The U.S. is my Home
The US is My Home-Rosh Hashanah Service 9/12/26
Picture this: I was sitting down to write to this very sermon about how the United States feels like home when I heard that agents from the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement had surged into Indianapolis. Indianapolis’ local Fox news station reported that ICE provided no information to them or to local public officials about what the operation involved, how many people had been arrested, or where they had been taken. Fox’s own investigations suggested that this operation was in line with a pattern of targeting vans carrying low-paid workers to jobs. Indiana is now home to an immigration detention facility in Miami County, which, like the many other such prisons around the United States, blocks visits even by elected representatives. This leaves only patrol officers overseeing basic human rights requirements. Dozens of people have died in these prisons, often because they have been unable to access life-saving medication. On this same weekend, immigration officers raided a nightclub in Memphis that was popular with the Latino community and arrested every single person there—more than 120 people, including at least fourteen parents with children at home. This is the reality in the United States today. This is my home.
For 18 years, I lived a relatively carefree life in Adelaide, South Australia. I enjoyed access to universal health care, a strong social safety net, and the same four weeks of paid vacation as every other employee in the country. Most of all, I appreciated that politicians across the political spectrum believed that the government was a force for good in people’s lives. They disagreed about how the government could make people’s lives better, but they all agreed that this was the government’s job.
In July of 2024, I moved from Australia to South Bend. Of course, I’d been back to the US many times since moving to Australia. But this time I was intending to stay. I was amazed that, within a very short time, I felt that I had come home. Most of you know that I arrived with the intention of only staying here for a year, and then only for two years. But South Bend got under my skin, and so I signed a five year contract with Temple Beth-El and bought a house.
Over the last two years, a song has come into my mind from time to time. It’s not an American song, or even in English. The song, written by Ehud Manor, is entitled “Ein li eretz aheret,”—I have no other country. The first line says, “I have no other country even if my land is aflame.” The song continues: “Just a word in Hebrew pierces my veins and my soul with a painful body, with a hungry heart. Here is my home. I will not stay silent
because my country changed her face.”
Manor wrote this as a protest song during the long, long first war in Lebanon. It articulates his frustration and despair at a country he no longer recognizes. But it also affirms that Israel is the only place for him. This is how I’ve come to feel about the United States. I have no other land.
Part of what has made me feel so completely at home here is the warm embrace of Temple Beth-El and the larger Michiana Jewish community. I also appreciate that living in the midwest is not like living in impersonal New York City or transient California. People around here take each other seriously and are deeply interested in connecting with one another. As I shared last night, a sense of community is crucial to finding home. But not just this, there are so many other things I treasure about the United States: its natural beauty, its optimism, its diversity, and how it has been a welcoming place for Jews through the generations.
I treasure the natural beauty of this particular part of the country. On Labor Day, I traveled through the rolling hills of southwest Michigan, ultimately ending up in St. Joseph on the shores of Lake Michigan—surely one of the world’s most wondrous bodies of water. After 2 years, I still can’t believe that there’s no salt! I have had the opportunity to explore different corners of the US—the vibrancy of New York City, the quirkiness of San Francisco, the spaciousness of Montana, the grandeur of the Rockies. There is still much on my bucket list; I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or to Glacier National Park. There are endless riches to appreciate in this land.
I treasure the supreme sense of optimism and openness that is so much a part of the culture of the United States. Americans are ready and willing to consider new ideas, new ways of doing things. We believe that there is no such thing as a problem that can’t be solved—we just haven’t figured it out yet. This receptiveness to new approaches is something I really missed while living in Australia. The sentence, “but we’ve always done it this way” just kind of trips off of people’s tongues with an ease that led me to despair on many occasions. I would ask, Why does Australia, with its endless supply of wind and sun, get more than half of its electricity from coal-fired power plants? Because we’ve always done it this way. And, because, you know, the coal miners need jobs.
I treasure the unending diversity of the people of the United States. In 2018, many years after I’d moved to Australia and six years after becoming an Australian citizen, I brought my older son down to DC’s National Mall to watch the fireworks on July 4. As we sat out in the muggy heat of the Washington summer, I invited Onyx to look around at the million or so other people on the grass with us. I noted that we were surrounded by people from every corner of the world, of every religious tradition and none. All had found a home here in the United States. All contributed to its economic prosperity but also to its extraordinary cultural wealth. Living in such a diverse society is not always easy; hard work and real flexibility is required, as well as a willingness to listen to those with drastically different ways of seeing the world. I believe the rewards are completely worth it.
Finally, I treasure living a Jewish life in the United States. This country welcomed Jews at its founding. George Washington’s letter to the Jewish community of New Port, Rhode Island, expressed his conviction that Jews would be entitled to exactly the same rights and privileges as every other citizen. There have been many times in the last 250 years when Jews have been discriminated against. But we have flourished in the United States. The richness of Jewish life in the US is unique. I am so excited to join with thousands of others when I go to my first URJ biennial in December in Philadelphia! While living in Australia, I would attend the regional biennial with participants from Australia, New Zealand, and from the expat communities in Asia. In a good year, we’d have 150 people in attendance, a reflection of the small numbers of Jews in those countries. Among those, an even tinier number were not Orthodox: 5000 liberal Jews in the whole of Australia, only three small congregations in all of New Zealand. 90% of Jews worldwide today live in the US and Israel, and the vast majority of American Jews are not Orthodox. There is just nothing like being Jewish in the US.
I have no other land. So much of what I treasure about this country is under threat. The US government is actively pushing a vision for this nation which affirms white Christians, and marginalizes the rest of us. The embrace of science that enabled us to beat back childhood diseases and put a man on the moon has been abandoned, with scientific research stripped of its funding. This country, built by wave upon wave of immigrants, has now abandoned even the pretense of welcoming newcomers. Hopeful immigrants came to their scheduled hearings expecting to progress in their dream of becoming permanent residents, only to be taken away in handcuffs. Our national park system which oversees our most precious natural treasures is in peril. The administration has reversed decades of regulation intended to keep our air and water clean, advancing our ecological decline.
Equally concerning, Jewish life in the United States is currently under attack. I am now reading Dr. Dara Horn’s brand-new book, provocatively entitled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A love story for the living. She documents horrifying experiences of anti-Semitism by American Jews just trying to live their lives, and that’s just in the introduction. Thankfully, I feel that, at least for the moment, we are blessedly shielded from the worst of these sentiments here in South Bend. However, the wave of anti-Jewish activity from the left, the right, and the middle continues to build relentlessly. We must not wait until it is too late. It is crucial that we all join with our allies and friends to do whatever we can to counter it.
I have no other country, even if my land is aflame. This messy, crazy United States of America, with a population of 1/3 billion people, is my home. It is all of our homes. As this Jewish new year begins, I personally commit to doing what I can to make sure that it remains a place that I am proud to call my home. I will not stay silent because my country has changed her face. Shana tova!
