What Israel means to the Jewish people: Beyond politics and borders - opinion

Israel is many things to many people. Arguments continue over who the land belongs to, where its borders should be drawn, when the modern state actually started, how the country ought to be governed, and why it needs to exist in the first place.Few people pause to ask the plain question of what Israel is. Every Jew should spend some time discussing that question and forming an answer of their own. The place is taken for granted all too often, and it rarely receives the personal contemplation it deserves. As a place that means so much to every Jew, people should think about what Israel is to them.People describe Israel as the ancestral homeland. Jews have pointed to this land for generations as the ground their forefathers entered after leaving Egypt, the hills and valleys they cultivated through seasons of plenty and drought, and the cities they built and rebuilt across the long biblical period.That deep family history running from the earliest settlements through later returns is what makes the country feel like the starting point of the Jewish story rather than a destination chosen in some later century.The land is given to the Jewish people by God.