By Rabbi Josh Wander

One year ago, some of the most senior Haredi rabbinic leaders in Israel boarded planes to America on an emergency fundraising mission. Their goal was staggering: raise roughly $100 million to compensate for Israeli government cuts to yeshiva funding after the High Court ruled that institutions whose students refused military service could no longer automatically receive state support. The images were surreal. Elderly rabbanim, treated almost like royalty, traveling from mansion to mansion, banquet hall to banquet hall, appealing to American donors to save the עולם התורה. The implicit message was unmistakable: the future of Torah in Eretz Yisrael depended not on Jewish sovereignty, not on the rebuilding of a functioning Jewish nation in its own land, but on the generosity of wealthy Jews living comfortably in galut. And perhaps most importantly, it depended on the American dollar.

At the time, the logic seemed obvious. America was still viewed as the financial center of the Jewish world. The dollar was king. Israeli institutions looked westward for salvation, as Jews have done for generations in exile. America was stable. America was rich. America was secure. Israel, meanwhile, was in the middle of a multi-front war, political turmoil, reserve duty crises, missile attacks, and economic uncertainty. To many, it seemed self-evident that the safer bet was the United States and not the tiny Jewish state fighting for survival in the Middle East.

Yet only a year later, reality is beginning to flip before our eyes. The dollar-to-shekel exchange rate has cratered. What was once approaching four shekels to the dollar has fallen dramatically. The same American donations now buy far less in Israel than they did just a short time ago. Meanwhile, despite nonstop predictions of collapse, despite war on multiple fronts, despite international pressure and isolation, Israel’s economy continues showing extraordinary resilience while confidence in the American financial system weakens. The irony is impossible to ignore. Those who placed their faith in the financial might of galut are now watching that very system begin to wobble while the supposedly fragile Jewish state continues to grow stronger.

But this is not merely an economic story. It is a spiritual story. For two thousand years Jews survived by attaching themselves to foreign empires. Babylon. Persia. Spain. Poland. Germany. America. Every exile develops its own illusion of permanence. Jews begin to believe that this host nation is different. This kingdom will last forever. This economy is invincible. This time we are finally safe. Yet history repeats itself with almost mathematical precision. The centers of Jewish life in exile eventually decline, weaken, turn hostile, or collapse altogether, while the Jewish people are forced yet again to confront the uncomfortable truth that galut was never meant to be permanent.

Chazal teach that Yaakov and Eisav exist in an inverse relationship. As Rashi explains in Bereishis 25, when one rises the other falls. The more dependent the Jewish people become on the systems and power structures of Eisav, the more they lose confidence in themselves, in their national mission, and in their unique destiny. But when Yaakov rises spiritually and nationally, the systems of Eisav begin to crack. We are witnessing this unfold in real time. America today is not the America of twenty years ago. Its internal divisions are becoming impossible to ignore. Its debt is astronomical. Faith in its institutions is collapsing. Antisemitism is exploding openly across universities, politics, media, and the streets themselves. The empire still projects enormous power, but increasingly it feels like late-stage Rome: wealthy, militarily dominant, culturally influential, yet internally hollowed out.

At the exact same time, Israel is undergoing the opposite process. Against all logic, against all predictions, and against all odds, the Jewish state continues advancing. Jews are returning home in massive numbers. Hebrew has been revived from a language of prayer into the language of an entire nation. Agriculture flourishes. Torah learning flourishes. Military power flourishes. Jewish sovereignty, once dismissed as fantasy, has become living reality. Ancient prophecies that sat dormant for thousands of years are materializing before our eyes in ways so dramatic that previous generations could scarcely have imagined them.

And still many refuse to connect the dots. There remains a deep psychological attachment to galut thinking even among Jews physically living in Eretz Yisrael. The instinctive assumption remains that true security lies somewhere else. Financial stability lies somewhere else. Political legitimacy lies somewhere else. Salvation lies somewhere else. So when crisis emerges, the reflex is still to board planes westward and appeal to foreign benefactors rather than fully internalizing that Jewish history itself has shifted directions.

Perhaps the most painful irony is that this dependence emerged specifically during one of the greatest eras of Jewish national revival in history. At the very moment Jewish sovereignty is returning after two millennia, many still instinctively place their trust in foreign currencies, foreign governments, foreign donors, and foreign empires rather than recognizing the magnitude of the transformation taking place around them. Fundraising itself is not the issue. Jews supporting Torah institutions is beautiful and necessary. The deeper question is ideological. Where do we believe the center of Jewish destiny truly lies? Where is our confidence anchored? What future are we investing in?

Currencies are never just currencies. They represent faith. They represent where people believe stability exists. They represent which civilization people assume will dominate tomorrow. Empires rise and fall. Financial systems rise and fall. The prophets warned repeatedly that those who tie their future to foreign powers inevitably collapse alongside them. Yet unlike previous generations, we already know how this story ends. The Torah and the prophets did not leave the finale hidden from us. ובהר ציון תהיה פליטה — “And upon Mount Zion there shall be deliverance.” The end of Jewish history is not in Washington, London, or Paris. It is in Yerushalayim. The final refuge of the Jewish people is not another exile empire but Har Tzion itself.

We are now witnessing something previous generations could barely imagine: the gradual weakening of the greatest exile empire in Jewish history occurring simultaneously with the strengthening of Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael. The writing is on the wall. The only question is how many Jews are still refusing to read it.