Is Israel losing American Jews, or are American Jews losing sight of Israel? Maybe it’s both.

In this episode of TEXTing IRL, Elana Stein Hain and Michael Koplow, Chief Policy Officer of Israel Policy Forum, turn to Parshat Sh’lach and the story of the spies in Numbers 13 to explore why many American Jews today feel overwhelmed, disillusioned, or disconnected from Israel. They unpack how fear, moral conflict, and a sense of powerlessness can erode commitment, and they explore what it would take to sustain a meaningful relationship with the Jewish state—and a shared sense of Jewish peoplehood—in this moment.

A full transcript of this episode is available below.

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Do We Still Believe in the Jewish State? Transcript

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to TEXTing IRL: Ideas for Real Life, where we wrestle with the big dilemmas of our time through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain, and we’re recording on May 28th, 2026. 

Even as many Jews around the world are intensifying their support of Israel, many others are losing their confidence in Israel and its future. There can be a number of reasons for this. Significant among them, of course, are the profound gaps between the outlook, actions, and rhetoric of the current Israeli government and the commitments of most American Jews. 

But we know that being dedicated to Jewish peoplehood entails caring about the Jewish national project. So what can we do to continue to engage American Jewry in the future of Israel? I mean, for people who care but may be losing confidence. Can we do this while being honest about the real gaps that exist? 

On this week’s episode of TEXTing, we’re gonna think through these questions through the Torah portion of Shlach, where famously the spies sent by Moses to check out the Promised Land brought back a negative report. This led to devastating effects, a loss of confidence on the part of the fledgling Jewish nation, and ultimately a loss of a whole generation. 

I’m joined today by Michael Koplow, the Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum and a senior fellow at Hartman’s Kogod Research Center. If you haven’t read Michael’s weekly column, you should. Michael brings a liberal Zionist voice to analyzing Israel and American Jewry. He’s a treasured colleague and a friend who has a lot to say on this topic. Michael, thank you so much for joining me.

Michael: Thanks for having me, Elana.

Elana: Well, so what’s amazing about this is, this is a scoop, because people can hear you analyze the Middle East anytime, but they cannot hear you have a Torah chavruta anytime. So I’m very excited about this. 

Let’s just remind our listeners for a minute. Shlach, this Parsha, Moses, at God’s behest, sends the spies to the land of Israel, 12 of them. They’re supposed to check out the land, and when they come back, 10 of them have pretty scary things to say. And I wanna start with their despairing report, or at least part of their despairing report, and we’ll see where we go from there, okay?

Vayesapru lo, they told Moses, vayomru, they said, banu el ha’aretz asher shlachtanu, we came to the land that you sent us to, vegam zavat chalav udevash hi veze pirya, it is flowing with milk and date honey. They didn’t mean there are a lot of bees. And this is the fruit. Efes, but, ki az ha’am hayoshev ba’aretz, it’s a very strong nation that lives there, veharim betzurot gedolot me’od, they’re very fortified cities, vegam yelidei ha’anak ra’inu sham, and we saw giants there. 

And I’m skipping a little bit to where the Torah sort of takes a third person narrator. Vayotziyu dibat ha’aretz asher taru ota. Basically, they spread negativity, el Bnei Yisrael, to the people, lemor, saying, ha’aretz asher avarnu ba letur ota, the place that we went through to check out, is eretz ochalat yoshveha hi, it eats its inhabitants, vechol ha’am asher ra’inu betochah anshei midot, everybody there is so big, ve-sham ra’inu et hanefilim bnei anak min hanifilim, we saw these giants there, vanhi b’eineinu kachagavim vechen hayinu be-eineihem, and we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we were like grasshoppers in their eyes. 

So I read these verses, and they just sound intimidated. They, they really just sound intimidated of entering the land and having to fight for it, right? They don’t say, it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful, but to be honest, we can’t just waltz in here and people are gonna give us where we, you know, whatever we want. We’re gonna have to fight for it, and, and we don’t think we can do it, right? So, you know, when you see this, what, what do you dilate on? What do you notice here? 

