The actual collective picture is better than the image Israelis have of themselves. Still, the identity crisis casts its shadows on Israel’s sovereign existence, and its gravity should not be downplayed.

The basic infrastructure that gives the state its legitimacy is rooted in the democratic model itself and in the contract at its core, and not in its Jewishness. On the contrary, Israel’s democraticity is the basis for Jewish flourishing, as we shall presently see. Israel is indeed a “democratic and Jewish state.”

The religious establishment in Israel relates to the entire aliyah from the FSU with suspicion and hostility and their every meeting with religious institutions from birth to death is fraught with difficulties. Those of us who are Jewish according to Halacha have to undergo a humiliating process with the rabbinate to prove our Judaism.

Now that Israel is long past the founding stage and its story has ceased to be that of a powerless minority, it would do well to reacquaint itself with the positive aspects of Weizmannism – an exemplary, measured, moral, and self-confident approach oriented toward promoting a diverse Jewish-Israeli identity through ongoing dialogue, rather than via the political power of an orthodoxy extremist in the identity or the political spheres

The Jewish state must remain a democratic, pluralistic one. To be Jewish but not democratic is an inherent contradiction. Nothing would betray Jewish values more than for Israel to surrender its democratic identity.

We may complain about the Israeli education system, and there’s certainly room for improvement, but let’s imagine what would happen if the Israeli-Jewish knowledge base that our education system transmits to students were available to all American Jews as well.

Establishing the state’s identity as a cultural identity in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence would prevent divisiveness and hostility, and enable all Jewish communities in Israel and abroad to join forces for the building of a nation-state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel.

Israel’s path to the confident Jewish State it is today was not predictable. And in critical ways, without America’s friendship and support, it would not have happened at all. But America’s soul and America’s spirit owes much to the biblical roots of the Jewish people.

There’s something about the Land of Israel. An invisible tether which tugs every Jew toward our homeland, and as a student, professional, wife, mother, and grandmother, my home is always there for me when I need it.