(Gershom Pesach Teitelbaum)

Rabbi Hillel’s wisdom rings down the ages: “If not now, then when?” Today, Jewish activists, from the movement “IfNotNow” to those challenging every form of oppression in the places they call home, have resurrected this question to confront Zionism’s demands. But perhaps an equally urgent question echoes alongside it: If not here, then where? It’s a question that challenges the notion that liberation depends on any specific land or place, asking instead what it means to be fully present in our struggles, right here, right now.

For the Bundist and the Jewish worker, this question asks us to reconsider the dangerous logic of nationalism—the idea that Jewish people must uproot themselves, claim another’s land, and bind their liberation to a “Jews-only” state. Zionism tells us that there is only one place in the world where Jews can be safe, secure, and fulfilled. But doikayt—the principle of “hereness”—refutes this myth. If not here, then where? Why must our liberation require a distant land, violently torn from another people, rather than be woven into the soil of the places we have lived and struggled?

When we ask If not here, then where? we are asking Jewish people to consider who we stand with and who we serve. Are we truly united with Jewish elites and state-builders simply because we share an identity? The Jewish worker has infinitely more in common with the exploited workers and oppressed communities around them than with the capitalist who merely happens to be Jewish. The unity that Zionism seeks to impose upon Jews is an illusion, an attempt to deflect the truth: that real liberation is found in solidarity with fellow workers, not in separation.

Doikayt urges us to recognize that our fight for justice is here, with the exploited and oppressed in every region, in every community. “Think globally, act locally” echoes the heart of doikayt: to think with a vision of universal justice, yet to act with deep-rooted commitment to the people and places around us. For the Jewish worker in New York, or Warsaw, or Buenos Aires, liberation is found not in a far-off “homeland,” but in the streets and homes and workshops they share with neighbors. If not here, then where?

And so we return to Hillel, and to the activists who have reignited his words. If not now, then when? If not here, then where? If we defer liberation to a single land, we lose the opportunity to root it where we are. In this hereness is the potential to transform not only Jewish life, but the lives of all who yearn for justice. Doikayt reminds us that our “homeland” is the world itself—and that only by standing here, with our neighbors and fellow workers, do we make real the vision of justice and peace.