Hanging by a thread

On a recent visit to a small bookstore in Mea Shearim, I got lost. Tracing my way back, now completely lost, I came across a small yeshiva’s courtyard wherein a few Karlin-Stolin Chasidim were intently but quickly tying the intricate knots of the tzitzit ritual fringes to the white poncho-like garment. Sizing up the scene, I figured that I had stumbled upon a good deal: the tzitzit were clearly being made with proper intent – a religious necessity – and the size of the garments would fit an adult. I could easily wear these under my shirt with the fringes tucked into my pants, in the 1950’s old-time Modern Orthodox style. My father would gently advise me as a boy: “Daniel, you don’t need to show off your religiosity.” And these tzitzit wouldn’t creep down to my socks. I was ready to buy a bunch, but I was hastily rebuffed. The Karliners were working on a special-order rush job. I pressed on – why couldn’t they sell a few on the side, and, as we used to say in the South Side of Chicago, claim that they “had fallen off the truck?” I was curtly told that these were not for sale, they were a special mitzvah for the young men in the milchomo (war). Abashed, they then refused my then awkward offer to contribute to the cause. I was stunned. Later, I bumped into an old yeshiva classmate of mine who confirmed that tzitzit had become requested battle gear amongst soldiers in Gaza, including many who hadn’t worn them in years and many who were putting them on for the first time.

Innately, I’m averse to multiplying magical and miraculous items. If you want to protect soldiers, buy them ceramic vests. But something special is happening, which is essential in getting us through our current dangerous and tenuous position. And that is the pervasive feeling, indeed intense yearning, for achdut. Usually translated as unity, we need to understand it more as ‘Oneness’. Studying the Jewish people should be an anthropologist’s dream since the cultural differences, variations, and fierce arguments are staggering and confusing. Nonetheless, there is a persistent, even if often or even usually unnamed, sense of achdut.

This DNA is expressed in the rabbinic dictum – “Israel, the Torah, and God are One.” Achdut is not only a functional ethic, allowing Jews to band together in the face of adversity, but it is more so a divine quality. We desire achdut in our very kishkes, move towards it and to Divine Oneness. Radical loneness, even autonomy, is radically isolating, even from our innermost being, which demands connection. As a rabbi, I’ve noticed that those who had wonderful marriages but lost their spouses often remarried the fastest – having experienced a form of achdut, they couldn’t live without it. The mass of reservists abroad who did everything to come back immediately from overseas felt impelled to return home. Women in high work positions found themselves knitting hats and baking challot for the fighters. The pilots who resigned from the IAF over a true moral crisis a few months ago, swearing they were finished, were immediately back on base in what was deemed 120% capacity after the attacks of October 7th. Those who make the tzitzit feel that they must because they are already tied into the Jewish people. Even top black-hat yeshivot that have gone on 24/7 shifts of Talmud learning do so because they want the threatened universe of the Jewish people to remain intact. 48% of Israelis, many burdened, who have added volunteer responsibilities to aid their stressed nation do so not as a “nice gesture” but because they feel the attachment, the pull of achdut.

Achdut is comforting, for it tells us that we are not alone, that we are part of a larger family; coming from a divine source, it whispers of redemption from our flaws and salvation from those who wish to destroy us. But achdut also facilitates great pain. We mourn the loss of those massacred on October 7th and the soldiers slain in the ensuing war as we would family members. Achdut means that the status of the chatufim – those taken – drives us to depression and near insanity. We worry obsessively – “What can we do?” – “What is their condition?” – “Do they think we have abandoned them?” Maybe worst of all: “Have we indeed, in not doing enough, abandoned them?” The return of a portion of the Taken leaves us with hope mixed with dread for those left behind in Hamas’s hands.

Our twin paralyzing fears are of being abandoned (especially since we have been abandoned by a good part of the Western World) and of ourselves abandoning our fellow Jews. This is at the basis of the gripping moment in the seder ritual of the four sons. There is naturally a strange attraction to the cheeky son who frankly dismisses the whole Passover process. Only he is labeled a rasha – an evil son – for he commits the ultimate “sin of omission” – omitting himself from Jewish fate. “Since he has taken himself out of the Unity, he denies the basic principle.” Those Jews who stand against Israel or absent themselves from its defense, in the words of the Haggadah, will not be redeemed. But notice that even this child is invited to and sits at the table. This child gets his/her say, which is also an achdut corollary. We engage vigorously, even rattling their teeth; but the conversation doesn’t take place unless the person is present and heard.

Tzitzit symbolize the same count of the Torah’s commandments. In the end, we are bound together by a set of seemingly simple yet intricately knotted strings. The destiny of Israel is secured by a string, tying together millennia of family, morality, and custom in an achdut that mirrors the transcendent reality of divine achdut. Our Sabbath liturgy proclaims: “Thou art One; Thy name is One; and who is like Thy People Israel, One Nation in the Land.” This string of words is resung slowly and poignantly at the Sabbath’s mystic third meal, revealing the mystery of our very being – an achdut that hangs by a soldier’s sense of urgent duty, tied by one far from the battle.