lives in Tehran. He had learned in yeshivah in the US, possessed semichah in Yoreh Dei’ah — and now in that flowery Persian manner that even WhatsApp hadn’t dulled, wanted help in arranging a telephone chavrusa in Kabbalah.

Thus approached, a few things occurred to me. First, that it was delightful, of course, to be referred to as “Kevodo” or similar honorifics normally reserved for the Chasam Sofer.

Also, that it was moving to think of someone so cut off from the great current of Jewish life, with such a thirst for Torah.

Third — and this was even before the recent Iranian campaign to recruit Israeli agents — I couldn’t help wondering whether my contact was the genuine article, or whether I was talking to a particularly yeshivish Iranian spymaster.

In any event, my stock of Grade A kabbalists was running low, and I couldn’t help, so the connection dropped. But even before it did, there was one topic that we didn’t touch: Israel.

Although my interlocutor assured me that the encrypted text was safe, it was understood that Jewish talk was on the table, Israel wasn’t. In a country where the sole Jewish member of parliament exists to make the occasional ritualistic condemnation of the Little Satan, that made a lot of sense.

There are other Jewish communities in the position of Iran’s Jews. Take Turkey, for example. Over the last two decades, President Erdogan — a neo-Ottoman, neo-Islamist supporter of Hamas — has tightened his grip on the country. What was once an ally of Israel has become a dangerously well-armed enemy. In the process, the country’s storied but dwindling Jewish community has been placed in a tenuous position. They retain the government’s protection with a couple of conditions: that they keep a low profile and minimize connection with Israel.

Why does my aspiring Persian kabbalist come to mind? Because the forced choice between local Jewish life and connection with Israel that is the lot of Jews in the Islamic Republic suddenly has implications for Jews in the free world, too.

Start with New York. The biggest concentration of Jews outside Israel is about to be headed by a man who sees nothing wrong with calls to Globalize the Intifada.

However uncomfortable that fact is, one thing is clear: The Jewish community has to work with whoever’s in office. Elections have consequences, as Zohran Mamdani-backer Barack Obama once said. The consequence of Mamdani’s stunning ascent to power is that the Jews of New York who want access to the mayor will need to make a distasteful bargain. Moderate their (justified) opposition to a mayor who is a pro-Palestinian socialist, or lose access to City Hall.

Is the latter an option? Regardless of who the mayor is, shuls still need guarding, schools need buses, the education department’s moves against Jewish education still loom. In short, nothing is to be gained by resistance-style bluster.

NYC is an extreme case, but it’s mostly a question of degree. Britain and France are run by governments notably more hostile to Israel than they were two years ago. Of course, as in New York, Jews there can freely criticize the government for their position on Hamas. But the costs of being stridently pro-Israel are inevitably steeper than they once were.

You can’t expect to excoriate Prime Minister Keir Starmer for rewarding Hamas one day, and then expect him to roll out the red carpet when you come to discuss an unrelated community issue the next day.

With a titanic battle over Israel and Jews underway on the American right, prospects aren’t so glittering there either. If the Israel-skeptic wing triumphs, American Jews might be forced to weigh local needs against those of Israel.

Sounds apocalyptic? It’s worth remembering that until just two months ago, the idea of Mamdani in office sounded equally impossible.

If Jews now question their future in a city that features an annual Israel Day parade, we are in a painful new era. Whether we like it or not, support for Israel now comes at a rising cost.

Which brings me to a key question: How will we, as a community, react? What price should Jews abroad be prepared to pay in terms of speaking up against officials whose political choices endanger Israel? What happens when you live in a city whose new mayor offers you a version of the Iranian choice: stay quiet on Israel, and I’ll look after you?

When considering the response, allow me to insert a simple clarification about the place where I live. If, for whatever reason, the words “State of Israel” make you uncomfortable, substitute “home to 7 million Jews.”

If, for whatever reason, you won’t come out in support of Israel, think of it as the center of the Torah world, home to Mir, Ponevezh, Brisk, and Slabodka.

Now let’s run the cost-benefit calculus again.

Israel is the home to almost 50 percent of Jews — a proportion that is only growing. When Israel is in danger, almost half of Klal Yisrael is in danger.

Quite beside the fact that coming to an understanding with anti-Israel zealotry — especially if you whitewash that behavior — is naive. Quite besides the fact that the distinction between anti-Israel and anti-Jewish is a fiction — that when someone rails against Israel, he means the Jews — going along with that hair-splitting means abandoning half of the Jewish people.

I don’t know — maybe that’s justified as yet another inevitable indignity of exile, one more bitter choice amid the bitterness of galus.

But as a wave of Israel hatred changes the political landscape and confronts us with unpleasant choices, let’s not forget the central fact of our time. To both friends and foes of the world’s only Jewish country — like it or not, Israel is you.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1088)