My body’s in America, but my heart’s in Israel

I keep seeing the same posts. Make aliyah. Come home. G-d is calling us back.

I didn’t grow up Zionist. Israel wasn’t woven into the fabric of daily life in my house. It wasn’t the center of conversations or the backdrop to every holiday. It existed somewhere in the distance, important but dormant, like an heirloom tucked away for safekeeping. Something you knew belonged to you, even if you rarely took it out.

Then October 7 happened. And something that had been quiet my entire life became impossible to ignore.

I’m not moving to Israel. I won’t be making aliyah. I’m American, and that isn’t changing. But something shifted inside me.

I feel Israel now in places I can’t point to on a map. In my chest when I wake up. In the way my attention turns toward it no matter what else is happening in the world. In the fierce pride that arrives when Jews stand up for one another. In the strange ache that comes with caring so deeply about a place I’ve never seen with my own eyes.

I’ve never walked the streets of Jerusalem. I’ve never touched the stones of the Western Wall. I’ve never stood on a hillside in the Galilee or seen the wildflowers bloom across the Negev after the winter rains.

And yet none of it feels unfamiliar.

It’s like hearing a song for the first time and somehow already knowing the words. Like opening a door and realizing you’ve been carrying the key your whole life.

People talk about Israel as a homeland. Since October 7, I’ve come to understand that word differently.

A homeland isn’t only the place where your feet stand. Sometimes it’s the place where part of your story has always been waiting for you.

I don’t mean that in a mystical sense. I mean it in the way family works. The way history works. The way love and loss travel through generations, crossing oceans and centuries without asking permission.

For years, Israel was something I knew about. Now it feels like something I belong to.

Not instead of America. Alongside it.

I don’t think that’s dual loyalty, and I’m not interested in arguing about it. Loyalty to a country and love for a people are not the same thing. They never were. I can stand fully in this country and still feel connected to the one place on earth where half the world’s Jews live.

Those truths don’t compete with each other. They simply exist together.

So when people tell me to come home, I understand what they’re saying. But I think some of us have already begun. Not with our bodies. With our hearts.

Melissa Brodsky is a content strategist who became an “accidental activist” after October 7. Follow her on Facebook and on Substack.

Write: ColumnistTheJewishStar.com