When a Hebrew year ends, and a new year comes to succeed it, we tend to quote the line "A year will end and its curses, a year and its blessings will begin," which somehow always sounds accurate. Maybe it's an internal Jewish thing, but in all my years I can't remember a single time when we weren't happy at the end of the year. I don't think that ever, towards the end of Elul, anyone felt the need to claim the honor of the passerby and cry out: No. Not. Don't eat so fast. Stay for a while. Why do you say "her curses"? It was actually a great year...
And yet, I also don't remember a year, Hebrew or Latin, that was so cursed. So awful. Like 23. Go to hell, 23. Go and don't come to us in a dream. Don't worry, we'll never forget you. You and your curses. True, it's not really your fault. There was no drought. And not an earthquake. When you think about it, we've even escaped a pandemic. How to tell you, 23, damn year: It's not you. That's us.
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In the great disaster that will be named after you, we are to blame. We will all have to sit down and study your history, investigate and understand the blind spots and omissions associated with your name, but which lie upon us. Without desire we will pry into you and without joy. Not as someone who smiles while opening an old photo album, but as someone who curses while opening a clog. But we'll do it thoroughly, I promise, just so you never come back into our lives.
Sorry again. It's really not you. The one who must not repeat himself is us.
As someone who grew up in a religious upbringing, I was always aware of the sharp differences between "our" Rosh Hashanah and New Year's Day. On our New Year's Day, they talked less about champagne and more about soul-searching. We didn't kiss at midnight, or at all, or fill the sky with fireworks. On our Rosh Hashanah we wore white, asked for forgiveness, ate a pomegranate and heard the sound of the shofar. I always thought it would be nice if our New Year was a little lighter, and if New Year's was a little less about shopping, and maybe a little more about the possibility of terrible days. Mostly, I thought it would be worthwhile for Rosh Hashanah to adopt the Jewish custom, which is less about what was and more about what will be. In short, minus 23 and more 24.
Because I want to tell you 24, from here you can only get better. It would be an understatement of life to say that you don't have to do much to be considered a huge success. A turnaround year and a positive trend. You don't actually have to do anything, it's completely ours. You're just a page on the board, but it's a new page nonetheless. Just what we need here and now. A new page, and the willingness to work hard to fill it with other words and a different drawing.
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What do I want to wish for you, 24? What would I like to wish for ourselves in you? "The days yet to come will be true. Let them lean over. Let them be above us like date palms," as the late Adit Funk wrote. And if anything, then let us ourselves be a little bent over each other. Less spritzes of cypresses and more palms of dates. May we know how to be more humble. Softer. We wait to bow our heads a little in front of others, as we do on the bitter mornings that open with "Permission for Publication."
Do you hear, 24? The year before you, the one with the prime number, we all entered too arrogant. Loud. Hard-necked as we know how to be. There were some who warned even then that it would not end well, but when we are so full of ourselves we are sealed to the point of deafness. We ignored the warnings, just as we ignored pain. And we repelled the cries of pain like the alerts and the danger lights.
We're talented guys and pretty clever guys generally, but there are no fools worse than us, and no worse fools than us, when we shut someone's mouth. When we take the young soldier who had gathered intelligence out of the room. When we hold back from chuckling in front of residents who hear that someone is digging under the community. All this "come on" for which we pay the price time and time again. And listen, 24, the one that preceded you grabbed us tightly in the place of the Yalla, the one that came on. May he forgive us if we bore his name in vain.
The good thing I can tell you, 24, is that many of us are no longer there. There is still a long way to go, and a lot of work ahead of us, but some of us are taking the first steps in the right direction. Our fighters, in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and along the northern border, are already in a completely different state of consciousness than that prevalent in most television studios. They are ready to rebuild Israel. And when the masses of reservists return from the battlefields to their homes and streets and decision-making centers, all this will receive a very serious boost. We all pray that this will happen in your first few months, Ya 24. Can we prove that you're really half of 48?
The terrible word left to us by the past year is "conception." If there's a consensus here, it's about a concept. Everyone agrees that this is a disaster. But still almost everyone means someone else's conception. of that party. of those officers. Yours, and hers and his wife's. We still don't see enough courageous leaders who honestly put on the table, alongside the keys, the concept that they themselves cultivated, built a worldview from and guarded it with all vigilance.
If 24 is the beginning of change, and I don't think there's any dispute that it has to be, we're all going to have to learn to get out of mindsets. The camel will have to develop a way to see its own hump. And until then, we'll have to hear – even after everything we've been through, and still goes through – all the foxes the other day in the studios, opening their words with the words, "As I've always said."
There are reasons why we tend to get bogged down in conceptions and find it so difficult to let go of them. Here, at least, there has been a culture for years that cannot forgive mistakes. A mistake in decision-making is considered an unforgivable failure, and often simply a crime. Where there is no forgiveness, you will often not find remorse either. Indeed, very few figures in the Israeli leadership are able to stand before the public and admit that they were wrong. They'd rather lie. Deny. Quibble. Shift responsibility or blame the media for distorting their words.
Why admit a mistake, in a world where there are no second chances? And here's another thing I'd love to see change in 2024, if we really want you to come to us for the better. The correction will not come from someone who has never made a mistake. The correction will come from human leaders who do not deny failure and do not evade payment.
But for that to happen, the Israeli public needs to encourage such leaders and foster second chances, not out of mere forgiveness. Those who are always the first to admit. The kind that shouldn't be held accountable. On the day we see a leader resign voluntarily, we may be approaching the moment when the people demand that someone retract his decision and return to leadership.
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