Israel tore itself apart on Yom Kippur - then October 7 reminded us of our collective 'we'

It is a Yom Kippur that will long be etched in Israel’s collective memory.

No, not October 1973, when two Arab armies staged a savage surprise attack on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, triggering the 19-day Yom Kippur War that cost the lives of 2,691 soldiers. That this day will always be etched in the Jewish consciousness goes without saying.

There is another one as well: the Yom Kippur of 2023, just 13 days before the brutal surprise attack of October 7 – on Simchat Torah.

The Yom Kippur when Israel turned against itself

That was the Yom Kippur when Jews were pitted against Jews over the erection of a makeshift mechitza (partition) in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square and other public spaces throughout the country.

Prayer books were thrown into the Dizengoff fountain, tallitot (prayer shawls) were thrown to the ground, and the somber Kol Nidre service was disrupted by the sound of shrill whistles and secular protesters shouting “Shame, shame.”

Scuffles broke out between those who came to pray and those who came to protest Orthodox prayer in a public space, in contravention of a High Court ruling.

Some wept at the scene; others wept when they saw pictures of it days later.

Had we lost it?

Yom Kippur 2023 will be remembered as a symbol of a nation at the brink – unwilling to compromise and intolerant of one another. It was also a Yom Kippur that Hamas head Yahya Sinwar saw, and he could only have been encouraged by the spectacle of Israel tearing itself apart.

To an enemy waiting to pounce, a nation whose citizens were at one another’s throats must have looked like a nation incapable of rallying together against a mortal threat.

Yet it did.

That Yom Kippur will always stand as tragic proof that when we tear ourselves apart from within – and there is no greater manifestation of that than physically fighting over a mechitza on Yom Kippur – we leave ourselves dangerously exposed to enemies from without. So obsessed with finding fault in one another, we ignored the wolf at the gates.

The High Holy Days are times of reflection and introspection, of looking inward, correcting one’s path, and mending one’s own faults. The anger and hatred that burst forth on that Yom Kippur came from finding fault not with oneself but with one’s neighbor and from having neither the patience nor the tolerance to hear the other side out.

If ever there were a day meant to disabuse us of our own infallibility, it is Yom Kippur.

“We have sinned, we have acted treacherously, we have robbed, we have spoken slander,” Jews say over and over on this day, followed by the recitation of a long litany of sins: “For the sin we have sinned before You under duress or of free will and for the sin we have sinned before You in hardness of heart.”

And on and on and on – a testament to our infinite fallibility.

Yet on that Yom Kippur of 2023, and throughout the angry days, weeks, and months that preceded it, each of the warring camps in the judicial reform debate was convinced of its own infallibility and the absolute righteousness of its cause – a certainty that brooked no room for compromise and allowed little, if any, understanding of the fears and concerns of the other side.

And it led to machzorim being tossed into water fountains and tallitot strewn on the ground. And much, much worse.

October 7 reminded Israel that there is only ‘we’

SOME WILL say that we learned nothing, that Israeli society has completely failed to internalize the lesson, and that we are right back at one another’s throats just as we were then.

The same certitudes. The same absence of doubt. The same absolutism. The same portrayal of ideological rivals as enemies.

But that is not the whole picture.

This impression is caused, to a certain extent, by the fact that we are in an election season. Elections the world over do not exactly bring out the best in people; on the contrary, they amplify their worst instincts. They create a political incentive to sow divisions, pit “them” against “us,” and paint every policy debate in catastrophic colors.

That is exactly what some politicians on both sides are doing now. It is to be expected. But during an election campaign, the bitter, divisive rhetoric of leaders does not necessarily reflect the sentiments of those they hope to lead – or the quieter, more measured mood of the country.

October 7 did change things.

It forced a recognition that however deeply we differ, our fate is shared.

Today – as always – political debates are fierce, and the shrillest voices attract the most attention. But beneath the noise lies a basic understanding that our political rivals are not our enemies and that the real threat remains beyond our borders.

Israel’s airwaves over the last three years have been tragically filled with interviews with wounded soldiers, bereaved wives, mothers, and fathers, released hostages, and relatives of hostages who never made it home alive.

Across those heart-wrenching interviews, one recurring theme emerges: A nation whose sons and daughters – religious and secular, from the Right and the Left – sleep together in the same tent in Syria, fight together in the same tank in Lebanon, patrol together in the same jeep in the West Bank, and clear the same tunnels in Gaza should be able to find a way to live together in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv without tearing itself apart.

We should be worthy of their sacrifice, goes the standard response to those stories of heroism and selflessness.

Those soldiers are the antithesis of the “us vs them” attitude so prevalent on that Yom Kippur three years ago.

Instead, they embody the collective “we” that runs throughout the Yom Kippur liturgy: “We have sinned, we have betrayed, we have robbed…”

The liturgy, like those stories, leaves no room for “us” and “them.”