Occasionally, I hear Jews complain that everyone is obsessed with Israel. It’s true: this country gets way more coverage than pretty much any other. The coverage of the war on Gaza greatly eclipses anything broadcast about Yemen, Congo, or Sudan.

But can we really be surprised? More than a third of the world considers this land to be holy. Jews pray in this direction three times a day. Muslims believe their prophet ascended to Heaven here. Christians believe their god was born here. For the Bahai, their founder died here.

I do not think it is controversial to say that this land is, in some sense, sacred.

It is not that this country has any more God in it than anywhere else. Religious Jews hold that the Divine Presence departed from here with the destruction of the Temple, and that God’s place is now as dispersed as Jews are throughout the world.

But for at least the last 2,500 years, religious believers have invested their hopes and directed their prayers here. That decision to imbue the land with holiness surely has an impact.

Since the late medieval period, Jews have held that there are four holy cities in the land: Jerusalem; Tiberias; Hebron; and Tzfat. As a result, people have decided to be buried in them, retire to them, have their remains moved to them, pray to them, and study in them.

Having finished my volunteering in Jerusalem, I did what a good religious Jewish boy does. I went with my boyfriend on a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Tzfat.

We took a long bus ride through the hillsides, past the holy Mount Meron and along the Sea of Galilee into this beautiful blue city.

For centuries, this town has been considered an important religious site for Jews. Almost everything a worshipper would recognise from Friday night prayers began on these ramshackle cobbled streets. Mysticism was born here.

The Shulchan Aruch, the most important law code for observant Jews, was written here. That was what I was really excited to see: the synagogue where its author, Rabbi Yosef Karo, composed his authoritative work of religious law.

This law code holds a deeply special place in my heart (as it does for most religious Jews). My copy was gifted to me by my mentor, Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner. She studied the codes with my grandfather, who loved halachah more than any Liberal Jew of his era (or since, probably.)

It also holds a deep connection for my partner, Laurence. He is a direct descendant of Rabbi Moses Isserles, who wrote a gloss to the Shulchan Aruch, called the ‘Mapa’, which turned it into the definitive law code for Ashkenazi Jews, especially his Lithuanian ancestors.

Laurence’s ancestry is a source of great pride to me, although he still has really no idea what the significance is.

Nevertheless, I think our backgrounds have contributed to why we connect so well. Because of our upbringings in the Liberal movement, and our ancestors who cared so much about Jewish law, we both see our Judaism in ethical terms. We regularly have moral conversations about what to eat, how to handle workplace difficulties, where to give charitable donations, and how to run our home.

When we first started dating, we had long conversations on our hikes over questions of Jewish medical ethics, like euthanasia, organ donation, and brain-death. In all of these, we refer back to our principles as religious Jews, and to the great writers on these ethical questions, like Rabbi Karo.

When we arrived at the Rabbi Yosef Karo Synagogue in Tzfat, it was shut. It hadn’t been open all day. It hadn’t been open for months. It would not be opening again any time soon.

In fact, everything was shut. Not a single art gallery, synagogue, or museum was open. We were lucky enough that one coffee shop was open in the Old City, where we got a drink, and found out what was happening. Nothing was open because there was nobody to open it for.

The northern towns have been entirely evacuated for fear of rockets from Hizbullah. No pilgrims have come for a long time, fearing for their safety. There are no tourists stopping by to look at the shops.

From the perspective of the locals, the central government has abandoned them. While the military successfully intercept nearly all the missiles from Lebanon, there has been no material support for the pious Jews who live and pray here, completely dependent on tourism.

When we first got here to the north, we felt like we could barely tell there was a war on. There were so few guns and next to no propaganda posters. It turns out we were looking for the wrong thing.

What we had not noticed were all the absences. All the missing shops, traders, youth trips, international tourist groups. There was nobody speaking English, Chinese, French, or Russian. Now the absences are the most gapingly obvious things here.

For many years, critics of Israeli nationalism have warned that arrogant militarism offered no hope for the Jewish people. For this, we have been accused of being traitors, bleeding heart liberals, communists, terrorist-enablers, and doe-eyed dreamers (usually by exactly the same people.)

I wonder if they will begin to see that it is precisely their hubris and warmongering that is destroying them.

This war is bankrupting them; their economy is in tatters; they are isolated and facing criminal charges in the Hague. Many Jews now look to this land with horror and fear.

Before the founding of the state, the mainstream religious position was one of opposition to Zionism. At that time, Orthodox leaders warned that building a military state would strip the land of its holiness. For them, this was an existential and mythical claim, borne partly out of their objections to secular modernity.

Today, however, it takes on a new meaning. The land is imbued with holiness because people have decided it is so.

Without pilgrims, even the shrines of great rabbis lose their significance. In the shadow of constant war, the place is stripped of its sanctity.

I am left wondering: what happens to the Holy Land if people can’t see anything holy here?

Noah knew that the Garden of Eden was the Holy of Holies, and the dwelling-place of God; and Mount Sinai was the centre of the desert; and Mount Zion was the centre of the navel of the earth. These three were created as holy places facing each other. – Jubilees 8:30