Michael: I agree with you. They, they certainly seem intimidated, and one of the things I notice is that there’s a, there’s a mismatch in expectations.

First of all, it’s interesting to me that the meraglim, the spies, are the leaders of the 12 tribes. Moshe says, you know, the ones that they’re gonna send, kol nasi bahem. And those aren’t necessarily the people that you would expect to go on a military reconnaissance mission. If you were actually going to scout the land because you had to invade it and take it over, you’d probably send somebody else. And it almost seems to me—

Elana: Who would you send, by the way? I’d, I’d like, I’d like to use some of your expertise here. Who would you send? This is why I invited you, Michael. 

Michael: You would send people with intelligence expertise. Maybe you would send people with specific military expertise. You would certainly send people who would have a lower profile than the leaders of each tribe who also—

Elana: Interesting.

Michael: —probably have some, you know, some, some sort of maybe even retinue that, that comes with them. So these aren’t necessarily the people you would send if it was a military reconnaissance mission. 

And it almost seems to me as if this is a delegation of leaders going to the land to check it out, and when they come back, they’re certainly intimidated, but I, I think there’s also a real gap in their expectations.

And I think you even, you know, you, you see this even a bit in their reaction. And one of the other things that jumps out to me is that in their initial report and the, the back and forth where they give their report and, and Calev contradicts them and says, no, we can. 

Elana: Meaning, one of the two who says, no, no, no, we can do it. We can do it.

Michael: Right. He says, he says, we can do it, and the response from the rest of them is, no, we can’t. In this first back and forth, Hashem, God is absent. They’re talking about it as if they’re gonna have to do this on their own, and that is striking to me too because this is a people who, in the span of just a few months, have watched God take them out of Egypt, have watched God split Yam Suf, split the sea for them, have watched God give them the Torah at Sinai, and now they seem to think that they’re gonna have to do this by themselves, that they’re on their own.

And so I think there’s definitely an intimidation part here where they go and they see people who are scaring them. But they also seem to be giving off this vibe as if they’re on their own, and I think that for them is, it’s not only intimidating, it’s almost like a shock to the system.

Elana: Well, so it’s interesting that you say, because, you know, I always have an eye—I have a split screen in my mind, right? I have an eye to the text, and I have an eye to the world that we live in. 

The eye to the world that we live in, what you’re saying about they didn’t actually send people with military intelligence. They sent people who expected to see something else and didn’t necessarily have maybe a full, a complete expectation, like a, a completely accurate understanding of what things were going to look like. And when they get there, that itself is a shock to the system, and it’s sort of like, wait, what is this? 

And I think just as a layperson, sometimes I just feel knowledge of the, the future of Israel, military threats, just military threats. It’s so beyond my pay grade to understand what the possibilities are in our tier, that sometimes, and I think a lot of people are feeling this, they’re just sort of like, I don’t know if I can be invested in this. I, I’m, I’m scared that the threats are too big and too real, and I don’t really, I don’t really know what the future holds. You know? I, I, I see that on the split screen, you know?  

Michael: Yeah. Without question. I, I think you see that from Israelis, and you also see it from American Jews, and particularly after October 7th, where we’re living in a different worlds. Israel is living in a different region. Nobody really knows what is coming next, and I think you see that here in the, in, in the story of the spies. They, they don’t know what to expect. They don’t know what’s coming next. The things that were familiar to them, whether it was 400 years in Egypt or whether it is their time in the desert, that is now all about to change in a fundamental way, and they don’t know what’s coming. And I think that that’s their story.

Elana: So in a way, the unfamiliarity, the uncertainty, the, the doubts, the intimidating factors, I think that’s very real. It’s funny ’cause as a person of faith myself, it’s interesting that you point out that, the absence of God there. You know, it- there’s a, there’s a faith that’s a faith that can handle realpolitik, and there’s a faith that can’t handle realpolitik and tries to supplant it, right? 

