Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner: What Israel means to me

Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner wites on what Israel means to her in this piece for The Jewish Chronicle.

I’ve been in love with her for as long as I can remember. I love her contours, her sounds and her smells. Her language is the heart-language that superseded my mother tongue.

Her language is the language of my prayers, of my strongest songs and my true soul. I lived with her for many joyful years and now I am away from her in another land and I yearn for her. She exasperates and totally infuriates me and I am often enraged by the way she can conduct herself when she really should know better from our history. She’s a refuge and an inspiration.

She can hurt others and through this, herself and me. I hold her responsible for her actions. I travel to be with her as often as I can and each time I leave her, I feel the distance between us as a physical loss. I simply adore her — warts and all.