In the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva tells a story about a fox who sees fish darting through the river, constantly on edge, always alert. “Why are you so afraid?” the fox asks. “Come out onto the dry land and live with me in safety.”
The fish laugh. “If we are afraid in the water, the very place that gives us life, how much more so on dry land, where we would surely die.”
Rabbi Akiva’s message is clear: we do not abandon the place of our vulnerability, even when it is frightening. Because it is also the place of our life.
I thought about this story often in recent weeks, following the Israel trip of The Ark Synagogue at the end of February, at the end of which ten of our congregants found themselves suddenly living through the outbreak of war with Iran. It was a text we had studied together with Rabbi Naomi Efrat, who has been opening her home in Pardes Hannah as a pop-up synagogue since October 7th, inviting all who look for it into a Judaism of questioning, openness and spiritual courage.
For many Progressive Jews in the UK, our relationship with Israel has become strained, even painful. Members of our community speak openly of heartbreak, of feeling alienated by a government whose policies on democracy, pluralism and human rights sit deeply uneasily with our values.
One participant in our trip described arriving in Israel unsure whether she was coming “to say goodbye… or to find hope in the dark.”
That tension was present throughout our journey.
The Ark Synagogue group look into Gaza from Kibbutz Nahal Oz
We met extraordinary Israelis working for a different vision of their country: educators at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa, building shared society across religious lines; Orly Erez-Likhovski, Director of the Israel Religious Action Center, leading legal battles for civil rights; and Rabbi Yael Vurgan, serving traumatised communities near the Gaza border while holding a commitment to peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.
It was an inspirational and yet at times uncomfortable trip. We saw the memorials to the atrocities of 7th October and stood at the Gaza border seeing the destruction that the war had left on both sides of the border. We witnessed grief and fear on all sides and we listened to stories that will not leave us.
And then, just as the group was preparing to return home, the war with Iran erupted.
Ten members of our community were stranded in Israel for nine days, sheltering from missiles and drones. They slept in underground car parks, ran repeatedly for cover at the sound of sirens, and lived with the constant uncertainty that defines daily life for so many Israelis.
One participant described it simply: “By day and night a story of living above ground and then below.”
And yet, what stayed with me most was not only the fear, but the connection.
Two of our congregants were welcomed like family by the Leo Baeck Education Center, sleeping alongside soldiers, school staff and local residents on gym mats. Our Tel Aviv group welcomed a lone new immigrant into their makeshift shelter community. They walked along the beach between sirens, holding on to moments of normality, even joy. All ten joined Shabbat services on Zoom with our congregation back in London.
And when they finally returned home, they spoke not of wanting to distance themselves but of feeling more deeply bound to the people they had left behind.
One wrote, with striking honesty: “I had come to Israel to say ‘goodbye’, but I left by saying ‘hello’ again.”
This is the challenge and the calling for Progressive Jews at this moment.
It would be easy, even understandable, to step back. To say: the dissonance between our desire to express solidarity and the disregard for our Progressive Jewish values is too hard to bear. To disengage from a political reality that feels morally exhausting.
But the story of the fish and the fox reminds us: leaving the water is not a path to safety. It is a path to disappearance.
Israel is not only a state. It is a living centre of Jewish life, identity and peoplehood. And what happens there, especially in relation to religious pluralism, shapes the legitimacy of Progressive Judaism across the world.
If Progressive Jewish voices withdraw, others will not pause in our absence. They will shape the institutions, the definitions of Jewish identity, and the future of Israel without us.
Engagement does not mean endorsement. It does not require us to silence our critique or soften our moral clarity.
On the contrary, it demands that we bring our values—of justice, equality, and human dignity—into the heart of the conversation.
It means standing alongside those in Israel who are already doing this work, often at great personal cost. It means supporting organisations that defend democracy and pluralism. It means showing up in dialogue, in solidarity, and yes, in political frameworks where diaspora Jews still have a voice.
But perhaps most importantly, it means staying in relationship.
Judaism has never asked us to love uncritically. But it has always asked us to remain connected: to wrestle, to argue, to care enough not to walk away.
The past weeks have made that painfully clear.
Our congregants returned physically safe, for which we are profoundly grateful. But they also returned with something less easily named: a renewed sense that even in fear, even in disagreement, even in heartbreak, this relationship matters too much to abandon.
Like the fish in Rabbi Akiva’s story, we may feel exposed, uncertain, even afraid in the waters of Jewish life today.
But it is still the water that sustains us.
And our task, as Progressive Jews, is not to leave it but to help shape it into a place where more life can flourish.