Breaking the Cycle: A Call for Lasting Unity
In the past 622 days, the Jewish people have faced repeated existential threats unlike any we have witnessed since the Holocaust. These have been days that have tested our resolve, our faith, and our fundamental belief in our destiny. Yet within this darkness, a pattern has emerged, one that reveals both our greatest weakness and our most profound strength.
An Ancient Rhythm
This rhythm is not new. It has echoed through thousands of years of our history. We know it intimately. This pattern carved deep into the story of our people. When missiles rain down from the sky, when terror strikes at our very heart, something miraculous happens. The divisions that seemed insurmountable moments before simply dissolve. Orthodox and secular, left and right politically, Ashkenazi and Sephardi, these distinctions fade into irrelevance as we remember what binds us together. The Jew of October 6th and the Jew of October 8th are worlds apart. I remember being in Israel just weeks after October 7th and the palpable feeling of unity in the streets, but since then we find ourselves repeating this over and over again.
This isn’t new. The Megillah we read on Purim tells this exact story. The Jewish people were scattered and splintered across the Persian Empire, divided by practice, by circumstance, by ideology. Then came the decree from Persia, (coincidence that this ancient threat emerged from what is now Iran?)a call to annihilate all Jews throughout the kingdom. Suddenly, the scattered became unified. Esther’s call went out, and despite their differences, they came together as one people facing an existential threat.
The pattern repeats itself through millennia. In ancient Babylon, during the Crusades, through pogroms and expulsions, in the ghettos of Europe, and in the gas chambers of the Holocaust. Each time external pressure threatened our very existence, we remembered who we were. We became one.
Today, in bomb shelters across Israel, strangers become family. Political opponents embrace. We are, in those moments, truly one people just as our ancestors were in Shushan, just as Jews have been throughout history when facing annihilation.
But then, as the immediate danger passes, as our apps notify us of the “all clear”, we slip back into our familiar patterns. The unity that felt so natural, so essential, begins to fray. We return to our corners, to our arguments, to the luxury of division that peace seems to afford us. This too is ancient. The very divisions that Haman exploited, the very fractures that have made us vulnerable time and again throughout our long history, the same cracks that made the Hammas attack possible in the first place.
Witnessing Miracles Daily
Right now, as Iran showers down ballistic missiles, we are witnessing something extraordinary. Each missile that fails to find its target, each interception by the Iron Dome, each near-miss that spares a city block, these are not mere coincidences. They are daily miracles unfolding before our eyes.
When a missile does slip through our defenses, we see the devastating potential of what we face. A single missile can level a city block, can shatter hundreds of lives in an instant. Yet for the most part, this destruction does not come to pass. The people of Israel are beginning to recognize these miracles for what they are.
Across the country, Shabbat observance is rising. Prayer has become more frequent, more heartfelt. We see the videos on social media of strangers in parking lots and bomb shelters praying with fervor and emotion and even joy. People are awakening to the recognition that our survival is not guaranteed by technology alone, but by Something far greater than ourselves.
The Commitment We Must Make
Here, in this moment, as you watch this unfold from afar or as you sit in a bomb shelter feeling the presence of strangers who are your extended family – people you may never have met before but who share your fate, make a commitment. Not just to survive this moment, but to remember it always.
Commit to holding onto this unity. Commit to staying civilized and connected even when you disagree politically, religiously, or on any other matter that once seemed so important. Commit to being one people, not just in times of crisis, but in times of calm.
The stranger beside you in the shelter, whose politics you might despise, whose religious observance might differ from yours, whose background might seem foreign they are your family. Remember this truth when the sirens stop wailing.
Changing the Narrative
We have the power to break this ancient cycle. Instead of allowing ourselves to be driven by the rhythm that has defined our history: disunity, existential threat, temporary unity, and return to division, we can choose a different path. We can learn from the Purim story not just how to survive persecution, but how to maintain the unity that salvation brings.
If we can maintain the unity that crisis reveals, if we can hold onto the recognition of daily miracles that danger illuminates, if we can remember that we are one people with a shared destiny then perhaps we will not need the external pressure to remind us of who we are.
The narrative can change. For thousands of years, it has remained the same. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It begins with each of us, in this moment, making the choice to see the miracle not just in the missile that misses, but in the person sitting beside us. The choice to recognize that our unity is the very foundation upon which our future depends.
Let this be the generation that breaks the cycle. Let this be the time when we learn to live as one people, not because we a forced to by our enemies, but because we choose to.
May we merit to see the day when our unity comes from love rather than fear, when our recognition of the divine comes from gratitude rather than desperation, and when the miracles we witness daily remind us not of our vulnerability, but of our eternal strength as one people, bound together by our destiny to make the world a more Godly place.
