Some moments in this short life are so beautiful they blow your heart wide open. The miracle of this life is so mysterious, so precious. You never want to forget this feeling. You don’t have to be Jewish to know about loving life like that. But Judaism is, at its best, the project we share with our ancestors of trying to feed and remember such moments. What would it look like to organize our whole world around the magic of love?

Israel, to me, like the rest of these states with borders and walls and deportations, is this heartbreakingly cynical sidetrack of thinking, “If only we had a militarized state in our own name, we might get on top of this thing.” And we did, and closed our eyes to who has been paying the price. 

Today Palestinians and African refugees and others bleed my ancestors’ blood and cry my ancestors’ tears. You don’t have to be Jewish to know about that kind of pain, but we do know about it.

It’s a big one — 70 years of statehood. Israel Independence Day kicks off the evening of April 18. To mark the occasion, J. asked dozens of Bay Area Jews to reflect on seven decades of the Jewish state. New ones will be posted daily here.