And my question as somebody who sees what’s going on in the region and is just wondering what the future holds is like how do I hold a faith that also—that understands realpolitik as something that matters within that future, right? Which is—I, I think there are plenty of people who are experiencing that too.

But I wanna point out that something that we’re doing is a little bit subversive. I think usually what we do is we say, okay, the spies did something bad. Maybe they left with bad intentions, and they returned with bad intentions. They were problematic. And I think the reason we say that is both because God is left out of what they say at the beginning, I think that’s true.

But also I think because of the disastrous consequences, right? I mean, the disastrous consequences is, are that they basically convinced people that this is not gonna work and that whole generation dies out, let alone the people who the next day say, oh no, no, no, we’re gonna do it, and they go up the mountain and they get massacred to try to go into the land, right? Disaster results. 

And I guess what I’m asking is, I think I’m perfectly comfortable saying I think that if American Jews pull out of Israel, there will be disastrous consequences. And the subversive piece here is, I want to understand the psychology of people who are feeling that need to, to pull away because I don’t think it’s coming from a bad place. I think there are people for whom it is coming from a bad place, but I think there are a lot of people, whether, by the way, Israelis themselves who are moving to America or moving elsewhere, right? Or American Zionist and liberal Zionist Jews who are either afraid of the threats or afraid of something else.

So the subversive thing I wanna do is I wanna look at some of the commentaries explaining the spies, not because these commentaries look at the spies as, you know, these are pious people, but because I wanna understand the psychology, ’cause I think in our day there are a lot of people who it’s… They have psychological reasons for feeling this way and I basically wanna say, disaster will result if you give up here. So I know you feel this way, but we have to do something to address it, right? Do you feel that that’s like a fair, a fair project to try to do in these next, you know, 17 minutes?  

Michael: Yes. That’s what we can do. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Elana: Okay. So let’s take a look. I, I wanna give people some things that they haven’t seen before, I assume they haven’t seen before. 

So there’s this Rabbi Isaac Arama, Rabbi Yitzchak Arama, and he has a very, very interesting take and he says, they just didn’t want the limits that the land was going to impose on them. As opposed to Joshua and Caleb, the way that he says it is, they rejected the unrestrained and unbounded life and they were willing to choose a life of limits in the land; basically saying, no, no, we’re happy to leave the desert even though the desert in some ways is easier. We’re happy to leave the desert and go there. 

And I, I think there’s something interesting about that psychological read. The idea that 10 of the spies basically said, we’re living fine in the desert. We don’t really need to go and have all of the new challenges of going into that land. And in fact, we are concerned that we are not gonna be able to reach those, like, meet those challenges.

And I’m wondering what you think about that. The text itself, like the concept itself, and the concept for American Jews who live in an incredibly different culture than what’s going on in the Middle East.

Michael: Yeah, I see that in the text and, and I definitely see it playing out today as well. American Jews hear from Israelis all the time, “You don’t understand what it’s like to live here. You don’t understand what it’s like to be under constant threat. You don’t understand what it’s like to be running to, to shelters and safe rooms.” 

And I think many American Jews absorb that, and they say, “Yeah, we, we don’t understand, and we don’t necessarily want to find out.” And—

Elana: Right 

Michael: It’s, it’s, it’s fine here, right? This is, this is the, the, the, the golden, the golden diaspora, right? The, the golden medina. So I think for many American Jews, there absolutely is a level of comfort here that people don’t think that they will necessarily experience in Israel, and there is something that is frightening about that. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t make it a wrong choice. But there is, there is a sense of apprehension. 

Elana: I, I also think that the culture gap is not just about are you going to bunkers, are you not? I think the culture gap is also American Jews generally, we don’t wanna have to use violence. That’s not, that’s not us. You know, the majority of American Jews are not gun owners. They’re not comfortable around guns. Like, they’re not doing that, right? The majority of American Jews would rather diplomacy than war, right? 

I, I think that there’s something also to the idea of, well, we actually have, like, ethical disagreements on how things should be done, which by the way, might change if somebody was living in Israel. It might change for them or it might not, right? Meaning we have ethical disagreements, and I think our ethical disagreements are very much shaped by the, the, the societies that we’re in respectively and our experiences. 

