On this Rosh Hashanah, we pray that the "Jews" and the "Israelis" will no longer kiss each other, but will approach each other.
"Let the old be renewed and the new be sanctified," as Rabbi Kook's famous saying goes;
Let's cling to it, and we will not let go of it either.
All of us - religious and secular, "Israelis" and "Jews" - pass like the sons of Meron before the Creator of the world, even though we have many different faces.
This diversity is the key to a healthy society and also the basis for togetherness that is so essential for us, but it requires us to know the face of the other and most importantly, to contain and internalize - even if we do not agree - that it is possible and permissible otherwise.
In the last decade we have had a hard time doing this, because our lives have been clouded by a war of identities.
From a politics of ideas we moved to a politics of identities, which blinded our eyes and blurred our senses and created delicate tissues in Israeli society.
This bad storm has intensified throughout the four election campaigns of the past two years.
Politicians needed the politics of identities, which brought about quarrels and quarrels, in order to sharpen and alienate, and especially to polarize between us.
This battle of identities exacerbated the differences between Judaism and Israeliness and between Jews and Israelis, rather than moderating them and creating connections.
Israeliness and Judaism, despite the closeness between them, and despite the fact that they suckle from each other and enrich each other, fell victim to the need of politicians to differentiate and preserve the "other", lest something hurt their identity, which is often based on diversity and differentiation from the other. ".
Therefore on this Rosh Hashanah it is worth praying that sanity returns; That defining our identity will no longer be based on the difference and differentiation from the other, but rather on the connection with it, that the common rabbi separates from; That the worshipers of the synagogues go out at least once to the parks and woods to pray with the "Israelis", and that the "Israelis" enter the synagogues at least once to pray with the "Jews"; That we will discover a new and original face in the old treasures and that we will also be able to elevate the mundane being and discover in it layers of sanctity; In the Shofar and the Slichot and the Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays prayers, we will be able to connect the binding of Yitzchak with Naomi Shemer and our mother Rachel with the poet Rachel and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, and the experiences of Rabbi Amnon of Maganza with the wonderful melody of 11 fallen in the Yom Kippur War; The "Israelis" to the "Jews".
These and those seemingly grew up in different flower beds, but in the end they drink from the same water, from the Jewish tradition, and secular Zionism is an outlier of the Jewish race.
In recent years, enough beautiful channels of access to the Torah Jewish language and the Israeli-Jewish language have been developed through educated rabbis, poets, singers and cultural and artistic figures - so that both the secular-"Israeli" public and the "Jewish" religious public will feel comfortable enough to approach each other. Get to know and taste.
"Layers made of layers is the legacy of a person from Israel," the poet Yonadev Kaplan once noted.
Indeed, in this basket there is Bible and Mishnah and Talmud and ancient piyyutim and prayers, along with poetry and literature and works written throughout the generations to this day - in Aramaic and Arabic and Hebrew and Yiddish and Ladino. Countless words that "And do not light a fire.
May the prayer of the many and the prayer of the individual, from the heart or the old cycle - all good and desirable - indeed give us some shade. We will pray for the one and against the fear of the other, which separates and incites hatred. We pray that the plague will be consumed and that we will have a good, healthy and connecting year.
