The Blogs: Breaking Down Barriers, Not Each Other

Another year draws to a close.

We look back on a year in which Israel has faced enemies beyond its borders and deepening divisions within. Voices have grown louder, positions harder, and people who share the same future have not always found it easy to share the same conversation.

And into all of this comes Rosh Hashanah—not with the promise that our differences will disappear, but with the possibility that another year need not look like the one we leave behind.

Long before there was a Jewish nation, there was a Jewish family.

Yaakov’s sons shared a father, a home and a destiny. Yet the Torah tells us what had come between them:

וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם
They hated him and could not speak to him peacefully.
(Bereishit 37:4)

The Sforno notices something easily missed. The brothers had not cut off communication with Yosef altogether. Matters concerning the household and the flocks still required contact between them.

They could still speak.

What they could no longer do was speak to him as brothers do.

Somewhere between disagreement and hatred, a barrier had been built.

There are barriers that protect a home, and there are barriers that divide one.

That does not mean abandoning deeply held convictions. It means recognising what may have gathered around them—the pride, anger and suspicion.

The differences may remain.

The barriers between us need not.

Our prayers take us beyond the individual:

וְיֵעָשׂוּ כֻלָּם אֲגֻדָּה אֶחָת לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם
May they all become united as one, to do Your will with a whole heart.

An agudah is something bound together—not made the same, but held as one.

As 5787 begins, may we break down the barriers between us without breaking one another.

We do not have to agree. We have to remember that we are brothers.