I think it’s sort of like, why are you dragging me into this when I actually, my moral compass keeps me where I am? Like I’m… You know, it’s not just that I don’t wanna go into a bunker, it’s, I don’t want that whole mentality. I don’t wanna have to think like that, and those wouldn’t be my moral equations or decisions either, maybe even if I can imagine myself in that, you know? 

Michael: Yeah. I think there’s, I think there’s a reason that the stereotypical American Jew is a doctor or a lawyer and not a soldier or a, I don’t know, jujitsu instructor, right? There’s, there’s a reason that—there’s, there’s a reason that American Jews are much more comfortable joining the ACLU than the Jewish Defense League. 

Yeah, there, there absolutely is, is something to that. The, the, the environment that we live in shapes us, and the ways in which we wanna deal with threats, the ways in which we wanna deal with anti-Semitism are generally very different than the way that Israelis approach it.

Elana: Right. Yeah, it’s, it’s also, I mean, I would say as a, another thing, why are you dragging me from where I am into where you are is some of the danger that American Jews are feeling because of what’s going on in the Middle East. I think there’s also a little bit of that. Meaning, now I’m entangled in your problems, but I’m over here and I’m entangled in your problems, and I think that’s, I think that’s very real. 

And look, I don’t wanna spend too much time just, you know, talking about the problems ’cause I do wanna get to, okay, what do we do about these feelings, right? Meaning, people have overwhelm about the military possibilities. People have a sense of, well, wait a second, we’re so different and we’re just going in different trajectories. We have different ethical frameworks that we think in. You know, you’re affecting me over here even, you know. 

But I wanna do one more before we get to, okay, what are, what are we, what do we wanna do about this? What do I wanna say about this? Because I don’t want this to be a reason for American Jews to say, “I give up,” like, “I’m done.” Disastrous effects. You might not have bad intention, but the effects are problematic. 

So actually I’m going to the Zohar because why not read a kabbalistic text on what for me is a Thursday afternoon? I’m actually gonna read it in the Aramaic ’cause I feel like not enough people listen to Aramaic podcasts. So we’re gonna try. So like you said, kulam anashim, these are all important people who were sent. And the Zohar says, kulam zakayim havu, they were actually all innocent, ve-reishay di Yisrael havu, they were heads of Israel. Aval einun davru l’garmeuhu itah bisha, but they took bad advice for themselves. Amay natlu itadah? Why did they take this bad advice? Elah amru, they said, i ya’alun Yisrael la’arah, if we go up to that land, nita’aber anan mithavei reishen, we’re going to lose our leadership positions, ve-yimnei Moshe reishin acheranin, he’s gonna make new leaders. 

And that, of course, if you hate the Meraglim, you can read that with the ugliest. You can say they, oh my gosh, they were only concerned about their own leadership. 

But can we just talk about what it looks like to be somebody who basically says, oh my gosh, we’re gonna lose control in the next, this next stage. Are we sure we wanna be pushing people to this next stage where we’re not gonna be in control and actually can’t tell people, like, it’s gonna be okay ’cause we’re gonna be helping you and we’re gonna be in control? What do you think about that? 

Michael: I, I think if we superimpose it onto American Jews and the relationship to American Jews and Israel—

Elana: Wait, can I ask you a question?

Michael: Sure. 

Elana: Before we superimpose it, what do you think about it on its own?  

Michael: Oh, on, on its own, uh, it absolutely makes sense. You know, these are the people who, whose leadership grew up and, and was inculcated in a very different environment. So if you are the head of your tribe because you were influential amongst slaves in Egypt, or if you were the head of your tribe because you were appointed that during this trek in the desert, then getting to the land of Israel where you’re going to have to defeat enemies, and you’re gonna have to build a new society, and you’re gonna have to be independent and self-sufficient in ways that you haven’t before. Yeah, I, I don’t know that there’s any expectation, or there should be, that the current leaders are going to be the next leaders.  

