I just read an article by Brian Thomas titled “Yom Kippur, Tel Aviv style” which I really enjoyed. He pretty much sums it up with in these two paragraphs:
That is the difference between living as a Jew outside Israel and as a Jew in Israel: here we can just BE Jewish and the calendar and the customs and the norms of behavior push us into being culturally Jewish even if we don’t want to study Torah for nine hours a day.
Jews don’t want anywhere else to be a little piece of Israel, we just want this one small place in the world to be ours and to feel Jewish.
What do you think?