Brothers before the ballot - opinion

This week’s election in Israel is the first since October 7. It comes after three years of pain and grief.

During the campaign, each side painted its opponent as a threat to the country’s future. While this is not abnormal for an election, it certainly poses a danger for the Jewish people.

Disagreement and argumentation are part of our Jewish tradition, but demonizing and fostering hatred certainly is not.

In this past week’s Torah portion, the shepherds of Abraham and Lot quarrel over grazing land. Abraham does not wait for the disagreement to cross the line.

He goes to his nephew and says: “Let there please be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brothers” (Genesis 13:8).

Notice what Abraham does not say. He does not tell Lot that he must think the same way. He offers to part ways: “If you go left, I will go right.” Achdut, unity, in the Torah’s first lesson on the subject, is not uniformity. Brothers can live in different places, make different choices, and still be brothers.

Our tradition is built on this. Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel argued for generations over hundreds of topics, some of them touching on marriage itself.

Yet the Talmud (Yevamot 14b) records that they did not refrain from marrying into one another’s families. They treated each other with affection and respect.

Israelis are divided over real questions this week: security, the draft, the place of Torah learning, the courts, and the economy. These are not trivial.

People hold their positions out of genuine conviction and love for the country and for our people.

But maybe the more important question of this election is not what we disagree on but how we treat each other while disagreeing.

The parasha continues after Lot and Abraham separate. Lot settles near Sodom, a choice the Torah clearly disapproves of. Soon after, Lot is taken captive in a regional war.

Abraham could have shrugged. Lot had made his bed. Instead, the Torah says, “Avram heard that his brother had been taken captive” (Genesis 14:14). Not his nephew, not the one who chose Sodom, but “his brother.”

Abraham arms his household and attacks the army to bring Lot home.

Whatever the result of this election, roughly half the country will wake up disappointed, many frightened. The person who voted the other way, whose party you consider a danger, is still the one who sits next to you on the bus, or in the hospital waiting room. When he is in trouble, he is still your brother.

In the summer of 2023, Israel was as divided as it had ever been. Then came Simchat Torah.

The terrorists who crossed the border did not ask anyone how they voted. They did not distinguish between religious and secular, Left and Right, kibbutznik and yeshiva student.

In the weeks that followed, neither did we.

Reservists who had marched against the government reported for duty beside those who had marched for it. Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) volunteers cooked for soldiers; secular families prayed for the hostages. For a while, the whole world saw what Jewish unity looks like.

We should not need another catastrophe to remember who we are: brothers responsible for each other. That responsibility does not pause for an election.

Settling the question of brotherhood

Unity is not a slogan; we need to pursue it actively. Especially in times of high passion, we must guard ourselves from demonization. Those we disagree with are not “traitors” or “enemies of the Jewish people.”

The person who votes differently almost always has good intentions and is trying to make Israel and the Jewish people safer, more secure, more successful. They just have a different thought process of how to attain these shared goals.

Abraham said “For we are brothers” before the land was divided, not after. He did not wait to see who got the better pasture. He settled the question of brotherhood first, so that nothing that followed could undo it.

That is the order we need this week. The Jewish people will not be decided at any polling station. We were brothers before this election, and we will be brothers after it. Let us act like it now.

The writer is the CEO of Kesher Yehudi, whose mission is to create unity between religious and secular Israelis.