Many Jews think more about Israel than about Judaism, because we are 60 years removed from the unthinkable. The great slogan of post-Holocaust Jewry – “never forget” – is like running into the room yelling about the game having started and finding everyone is already glued to the TV.

Because the world won’t let us forget. Because no matter how many people die elsewhere – in the hundreds, in the thousands – if someone sneezes in the West Bank, that’s tomorrow’s headline.

So how you think about peace, war, death, underdogs, overlords, Jews, Arabs, “the other”; how you think about force and deterrence and hate and politics and anti-Semitism and Jewish guilt and Jewish entitlement and Jewish mission and Jewish ethics – that’s Israel. How you think about salvation and damnation and forgiveness and cruelty and compassion – that’s Israel.

I found that in thousands of discussions on ethical issues that I have had with students, eventually some analogy will be threaded back to the Holocaust or Israel.

One day I asked, “Do you think that Israel should strike back at terrorism, even if it means the deaths of many innocent civilians? Is there a limit to the number? Should we destroy their families’ houses? Should we make them pay disproportionately? What is disproportional when you fight terror?”

Randy said (all names here are pseudonyms): “We learned about that in the Torah, with Abraham’s son, Ishmael. Rashi says that the angels want God to kill him because he is going to be trouble for the Jews later on. But God asks ‘Is he a bad guy now?’ and the angels say ‘No.’ So God spares him.”

“And is this a good thing?” asked Yoni bitterly. “Ishmael’s kids are now suicide bombers.”

“But not at the time,” said Shauna.

“Oh, so just wait for them to kill you? Not at the time? That’s stupid,” said Yoni. “Why should I let the bad guys win? Only an idiot waits to get killed.”

“Yoni, Yoni!” Shauna almost shouts at her classmate. “If I showed you a man on the street today, an ordinary-looking guy, and I told you that for many years he would live an ordinary life – you know, nothing special – but many years from now, he was going to murder someone, would you kill him now?”

“I don’t know,” Yoni answered. “Maybe.”

He looked like a man who was being tricked out of what he knows to be right. I know how he feels.

Answers to the dilemmas that face the Jewish state at 60 are in fairly short supply.

One can manufacture them in a burst of bravado, but the reality is that the issues are complex and, in some cases, fairly intractable.

I recently heard a telling anecdote about Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who has been involved in acquiring houses in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, with the ultimate goal of buying out all the houses.

“How long do you think that will take?” someone asked him skeptically. “A very short amount of time,” he replied sincerely. “Maybe 300 years.”

In Jewish history, the long run is the correct time frame, that being the closest thing we have to God’s calendar.