Elana: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, now superimpose. Go for it.  

Michael: So if we, if we—

Elana: Now, now make the connection …  

Michael: So if we superimpose it on, on American Jews today and, and some of what’s going on with Israel, I think for many American Jews, even as they feel an attachment to Israel and an importance to Israel and Zionism and a sense of peoplehood with Israeli Jews, they feel like they can’t impact anything that goes on there. 

There’s a, there’s a feeling of, of helplessness, and the idea that we can control our own American Jewish institutions and American Jewish identity and, and culture and the way we operate in the world, but ultimately we don’t have any levers or mechanisms for real fundamental change in the Jewish state that, that in many ways speaks for Jews everywhere, and even if it doesn’t, haters around the world think that it speaks for Jews everywhere. 

And we increasingly don’t even get the sense that we’re able to influence Israeli leaders, that they listen to what we say, that they care about what we say, that they care about how Israel’s actions in the world, many of which are necessary, are impacting us here in the United States in a way that Israelis just don’t take into account. 

And so I, I think that there is this idea that we can control our destiny here, even if we were to go to Israel, we wouldn’t necessarily be the people controlling our destiny there, and we certainly aren’t when we’re not there. So I think that there’s definitely something to it. 

Elana: Although it’s so funny, you know, because we’ve been in Israel for these two years, and my kids, we talk about like, do you need an Israeli accent? Do you not need an Israeli accent? I’m like, just listen to Golda Meir. She didn’t have an Israeli accent, and she did plenty of impacting on this country.

But I really understand what you’re saying. Okay, so we, we have set for ourselves a mountain of reasons for people to kind of pull away. Okay? Let’s talk a little bit about what we can do. Being honest about all of those reasons, what we can do. Let’s think about it together.  

Michael: Sure. So part of what I like about the, the structure of, of the tribes of Israel is that they are tribes, and they each have their own fiefdom. They each have their own sphere. Even, even the Levi’im, the Levites, when they’re traveling through the desert, they each have their own jobs with regard to the tabernacle. And when the Israelites get to the land, they literally each have their own plot at which they—and they, they each govern their own plot. And I think that’s an important model. 

When, in 2015, Reuven Rivlin, who was then president of Israel, gave his, his famous four tribe speech where he talked about—

Elana: We’ll put it in the notes.

Michael: Where he talked about the way that Israeli society was now divided into four almost equally sized tribes, and he diagnosed that as a problem. He, he wanted there to be a, a more coherent, single, unified Israeli identity. 

But I think that in this case, the, the case of the 12 tribes of Israel, it’s actually an advantage because everybody has their own place, and you can find what you’re looking for. 

And I want American Jews to be deeply invested in Israel. I want them to be connected to Israel. And we have to acknowledge that for many it’s increasingly difficult because they look at Israel and they see it as a monolith. They see the government that they don’t like, and they see policies they don’t like, and they think they have to withdraw. 

But the beauty of Israel is that it is tribes, and there are very different groups and demographics. And you can support what you like and, and find what there is to be attracted to.

Elana: So, you know, it’s an interesting thing because I think on the one hand I’m with you, meaning I, I always encourage people, left, right, or center, I encourage people to find their parallel as American Jews, to find their parallel in Israel. NGOs, just meeting people, political leaders, right? 

Michael: Definitely. 

Elana: What I’m—like, the open question mark for me is, and I’m doing this because we’re recording a few days before the Israel Day Parade; I’m thinking a lot about it as a New Yorker. The open question mark for me is sometimes you actually need the tribes to be able to come together, to be able to say, oh, here we are with political force, with political sway, with political—right? And I’m a little worried about losing that. And there’s a reason why the establishment had a model that was more centralized, right? Because you amass political power. You amass some sort of… You, you amass resources, right?

So I think the question for me is less, do we want people to be able to connect to their tribe, which I think we do, but how do we also maintain something—and this is what I think Rivlin was talking about—there needed to be an Israeli civic identity. There needs to be an Israeli civic identity. 

