Not that we don’t pay a high price for living under extremity. The Israeli character can be edgy, aggressive; my wife, Sarah, who grew up in genteel Connecticut, calls Israel the post-traumatic stress capital of the world. We cut each other off on the road and in lines. Our politics can be brutal, each side denouncing the other as enemies of Israel. There is growing violence in our schools. Political corruption is on the rise. We live with accumulated layers of unresolved trauma—wave after wave of immigrants entering a country facing the constant threat of terrorism and missile attacks and,
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