Eretz Yisrael is now a decision, an undertaking — it demands a choice, even in the short term

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or patriotic reasons involving national security, I’m going to voluntarily redact the following story. So please contact me if you have sufficient security clearance and want further details.

In mid-June last year, one of the world’s most closely guarded secrets was Israel’s pending attack on Iran. Everyone knew that war was in the air as both sides traded threats, but at the same time, no one really knew anything.

What wouldn’t Britain’s MI6, Russia’s SVR, or the world’s other spy agencies have paid to get a heads-up? With today’s prices, it’d be an exaggeration to say that you could have married off a daughter by selling the state secret — but at least it would have covered the engagement flowers.

Anyway, the number of people who were in on the classified operation was tiny. There was Bibi. The IDF. The White House. US Ambassador Mike Huckabee whose cheeky little tweet nearly let the cat out of the bag.

And then there was my good friend J., whose apartment commands a view of one of Israel’s air bases miles away.

At about 11 p.m., his wife says to him: “Come quickly — look at the planes!”

The fighter jets were a sight to behold, spewing flames as they roared skyward with their heavy payloads. Used to the sight of a few jets leaving on patrol, the couple counted out the planes, which didn’t stop coming. One… two… three… ten… twenty… thirty….

“That’s not a mission — it’s the attack on Iran!” exclaimed J.

Then came the pivot from high strategy to domestic policy. “Quick, we have about three hours until the planes reach Iran,” he said. “Let’s clear out the safe room.”

For the next three hours J. and Mrs. J. cleared out their mamad and put the sleeping kids inside.

Not a moment too soon. At 2:50 a.m. the balloon went up, the sirens went off, and millions of Israelis scrambled for the shelters. All except J. and Co., thanks to an astounding intelligence coup.

Eight months on, that tale of high drama and low farce comes to mind, as Israelis find themselves with one eye on the sky — or in the case of anyone who needs to travel, the skies.

As the country goes through another week of waiting for Donald Trump to attack Iran, Israelis are once again semi-isolated from the outside world. The looming threat of another dustup has scared away foreign carriers, and made leaving or visiting Israel an exercise in foreign policy roulette.

I say that we’re once again cut off, because this is becoming something of a habit. In fact, it’s crept up on us almost unnoticed that Israel has become a place where it’s difficult to get in and out of.

It all began during Covid. For more than a year, there was no such thing as dropping in for a simchah or a shivah. Traveling to yeshivah and seminary became a saga involving tests, quarantine, and vaccine certificates. People who were used to commuting between Israel and somewhere else had to make up their mind: Where do I live? A split identity was unworkable.

When Covid receded, we dismissed it all as an errant squall on the tranquil surface of normal life.

Then came the 2021 Gaza war and flights were once more canceled.

By the end of 2023, Israel was suddenly barred to entry again, when Hamas struck. Not many wanted to visit a war zone, and few could anyway, as the airport came under attack.

Like anything, we all learned to live with workarounds: paying through the teeth for El Al flights that wouldn’t be canceled.

But then in mid-2024 came the Iran war. For weeks, tens of thousands were stranded both in and out of the country. People resorted to boats out to Cyprus or a sojourn in the Sinai en route to Sharm-el-Sheikh.

In fact, we’re now so used to an Israel that is periodically off-limits that it’s hard to remember a time when the greatest issue when it came to visiting was the cost.

In retrospect, the easy-come, easy-go that was the norm was an anomaly. It came about as budget airline prices and cheap communications combined to give us an Israel that was ever closer.

People could drop in for a few days’ vacation. They could take a year in yeshivah in Jerusalem or get six months of work experience at a Tel Aviv start-up. They could daven Shacharis in New York and recite Tikkun Chatzos at Kever Rachel.

The anomaly was reflected in the gray area of Yom Tov Sheini. One day, two days, something in between? It was hard to say, because never before had poskim encountered the idea that people could live in the halachic borderlands — half in and half out of Eretz Yisrael.

Covid, Gaza, Iran — they’re all individually explainable, but taken together, something extraordinary has happened since 2020. In hindsight, that year was the start of a new normal — or a return to how our recent ancestors experienced it.

Eretz Yisrael is now a decision, an undertaking — it demands a choice, even in the short term. We can be in or out, but often, we can’t be both.

What does it all mean? Why is it so much harder for us to experience Eretz Yisrael?

It doesn’t demand any great degree of Heavenly insight to suggest that perhaps we’re being nudged into viewing Eretz Yisrael differently. As more of a spiritual entity, less of a global destination.

For years, Israel was both a place and an idea — a dream of generations.

I once met one of the paratroopers who had liberated the Kosel in 1967. A secular man, he was so overcome when he touched the Wall that he was temporarily paralyzed. His friends thought that he’d been shot.

“Throughout my childhood, we saw the Kosel as a picture in our schoolbooks, and suddenly there it was,” he told me.

To those raised on the idea of the Land’s holiness, that was all the more resonant. We instinctively understood the idea conveyed by the Gemara (Berachos 5a), which tells us that along with Torah and the World to Come, Eretz Yisrael is a spiritual gift that requires self-sacrifice to attain.

But an interesting thing has happened over the last few decades. As Israel has developed, it’s also become more of a “real” place, subject to ordinary thought processes.

A country whose most sophisticated export was once Jaffa oranges is now a global tech center. Once upon a time, the grim joke was that you made a small fortune in Israel by bringing a large one. Today, the country can be a lucrative investment option.

Those are all wonderful things, but they have a downside. The more normalized that Israel has become, the more ordinary it seems — a place to be grumbled at and taken for granted.

Today, as we wake up each day wondering whether we’ll end it in a bomb shelter, it’s once again clear that Eretz Yisrael is a place to merit, and a precious, fragile gift. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1098)