The images of the expulsion of the worshippers from Dizengoff Square, on the night of Yom Kippur, embody something that goes many times further than hatred, or the inability to contain the other. Nor is this "another religious war," or even another mutation of the Kaplan protests. These pictures are images of despair. This is what despair looks like; One step ahead of the terrible idea of atrocities that has recently gained a foothold on the margins of the Kaplan protests, and to which there are those who responded even on the fringes of the extreme right: the idea of separation between the State of Israel and the State of Judea, or in the slightly euphemistic words of the thinkers of the idea: cantonization of the state. The meaning: "us" and "them." A stamp of divorce on the rift and disputes that have accompanied us, and will continue to accompany us here.
This idea is the complete opposite of the "peace sukkah," in the spirit of the incoming holiday with its many symbols of unity; Bad thought about a sukkah for this and a sukkah for this, when in the sukkah of one there is no room for the other, or in the words of Nitzan Amit (a resident of Givatayim), one of the thinkers of the "wonderful" idea: "In the end there will be two completely separate states, like two countries in Europe, with an open border... The army can also be separated."
I try to imagine how our founding fathers, David Ben-Gurion and his friends, would have responded to the teachings of the architects of the new despair. What would they say if they were exposed to the amount of poison and hatred that has been flying from side to side here for many months? And most importantly, how would they react to the "Judea and Israel" plan, which shatters a generational dream realized after two thousand years, with such heavy blood and sacrifices?
"Danger to the State of Israel": Herzog addresses the riot in Kippur in Dizengoff // Archive photo
It would not be far-fetched to assume that they would not have known their souls from pain, and that in such an impossible face-to-face encounter between the founding generation – Ben-Gurion, Begin or Rabin – and the thinkers of the idea, some frustrated "go outside" (created by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef), and perhaps also some slap on the cheek of one of the "you" and "us" people, Judea and Israel, in an attempt to get them back on track.
It is possible that our leaders would even wear sackcloth and ashes as Mordechai the Jew did, or pluck their hair out of sorrow, as the Midrash famously says about Abraham (Lamentations Rabbah), who would "pluck the hair of his head when the Temple was destroyed, and tear his clothes and ashes on his head and walk and worship and shout." After all, the meaning of two Jewish states is nothing but destruction.
Disruption of basic concepts
After all, this is exactly where these giant steps are taking that keep Jews away from their prayers on Yom Kippur, with the de facto backing of the first Hebrew city municipality, and its erroneous and misleading head. And all due to what? Ostensibly because of gender partition and segregation, but in fact because their concepts of "us" and "you" have broken down to such an extent that they have managed to disrupt even the simple meaning and understanding of the basic concepts of "liberalism" and "democracy," which they now bear their names in vain.
It is especially likely to me that the founding generation, like many of us today, was by no means able to understand the intolerable ease with which discourse on the idea of division of the people is accepted as part of the legitimate marketplace of opinions.
After all, it is not for the sake of democracy or even for the establishment of two separate Jewish kingdoms that more than 24,80 of our sons and daughters have fallen in Israel's battles since the establishment of the state. Heroes like Eli Cohen, Emanuel Moreno or Roy Klein did not sacrifice everything so that for the <>th birthday of the Jewish state it would fall apart between our hands, and more by self-employment, Hebrew.
We have no interest in going back to the days of the schism between Jeroboam (King of Israel) and Rehoboam (King of Judah) that lasted hundreds of years, until the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. That schism, after Solomon's death, created two weakened kingdoms, exacted a terrible price in blood, and finally turned from a political schism into a cultural and religious schism that was even deeper.
Nothing that is happening now within us can justify such a new, divisive and distorted creation. What is needed now in light of the severe rift is the exact opposite: overarching efforts to bring people closer together, mediate, reconcile, and build mechanisms for dialogue and compromise. We must not accept the proposal to cut off the baby as in Solomon's trial. We must clarify in incessant discourse how to remain whole, and even understand, for the sake of and recognizing the power of togetherness, that it will be necessary to give up positions and principles and move towards the other; Without this togetherness, neither side here has any real existence. Not to the "Israeli" side and not to the "Jewish" side.
"Where do you get the strength to draw from?"
These are not just slogans and recommendations. Try to imagine two governments, two parliaments, two armies, two police, two Shin Bets, two ministries of health and transport, two judicial systems. The chaos in the pastures, as well as total devouring of values, but mainly the disintegration of our greatest and most significant asset in the 75 years of our existence here as a state – mutual responsibility, which, even if it has weakened greatly, must be rehabilitated, rather than continued to unravel.
The public ended with sparks of holy justice, revenge, storms, the politics of inequality, hunting expeditions, threatening fingers and intimidation. The public asks, as Rachel Shapira says in her poem "Consolation": "Where do we draw the strength from?" He craves encouragement and understanding. He seeks comfort and agreement and compromise, and a continuation of mutual responsibility and the common fabric.
On the eve of last Yom Kippur, I sinned naively, at least some of my readers believed. I have written—if I may exceptionally quote myself here—that "peacemaking within us requires mutual recognition of the value of the baggage carried by the cart of the other"; "If one side sees the other's cart as an empty cart, inner peace will drift away, but if each side recognizes that the other side's cart is also full of values and goodness, inner peace will draw closer."
Let me explain again: the religious side does not have to sanctify the egalitarianism and liberality of the secular bandwagon, but it is allowed to recognize their value in quite a few situations that accompany us here. The secular side does not have to begin to fulfill the 133 mitzvot, but it is allowed to recognize the abundance of life values offered by the Torah, including the value of the sanctity of the family. The secular side does not have a monopoly on progress and enlightenment, and the religious side does not have a monopoly on Judaism.
The morbid show of hatred by secular extremists on the night of last Yom Kippur in Dizengoff is no different from the sick displays of hatred by ultra-Orthodox extremists in Jerusalem in recent years, yet there is one difference: the last show took place on a day that only a week ago is still considered the holiest and most consensus day on the Jewish calendar. Now another border has been breached. The holiest cow was slaughtered.
If we, the "middle men" and the compromise, do not stand up now and shout out loud that the whole – the people of Israel – is greater than the sum of its parts and its disagreements, and that there is a common dispute over the divide, the extremists will succeed, God forbid, in dragging us into the mirage of Judea and Israel.
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