The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Opinion The Yodim Wars | Israel Today

2023-01-19T07:52:55.350Z


This is not a Gog and Magog war between the people of light and the people of darkness • Neither side has a monopoly on the truth, contrary to Lapid's claim • Each side interprets the phrase "Jewish and democratic" differently


Yair Lapid's article in Haaretz newspaper, "The truth is dead, we must bring it back to life", reminded me of a Hasidic story.

This is how Rabbi Naftali of Rupshitz said:

When I was a little boy, I learned the alphabet and punctuation.

One day I read a verse from the Pentateuch, and found in it two Yodim standing side by side.

The teacher explained to me that when you see two Yodim like this - the meaning is the word "a-doni", the name of the Holy One, blessed be He.

I continued reading, and here two Yodim appeared before me again, but this time they were written one above the other.

I, who didn't know the difference, also called them "A-doni".

Then the teacher scolded me and said: "If two Yodim stand above each other - it is not a holy name, but a sign of the end of the verse!".

In an article in "Haaretz" Lapid blatantly places the two Yodim one above the other: he claims that he lost the elections because his opponents "took control of the truth" using a "poison machine".

Since part of the "poison machine" consists of people whose intelligence and integrity are indisputable, Lapid does not hesitate to arrogantly call them "second-rate intellectuals".

His claim to the media is particularly strange: "The establishment media has lost its self-confidence as an arbiter between truth and lies. Instead, it has moved to a model of balance... There is only one problem with this model: the truth has no versions. There is only one truth, and everything else is a lie."

The balance between the Jews (and for example, of course, between the Jews) - the many faces of the truth, the thing that Rabbi Naftali saw as sacred - becomes in Lapid the embodiment of evil.

The sharp debate surrounding the Levin reform is a result of the definition of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state": if Israel aspires to be the nation state of the Jewish people, inequality in certain areas is derived from this (for example, the legislator's desire for protection against the flooding of the Jewish state with infiltrators), and therefore Also the restraint of the judicial activism of the High Court. If Israel insists on being democratic and equal to all its citizens above all else, the opposite will follow - the restraint of the Knesset, where the majority is Jewish. This tug of war is inevitable, and it is also healthy. This is not a war between Gog and Magog The sons of light to the sons of darkness. No side has a monopoly on the truth, as Lapid claims.

Each side interprets the phrase "Jewish and democratic" differently, and since these two values ​​are at the basis of our existence - the vast majority of the people also want to reach an equilibrium.

The major left-wing parties do not aspire to abolish the definition of the state as a Jewish state, and the Likud is also a strictly democratic party, including primaries that Yesh Atid's Knesset members can only dream of.

Even if the equilibrium point moves in the coming term a little more in the "Jewish" direction - it will not be the end of Israel as a democratic state.

The thousands of protesters who came to the Bima square on Mochash do not feel that way.

I respect them (and also love some of them personally), but I would be happy if there was a responsible leader at the head of their camp, who reminds them that they are fighting for "their truth" - and not for "the truth".

were we wrong

We will fix it!

If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2023-01-19

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.