USY Shoresh Israel fellows are empowered to lead communal discourse on Israel as a value, an idea, and a modern nation-state of the Jewish people. One teen reflects:
Shoresh is a fellowship where you engage with different perspectives on Israel. Every class we would discuss something different, like how they justify that Israel should be the Jewish state and our homeland without the 2 H’s: Hashem and Holocaust. We can do this since we are not just a religion, but we are an ethno-religion, meaning that you can be Jewish without being religious. This allows us to justify that Israel is our homeland and should be the Jewish state through land, language, and culture, LLC, which is a justification not by religion. Taking this fellowship has made me think deeply about this. After all, truthfully, I had not thought much about this till I took this fellowship, because it never really occurred to me, because I just would never think about it like this. Another thing we did was read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence for Israel, which talks about this topic as well, justifying how Jews are connected to Israel beyond the two H’s.
The thing that surprised me is how Jews are an ethnic-religion because I have always thought of us as a religion, but after we discussed how we are connected to Israel without the two H’s, we are connected through blood and through archaeological evidence. Israel has been our home for over 4,000 years, and that’s how so many Jews around the world are still connected to Israel and relate to it even if they have never been there. This has made me think more about the modern world with anti-Zionism, which today has become on many levels the same thing as antisemitism, with terms like “free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.”
Taking the Shoresh fellowship had changed my way of thinking through seeing how, as I have mentioned previously, Israel should be the Jewish state without citing the Two H’s, Hashem and Holocaust. We can do it through LLC Language Hebrew land Israel, and the culture of Judaism. The thing is, I had never thought about it this way until I took the Shoresh fellowship, which is something I am so grateful I did because I have learned so much about Israel, and it has shaped how I see Israel and how I think about my connection to it.
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