Israel After the Elections: No Time to Look Back

I must confess that I am deeply disappointed by the results of Tuesday’s elections. Like many Israelis who had hoped for a decisive change in the country’s political direction, I have spent the past two days trying to understand what went wrong. How could Israel have experienced the catastrophe of October 7, endured three years of war, witnessed such profound failures of leadership, and still emerged from the elections without a clear mandate for change?

These are legitimate questions, but perhaps dwelling on them is not what we—or our leaders—need most at this moment.

An episode in this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, may offer some guidance.

When God decides to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, two angels arrive at Lot’s home and urge him to flee with his family. The Torah describes their departure with extraordinary urgency. At dawn, the angels tell Lot to take his wife and daughters and leave immediately, lest they perish along with the city.

Yet Lot hesitates. The angels seize him and his family by the hands and lead them outside the city, where Lot receives another warning: “Flee for your life! Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the plain. Flee to the hills, lest you be swept away” (Genesis 19:17).

Lot and his family must leave immediately, without stopping or even looking back.

This urgency recalls the Israelites’ hurried departure from Egypt, when they left so quickly that their dough had no time to rise. Yet there is an important difference. The Israelites departed under extraordinary external pressure, as the Egyptians urged them to leave following the final plague. Lot, by contrast, was not being pursued by the inhabitants of Sodom. The urgency stemmed from God’s impending destruction of the city.

But why did that destruction have to happen so quickly?

After all, Sodom did not become wicked overnight. A society does not descend into such profound moral corruption in a matter of days. Its wickedness had presumably developed over many years, perhaps generations. If God had allowed Sodom to deteriorate for so long, why was there suddenly no time to spare?

Perhaps the Torah is teaching us that there comes a moment when deliberation must give way to action. Once a decision has been made and a new reality has emerged, dwelling on what might have been can prevent us from doing what must now be done.

This may also explain why Lot’s wife is transformed into a pillar of salt when she turns around. Perhaps her offense was not the physical act of looking back but what it represented. So attached was she to the world she had known that she could not embrace the necessity of moving forward. While the rest of her family continued toward an uncertain future, she remained forever fixed in the past.

Even her transformation is suggestive. Salt preserves things as they are. Lot’s wife thus becomes a monument to the danger of clinging to a reality that no longer exists.

As Rabbi Tarfon teaches, Hayom katzar vehamelakhah merubah—”The day is short and the work is great” (Pirkei Avot 2:15). Time is limited, our responsibilities are enormous, and time spent dwelling on what cannot be changed is time taken away from the work ahead.

This is precisely the lesson Israel must absorb in the aftermath of the elections.

The results are not what many of us had hoped for. The political map is fragmented, neither major bloc has secured a parliamentary majority, and the temptation to dissect the results, assign blame, and lament missed opportunities is enormous.

But Israel cannot afford to remain trapped in political disappointment. We face enemies who threaten our security, a society wounded by years of war and division, and urgent challenges involving military service, economic recovery, social cohesion, and the restoration of public trust.

Under these circumstances, forming a broad Zionist coalition is not simply a desirable political outcome. It is a moral responsibility. Israel needs leaders who recognize that the country’s future matters more than their rivalries and that the urgency of the moment demands difficult compromises. This will require setting aside longstanding grievances, reconsidering entrenched political positions, and placing the national interest above personal and partisan advantage.

The election results therefore present Israel’s political leaders with a defining test. Will they continue fighting yesterday’s battles, clinging to old alliances, grievances, and personal ambitions? Or will they recognize their responsibility to the country and summon the courage to form a government capable of confronting the challenges ahead?

We must certainly learn from the past, but we cannot afford to live in it. Israel’s enemies will not wait for us to resolve our political differences, and our wounded society cannot wait indefinitely for its leaders to place the country’s future ahead of their own.

The angels’ message to Lot echoes across the centuries: “Do not stop. Do not look back. Move forward.”

For Israel, the day is short, the work is great, and the time to begin is now.