Is it time to leave?

A thread by Hillel Fuld

Hillel Fuld

I’m not sure it’s wise to publish this post, which is why it’s been sitting in my Drafts folder for more than a week.

I guess I’ve been worried that family, friends, and neighbors will read it, roll their eyes, and think: Stop with the drama, Alan, and get a grip. It’s not all about you, you narcissistic ghoul. So many other groups are vulnerable right now — “how can you ignore the ‘genocide’ in Gaza?!!” — but no, you can’t stop with the JewJewJew talk, can you? Seriously, man. Shut up already. No one wants to hear this.

Well… time’s up. I’m posting it today because it directly addresses the question that animates this Substack: Do Jews and their Story have a future in the Diaspora?

In the X (Twitter) thread below, Hillel Fuld says: Absolutely not! Wake up! It’s time to leave!

And me? I’m still here in Maryland, hoping that for the first time in 2,000 years, diaspora Jews have finally cracked the code and found a way to live safely in exile, far from their ancestral homeland.

I’m here in Maryland hoping that history has finally turned a corner and that all the leaders of modern Zionism — Theodor Herzl, Leo Pinsker, Max Nordau, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann — were wrong.

I’m here in Maryland hoping that the modern nation-state of Israel isn’t necessary: Jew-hatred is a thing of the past, I whisper to myself over and over again. People have learned from history’s mistakes. We’ve changed.

All those hopes are a blind leap of faith, of course. There’s little to no evidence that people have learned anything from the past (assuming they can remember the past) or that human beings have fundamentally changed.

Thucydides still thought it was worth writing the history of the Peloponnesian war because its events inevitably would be repeated.

We in the West are, by and large, the children of Thucydides. The visions of Athens, not Jerusalem, still rule the day. What once was will be again. Or, in a more common vernacular: Same sh*t, different day.

Who is Hillel Fuld?

He’s an American-Israeli business advisor specializing in Israel’s high-tech sector, and a blogger-vlogger with about 250,000 online followers. Born in New York City, he moved to Israel with his (Orthodox Jewish) family when he was a teenager.

I don’t agree with everything Fuld writes in his thread (below). But the question he poses is one I repeatedly ask myself, my wife, and my children: Is there an event that, if that event happens, you’ll say, “Okay I was wrong. It’s happening.”? What is that event?

My honest answer: I don’t know. But it’s a question worth asking — and not only for Jews. As the late, great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often said: “The hate that starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.”