Actually, our colleague, Matzua Sagiv, wrote a great piece about this in Sources a while back, in our Hartman journal. There needs to be a civic identity. And I guess what I’m wondering is can we develop an American Zionist civic identity even as we’re all going to our different tribes? I’m wondering about that. What do you think about it?  

Michael: Yeah. I agree that there needs to be a civic identity, and I think that civic identity increasingly needs to be supporting the vision of the state that accords with what most American Jews want to see. Doesn’t mean that everybody is going to agree, but, but I, I think you’d be even, even, you know, whether wherever you are politically, right, left, center, I think most people, most American Jews would be hard-pressed to disagree with the basic idea that Israel should be a Jewish and democratic state, and figuring out what the best version is of Jewish state and what the best version is of democratic state. That’s a broad civic identity, and within those things, you can find what speaks to you. 

Something that, that just is so striking to me from the past few years is that when you had the nine months of the judicial overhaul protests in Israel, lots of American Jews went, and they showed up at those protests on, on Saturday nights, on Motzei Shabbat, in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

And they came back and they said that even though it was a protest against the government, they came back saying that they felt it was the most Zionist thing they had ever done in their lives because they were supporting an idea. They were supporting Israel. 

Elana: What they cared about, and in Israel. 

Michael: Exactly. What they cared about—

Elana: And in Israel.

Michael: In Israel. They were, in their view, they were supporting Israel. They weren’t supporting the government or the policies. They were supporting the project of Israel, and I think that’s a really good example of how you can build an American Jewish Zionist civic identity where people can find their spots. 

Elana: Yeah. You know, I think I wanna end with this. I think this might have been Dr. Erica Brown wrote this in one of her books, if I’m not mistaken, where she says, you know, part of the problem here is not actually just the way that the 10 spies reacted. It’s what the two spies who were pro then did. And the, the term is Vayahas Calev, right? Caleb, one of the two spies who was pro, quieted everybody down, and he didn’t actually listen to the problems. He just shut everybody up. 

So I think, I think there’s a, there’s a certain… Like for me, I come to this with saying I think American Jews have to be realistic that we’re not the center of Israel’s story. We’re not. Israel is the center of Israel’s story. I think we need to be realistic about the fact that the Middle East is a different place and actually is going to have different challenges and play by different rules. 

But I do think you’re right. I think being able to actually feel that we contribute something to what we think matters and also that we are heard by somebody, right? It’s not just that you’re contributing, it’s also that somebody sees you there and says, huh. I see you here. Glad you’re here. Right? There, that can happen when you’re working with your tribe. It can happen on the level of Israeli politicians who are willing to say, “I hear you.” Can even say very Herzogian, “I hear you, but I can’t do anything,” right? But like, “but I hear you.” There, there’s something to that, right? 

There’s that, you know, that piece of both contributing and feeling that you are wanted, in some way, helps people stay in relationship, even when things are difficult.

Any last words, Michael?  

Michael: Yeah, well, I’ll, I’ll pick up on, you know, ’cause you bring up Calev’s reaction. I’ll, I’ll bring up, Joshua’s, Yehoshua’s, which is, which is very different.

Elana: Perfect.

Michael: Where he’s actually trying to, uh, convince people on different fronts, right? He, he says, he says it’s the, the, the land itself is, is good, flows with milk and honey. You know, God, God will, will bring us there if, if we, if we do what we need to do. Don’t be afraid. He, he’s trying to speak to people more where they are as opposed to just saying, be quiet. We can do it. I think he’s trying to be more persuasive and actually listen to their, listen to their complaints.  

Elana: Yeah. So I think what we’re talking about here is a, is a grown-up relationship, a grown-up relationship that recognizes the problems and is honest about them and is still in it, a grown-up relationship that can communicate and can hear people where they are and be able to be honest about what the possibilities are.

Michael, thank you so much for taking on a new cap for us today. I hope we have many opportunities to learn Torah together in the future. 

Michael: Thanks for asking me.