When Dreams Come Home...

Zionism is the “I Have a Dream” of the Jewish People

“I have a dream…”Those four words don’t belong to just one speech, or one man — though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave them their most powerful shape. They belong to anyone who has ever carried a vision so fierce it outlived centuries of exile, hardship, and disbelief.

For the Jewish people, Zionism was — and is — that dream. Not just an idea scribbled in a political pamphlet, but a vision that refused to fade for two thousand years: We will return to our homeland.

Martin Luther King Jr. himself recognized this. In 1968, he said:

“Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity… Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”

Zionism was the Jewish “I Have a Dream” movement long before it had a name. It was the whispered hope of shepherds in Babylon, the hymn of exiles on the Vistula River, the prayer murmured at every Passover table: Next year in Jerusalem.

And if Dr. King gave us the poetry of liberation, Walt Disney gave us the playbook for how to believe in it. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” Disney famously said. The founders of modern Zionism, from Herzl to Ben-Gurion, seemed to take that as a personal dare.

Herzl’s version of “When You Wish Upon a Star” was more like: When you wish upon a homeland, makes no difference who you are — as long as you’re willing to build, sweat, and defend it. And they did. With shovels in one hand and plows in the other, they turned dream into blueprint, blueprint into neighborhoods, neighborhoods into a living, breathing country.

It wasn’t magic — but it was miraculous.

I was reminded of this recently when I visited Disney. Walking down Main Street with fireworks overhead, music in the air, and kids darting past with ice cream, I felt that intoxicating mix of freedom, life, and pure joy. Disney is childhood’s dream brought to life. But Israel? Israel is our adult Disney — a dream thousands of years old, built not out of fairy dust but out of hope, courage, and relentless determination. It’s the place where our story leapt off the page and became something we could walk through, live in, and pass on to the next generation.

And that’s why it hurts to see how often people attack this dream, the way they attack Israel and Zionism itself. I hope we can learn to let each other dream without tearing those dreams apart — because every people deserves their chance to turn “I have a dream” into “Here we are, living it.”

Dr. King once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Zionism was the Jewish people stepping onto that staircase — even when it looked like it might vanish into the clouds.

And here we are, still climbing. Still dreaming. Still singing our ancient song in a modern key. Because if you can dream it, you can do it — and if you can dream it together, you can build a home.