Jews can’t take good news, or at least not Israeli Jews.
Inundated since Oct. 7 with bad and often horrible news, when we finally hear something good – about our country, our economy, our society, our international standing, even our weather – we doubt its veracity.
It can’t be, we think. Something’s off; something must be wrong. Someone is pulling the wool over our eyes.
Thoughts about this national inability to see the sun peeking through the clouds came to mind earlier this month, when, toward the end of several news programs, there were surprisingly positive economic stories.
One reported that The Economist – not exactly Israel’s biggest cheerleader – ranked the Jewish state third in its annual survey of the world’s strongest economies in 2025. The stock market was named the world’s top performer.
“Israel has continued its strong recovery from the chaos of 2023,” the magazine wrote.
There are several telling aspects to this report.
First, it stands in stark contrast to the doom-and-gloom projections heard during the judicial reform protests and the war: that the economy was going down the toilet, that all the smart and talented people were leaving and taking their money with them, and that nobody in their right mind would want to invest here.
Second, and no less telling, is how few Israelis even heard about this ranking. Why? Because the media were busy highlighting the negative, scary, maddening, divisive stories of that day. Had Israel ranked not third out of the 36 countries studied but rather 33rd, it would have drawn much more attention. That’s just how we operate.
Israel is supplying its neighbors with natural gas
Shortly after that report, news came that Israel had approved a $35 billion gas deal with Egypt. Think about that for a second: Israel supplying Egypt – and Jordan as well – with natural gas, and making billions in the process. Yet coverage focused less on the strategic significance of Egypt becoming dependent on Israel for energy than on Egypt’s rush to deny that the deal had any political implications.
The next day brought another promising economic tidbit: Nvidia, the world’s most valuable technology company, announced plans to build a campus in Kiryat Tivon that will accommodate up to 10,000 employees. After praising Israel’s technological prowess, Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang said Israel “has become Nvidia’s second home.”
That statement received less attention, for instance, than a declaration signed by thousands of actors, directors, and film industry professionals in September pledging not to work with Israel. On one side stood 85-year-old actress Julie Christie, along with Javier Bardem and others, boycotting Israel; on the other, Huang declaring that Israel is Nvidia’s second home. Which matters more? Yet Christie and Bardem drew outsize attention, while Nvidia’s plans barely registered. Again, that’s just how we operate.
Then came more. Germany said it would expand the Arrow 3 battery it just deployed, to the tune of $3.1b. Around the same time, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel’s inflation rate in November fell to 2.5%, the lowest level in four years. These stories, too, were largely overlooked.
The media know what they think their consumers want to hear – and good news isn’t it. Or at least that’s what those making those editorial choices believe.
And they do have a leg to stand on.
Take the 12-day war with Iran in June, by any reasonable account a smashing success. It was good news for Israel. Yet, we didn’t savor it, for a number of reasons.
First, hostages were still being held in Gaza. And second, we didn’t quite believe what we were being told. The success – opening an aerial corridor into Iran, bombing pretty much at will, and significantly setting back Tehran’s nuclear program – seemed to be too good to be true. So we assumed it wasn’t. Some still do.
This negativity bias is not divorced from our history. We do have ample reason to be suspicious of good news because in our history, auspicious events are often followed by less auspicious ones. But sometimes it is worth just accepting and savoring the good, not fretting immediately that it is temporary, that the other shoe will soon drop, or that there must be some hidden catch we’ve yet to uncover.
This lack of gratitude was not always a part of our collective DNA. The compilers of the Haggadah, for example, included “Dayenu” – a song of tremendous gratitude built around the idea that each positive development on its own would have been enough. Had God only taken us out of Egypt, that would have been enough. Had He only given us the manna, that would have been enough, and on and on.
Had those events occurred today, they’d likely have been inspected and dissected endlessly in search of the downside. He took us out of Egypt, but what about all those who didn’t make it? He gave us manna, but it wasn’t so tasty.
Even when it rains, as it has in abundance in recent weeks, we kvetch. Either it is too much for the ground to absorb, or it falls in the wrong places – near the coast and not in the Kinneret, or it all drains into the wrong aquifer.
Some people see a cloud and look for the silver lining. We, as a people, see the silver lining and go hunting for the dark cloud.
This search for the negative is understandable. It’s how we’ve been shaped. However, it sits alongside something else that seems to contradict it but is just as much a part of us: a deep, stubborn optimism.
And therein lies the paradox of Israel: the ability to believe fiercely in the future, even while instinctively distrusting good news in the present. To plan, build, invest, and persevere – while never quite allowing ourselves to exhale.
Optimistic, but uneasy. Confident, but cautious. Hopeful, but wary. That, too, is who we are.