A Pre-Oct. 7 Message for a Post-Oct. 7 Israel

Doron Perez’s book, The Jewish State: From Opposition to Opportunity, is a cry for Jewish unity. His plea was published in the midst of the judicial reform crisis that was pulling Israeli society apart at the seams. 

The first half of the book posits that current Palestinian resistance to Israel is based on an antisemitism that cannot abide any manifestation of Jewish sovereignty. According to the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu son of Shlomo Zalman of Vilna), the ancient Philistines embodied this archetype of antisemitism. While acknowledging that there are no ethnic or cultural ties between the Philistines and the Palestinians, R. Perez sees the Palestinians as the spiritual heirs of their ancient namesake. Just as the biblical Philistines single mindedly sought to route out Israelite sovereignty, so too Palestinian nationalism is fixated on the destruction of the Jewish state and unconcerned with any constructive aspiration of its own. While one might argue that R. Perez’s portrait of Palestinian nationalism is reductive, the dominance of Palestinian rejectionism is strong enough for his presentation to resonate. R. Perez argues that since this rejectionism does not distinguish between various Jewish religious ideologies, political camps, or cultural backgrounds, the proper response to it is unity and solidarity. 

In the second half of the book, Rabbi Perez argues that the unity that he calls for is not merely a tactic. It is an expression of a deeply rooted, authentic Jewish impulse. And even more than that, Jewish unity can serve as a beacon to a postmodern world struggling with an acute identity crisis. 

Perez draws upon Rav Kook’s insistence that “the holy, the national, and the universal” must all be valued despite the tension that one might find between these values. While certain camps within the Jewish people emphasize one to the exclusion of the others, the authentic Jewish approach is to find the proper balance between them. R. Perez explains that R. Kook’s approach, that embraces a complex of values, seeks nuance and eschews extremism in its pursuit of balance. This multifaceted rich ideology was embedded in Rav Kook’s ability to appreciate the positive contributions of secular Zionist pioneers while still maintaining that their vision was incomplete. This approach is the basis of R. Perez’s call for the various sectors of Israeli society to appreciate the truths and contributions of other factions instead of shunning, or even worse demonizing them. 

Drawing on Biblical paradigms, R. Perez demonstrates that Avraham, our spiritual founding father, actually embodied the holy, the national and the universal. His extreme obedience to God’s will in the binding of Isaac demonstrates his commitment to the holy, his fight to save his nephew Lot demonstrates his loyalty to his people, and his bargaining with God in an attempt to save the wicked city of Sodom demonstrates his care for all of humanity. The holy, the national, and the universal were part and parcel of Avraham’s person. R Perez also highlights King David’s forbearance of his political rivals like Saul and Avner ben Ner to show that the impulse to transcend factionalism was embodied in the legendary monarch who united all twelve tribes of Israel.  R. Perez calls upon us to live up to the legacy of Avraham, David, R. Kook and other examples of this impulse towards unity, synthesis, and pluralism.

This appeal was published in one of the most conflicted moments in Israeli history, during the uproar over the government’s plans to overhaul Israel’s judicial system. It was a call for Israeli society to step back from the brink of internecine self-destruction. 

In the immediate wake of Oct. 7th, this political turmoil was forgotten. Israeli society largely rallied around itself. The crisis and its heartbreaking stories left little attention for anything other than survival and restoration of a basic sense of security. The Perez family’s ordeal was among the most gut wrenching post October 7 episodes. 

Two of R. Perez’s sons, both IDF officers, fought heroically against the Hamas invasion of Nahal Oz. Yonatan Perez was shot in the leg in a gun battle. Just a hundred meters or so from where Yonatan was shot, his brother Daniel was commanding his crew from inside a tank. He fought for over two hours before he went missing in action. It was presumed that he was taken captive into Gaza. Yonatan was engaged to be married and after recovering from his wound, the family had to decide whether or not to go ahead with the wedding without Daniel’s presence. They ultimately proceeded with the wedding, mixing angst with joy and worry with celebration, perhaps modeling in a haunting and extreme way, the embrace of tension and complexity that R. Perez’s book calls for. Unfortunately, this past spring the Perez family received the awful news that Daniel was not taken captive but had fallen in battle.

I was supposed to have submitted this review shortly after the war broke out. Somehow, I could not bring myself to finish writing it until now. Everything I tried to say about the book was dwarfed by the enormity of the emotion laden personal story of its author. I kept putting it off. This procrastination may have produced an unintended benefit. Our society is regressing to our pre-October 7 state. Sadly, R. Perez’s message is now as relevant as ever. 

Many pundits have suggested that the Oct. 7 attack was, at least in part, an attempt to take advantage of our disunity. Having paid such a high price, we owe the author of this book a serious reckoning with its words, and we also owe it to ourselves.