Our second week in Europe took us through the Jewish quarters of Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Each city held layers of Jewish life, tragedy, and echoes of cries that still feel real. 

In Budapest, we visited the Kazinczy Orthodox Synagogue and then stood in silence at the “Shoes on the Danube.” The experience was heavy. Rain came down steadily, adding a somber weight to the scene. Just steps away from the iron shoes was a street post, plastered with images of the Israeli hostages. That moment bound the past and present. The Danube seemed to connect us to the horrors of the past and the crisis of today. 

Vienna felt different. The beauty of the city couldn’t mask what we learned there. We heard story after story of how quickly the Austrians joined the Nazis with enthusiasm. And after the war, how slowly and reluctantly they admitted their role. In our short time there, I struggled to find much that felt redeeming. I was happy to leave and never return. 

Prague brought up the deepest conflict. The city is stunning. Its bridges, its colors, and its architecture, all of it is breathtaking. But the shadow of what happened there never left us. We visited Terezin, the so-called “model ghetto,” which the Nazis used as propaganda. Today it is a functioning town. People live in the very buildings where Jews were held, humiliated, and sent off to Auschwitz. I can’t actually wrap my head around that. 

For us, that visit was also personal. Our daughter-in-law’s grandmother, Omi, is from Prague. She was deported to Terezin, then to Auschwitz. When we were at Auschwitz, she asked me to say Kaddish there for her family who was murdered there. I did. She is 96 now, intellectually sharp and feisty, with many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. That’s a miracle. She survived, and along with her husband, z”l, they built a beautiful life out of what was meant to be destroyed. And without their survival, Naomi would have never come into our lives, nor our grandchildren. What a blessing. 

Prague also offered something else, similar to Budapest. Both cities offered connection not just to loss, but to Jewish life that still lives. In Prague we visited the Old-New Synagogue, founded in 1410 and still in use today. It’s where Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, once prayed. We stood by his grave in the old Jewish cemetery. These places carry stories that live on through us. 

And then, just this past Monday, we boarded El Al to fly to Israel. That day was a turning point. We felt it in our bodies. We were moving from memory and mourning to continuity and hope. The shift was emotional, but it was also physical. We were leaving a continent soaked with our people’s blood and heading to the land of our people’s rebirth.

We exhaled the moment the plane lifted off. We were going home.

When we landed, we headed north. As we drove up to the Galilee, not far off the highway stood Mount Gilboa, where King Saul fell in battle, where Jewish sovereignty once barely clung to life. I thought about that last stand, about the tragic nobility of a king trying to hold his people together and ultimately falling on his sword. And I thought about David’s cry, at the loss of Saul and most of all his best friend Jonathan. That mountain is not a myth. It’s right there, still watching over this land.

From our hotel, I can see Mount Arbel, a prominent cliffside rising dramatically over the lake’s southwestern shore. It was a site of Jewish resistance during the Roman period and a cliff I climbed many years ago (never to be done again)! 

In our first two days, I was surrounded by the very hills where our ancestors walked, where they fought, where they fell and rose again. I wasn’t seeing symbols. I was seeing the land itself and the soil of our people’s story. This wasn’t an abstract connection. It was physical, it was spiritual, and most of all, undeniable. In spite of everything going on, it is hard not to be hopeful. 

This is the heart of my Zionism. It is the living bond with the land and the people that no border dispute, no propaganda campaign, and no outside narrative can erase. This is not a foreign story imposed on someone else’s land. This is our story, in our land where we should be proud and unapologetic of our rights. 

When I’m here, I don’t need to be reminded that we belong. Clearly others do. And maybe we all do, especially in a time when so many seem eager to forget, or worse, erase our history.

We must never allow our right to Israel to be treated as a topic for debate. It is not. Our presence here is ancient, enduring, and sacred. The hills of Gilboa and the heights of the Arbel are not just settings from long ago. They are still speaking to us, reminding us that this is our story, our memories, our home. We need only to listen.

Yes, we are an imperfect people. Yes, we make mistakes. Yes, we each can have our opinions of the politics in Israel. But remember, what other country in the world institutes “rescue flights” to bring citizens home to war, not to evacuate. That sums us up. This is our home, our land, our people in all of its beauty, incongruencies, messiness. This is where we belong. Our connection to this land runs deep. And it must never be in question.