Jerusalem, Israel - Nov. 15, 2023:

Dear friends and family in America,

Wow. That was remarkable, for the first time in a while, maybe ever, I, like many other American-born Israelis in Israel, felt FOMO.

DC, the place I used to call home, was the place to be!  A page in history was written today.


I remember a day in history in 1987 when I was a little girl, my family took the metro to DC to go to the protest that Natan Sharansky spoke about today. A rally to stand with Soviet Jewry who were not free to leave Russia or practice religion.  That historical event made a difference. 

Years later I heard Sharansky speak about his story, the difference that day made and his miracle I said: "I was there that day." - I was present when that page of history was written.
 
If you had told me on that day that in 36 years, we would be at the Mall at a march against antisemitism in America, I would not believe it. Not in a million years.


All my grandparents were born in the USA. I felt a little left out when friends would talk about their grandparents being in the Holocaust, back then my grandparents were at Ohio State University getting an American education, and participating in all the clubs and extracurriculars. Living the American dream.


And I grew up living the dream.


I grew up in an America where 80 percent of my street was Jewish and Jews felt safe and confident.
I grew up in an America where we couldn't imagine having any issues with a visible mezuzah.
I grew up in an America where students could proudly wear a kippah on any college campus.
I grew up in an America where antisemitism was a concept that felt like a thing of the past or so marginal in the present that it would never affect my day-to-day life. 


When I was in high school, in 1994, I went to Poland. I visited city after city that was once filled with hundreds of thousands of Jews and in each and every place - had not one Jew left.
Cities in which 80 percent of the street was Jewish, and we could see the remaining marks from the mezuzahs on the doorposts.
Cities that had so many large synagogues, yeshivas, mikvahs. The buildings were there, the Jews were gone.


I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my local shuls in Maryland, or in Krakow I tried to imagine the parallel Teaneck, New Jersey. and I thought nah -" I can never ever see it." America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Never.
I knew what we said every year at seder that every generation someone would stand up against us to destroy us, and I thought nah - not here - not now.


I knew that every empire in history rose and fell, and I thought - nah not America. I could only envision a future in which America thrives forever.
The only type of destruction of the Jews of America that I could imagine was intermarriage and assimilation.


Well, now I can't believe what I hear, and it feels to me that the America I grew up in is gone. I have been living in Israel for 30 years now. People who live in the US felt it gradually, little by little. But for me came as a shock.
The first time I felt this was when I spent a Shabbat in Hollywood, CA a few years back, and after shul, Jews were instructed not to stand around outside and go straight home. It was a shock to me that it wasn’t considered safe for Jews to hang out on the street.
Then after the Covid lockdowns in Los Angeles, there were riots, and our friend went out at night with a few people to remove and hide all the Sifrei Torah from the shuls in LA. They feared they would be vandalized. I could not believe it. This was not the same country that I grew up in.

Now I hear that Jews were considering taking off their mezuzas for Halloween to save their houses from vandalism and violence.
When someone told me that she heard demonstrators in the heart of Jewish New Jersey shamelessly chanting "Gas the Jews" I really couldn't believe it. That is the kind of antisemitism I could not believe would ever set foot on red, white, and blue soil.


Social media trending praise for Hitler and suggesting finishing the job he started...
Students at Harvard, the university I had believed educated some of the smartest people in America, not knowing the simple difference between good and evil.


I am not a prophet, nor an historian. I am just an "American" who can never go back to visit the place I grew up in because it no longer exists. Soviet Jewry was freed and over a million Russians made aliya and now American Jewry is marching against antisemitism.
When people say "Never again is now" I close my eyes and I can imagine the cities and shtetls in Poland; when I try to imagine the possibility of destruction now, shivers go down my spine.


I hope that this is all wrong, one big exaggeration but if the youth is the future, and the future of America is the scene on college campuses, I deeply fear what the future of America has in store.


Not saying that life in Israel has been easy.

Not saying that in Israel we didn't get a rude awakening revealing the extent of the evil of our neighbors with whom we tried so hard to make peace. In Israel, we are broken-hearted and hurting so deeply. We need a deep introspection about our mistakes, our society, and what our future should look like, but we are home. 

And even in this dark hour, I can envision a future here that looks remarkably bright.

Ora Altshul Derovan is a native of Maryland and has been living in Israel for 30 years. She is now the CEO of Ulpan La-Inyan, an organization that opens the doors to Hebrew for people all over the world