It’s time to forgive but never forget

The days between Rosh Hashanah and the solemn day of Yom Kippur are called the Ten Days of Repentance and Forgiveness.  During this time, people make a special effort to ask forgiveness from anyone they may have wronged over the past year. Yom Kippur itself is about asking G-d for forgiveness for sins against Him, but these ten days are really about making things right with other people and hopefully receiving their forgiveness in return.

Many of my observant acquaintances, friends, and family members have taken this opportunity to ask for forgiveness for any wrong they may have done to me, whether knowingly or unknowingly, and I, in turn, ask the same of them.  Not only is it an exercise in forgiveness but in compassion and, to a certain extent, Godliness.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask forgiveness from those who truly deserve it over the past two years, in no particular order.

To begin with, I would like to ask forgiveness from all the families whose lives have been shattered and will never return to normal following the tragic loss of husbands, wives, children, parents, friends, and countless other loved ones. Lives were cut short on the battlefield, at the Nova Music Festival, in their homes, or simply while going about their everyday lives.  The lives of countless Israelis were taken far too early and without warning. We all know that October 7 should never have happened. Yet to this day, no investigation has been carried out to determine which individuals or institutions bear responsibility for the greatest tragedy the State of Israel has ever endured. I would even go so far as to say that those who fueled the divisiveness this country experienced prior to October 7, and throughout much of the past year, share in that responsibility.  For this grave abuse of our trust that has cost over 2,000 lives, we are terribly sorry.

As an extension of that plea for forgiveness, we beg the families, friends, and supporters of the hostages who have now endured 719 days of pure hell without resolution. This has already surpassed and dwarfed the longest hostage crisis in modern history, when 52 Americans were held by militant Iranian students for 444 days after they stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979. While the issues surrounding the resolution of the hostage crisis in the tunnels of Gaza are undeniably complex, this never-ending nightmare should have been brought to an end long ago. It has been two years of unbearable suffering for those still held by Hamas and for their loved ones. Most of these hostages were not soldiers but innocent civilians, families in their homes or young people dancing the night and early morning hours away at a holiday music festival. They trusted the IDF and Israel to protect them and shield them from such a fate, but we let them down in the most horrific way. The painful truth is I cannot imagine how they could ever truly forgive, let alone forget.  But we MUST ask for forgiveness.

How can we not ask forgiveness of the tens of thousands of citizens of Israel whose tranquil lives were shattered by incessant rocket fire and drone attacks, and who were uprooted and evacuated from their homes; especially those whose homes were made uninhabitable by Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, and in the Gaza envelope by bloodthirsty terrorists on October 7. Hezbollah should never have been allowed to amass such an arsenal so close to civilian populations, and while most Iranian missiles did not reach their intended targets in Iran’s first attack, the second round of missile barrages was much more successful, leaving much destruction in their wake. The continuous Houthi rocket attacks are bewildering and deeply frustrating. How can a country as strong and capable as Israel still face missile attacks from a ragtag group of terrorists reminiscent of the Afghan Mujahedin in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’? While the Houthi missiles are more of a nuisance than a true conventional threat, they nonetheless disrupt the lives of millions of Israelis almost daily. To everyone whose lives were severely ravaged, we humbly ask for your forgiveness.

We would be completely remiss if we failed to ask forgiveness to an underrated but vital component of our armed forces, our reserve duty soldiers, better known in Israel as our “Miluimnikim.”  As conventional armies go, Israel has a very small standing force.  To fight on multiple fronts, we rely heavily on the reserves (ages 21-45 in most cases) to fill the gaps necessary for the county to protect itself.  Without this “backbone” of Israel’s military preparedness and readiness, the IDF could never deploy effectively across all areas of need. Basically, miluim service is Israel’s lifeline, where every citizen’s service and sacrifice ensures the nation’s survival and unites its people in defense of their homeland.

Unlike compulsory service soldiers, known as sadirnikim, reserve soldiers are either just beginning to attend institutions of higher learning, start careers, find life partners, and raise families or for older miluimnikim, are firmly in the prime of their lives. Those rights and milestones have been severely disrupted, if not completely nipped in the bud. I would say half of the soldiers who have been mortally wounded are reserve duty soldiers. Either way, they pay a heavy and sometimes the ultimate sacrifice.

Undoubtedly, we are in a unique situation with IDF soldiers fighting on no less than seven fronts, most of those requiring boots on the ground or troop support roles, but most pundits and even casual observers agree that reserve duty time would be sharply reduced if the IDF could integrate the 100,000 potential combat-capable force from Israel’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community.  This is another can of worms completely, and worthy of an opening piece in a different Tamir Newsletter entirely, but that is for another day.  Right now, the wrath of the overtaxed and overburdened miluimnikim should be directed at draft dodgers, the political leadership and military planners but most of all, the Haredi Rabbis who would rather have their disciples leave the country or even die before they set foot in the IDF.  For all of the above, to our dear soldiers who tirelessly do Miluim to defend the country, we plead for forgiveness.

As you see, there is no shortage of people from whom we need to ask forgiveness.   The ones I mentioned above are somewhat obvious, even to those outside Israel. But as a final act in this ongoing plea, I want to address the often invisible underbelly of Israeli society, those who bear the ripple effects of this nearly two-year war almost as heavily as anyone, yet suffer quietly, with hardly a word of complaint.   Who are these once proud but now often overlooked by-products of Israel’s longest war?  Let me clue you in because nobody else will.

We ask forgiveness from the grandparents who shoulder the burden of filling in for the parents fighting or serving in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Judea and Samaria, very often when they have little strength, resources and time to do so.  They never expected to fill such a role late in their years, but they, too realize there is little choice.  They do it loyally and lovingly and often with little recognition. To those grandparents who tirelessly trudge on behind the scenes, we ask for forgiveness.

We ask forgiveness to the small group of “girlfriends” and future partners of slain young soldiers who asked for their hands in marriage or dreamed of one day doing so but just never got around to it before or after October 7.  Tragically for them, it was like losing a husband albeit without children and without the “benefits” of being a soldier’s wife.  But sadly, Israel has to draw the line somewhere and these poor girls have fallen between the cracks and will never realize their dream of marrying their first love, separated from them when war struck..  It’s painstakingly cold and it brutally sucks, and you deserved better.  For that, we are truly sorry.

We ask forgiveness from the countless number of Israelis who answered the call of a nation at war.  Whether it was providing food for soldiers, picking fruit in the blazing sun to help farmers with their rotting crops, offering counsel for the hundreds of thousands of traumatized Israelis or supporting the scores of PTSD soldiers, we are sorry.  But we do not ask forgiveness for what you did. It is our duty and PRIVILEGE to assist in any way we can when their country’s survival is at stake.  We ask for forgiveness because many of you simply just can’t stop despite the lack of time, money, and strength needed to do this for such an extended period of time.  Many of you are hooked or even “addicted” to helping, even though you feel you have done your share.  For that, we ask for forgiveness.  Many of these righteous angels are emotionally finished.  Many of them continue on as if some freakish force propels them forward, like the small group of ladies I know personally from Maale Adumim who have been cooking for over 900 soldiers every Shabbat for two years! without fail for a base in the North since the war began.  Don’t even ask how they find the strength, fortitude, and financial means to do this. For all of these “second jobs” you have taken on for NO pay, we are sorry.

For everyone I mentioned and didn’t mention, we simply ask you to forgive but never to forget.

But maybe just maybe, before we ask for forgiveness to everyone mentioned above, we must first ask forgiveness of ourselves.  It MUST begin there.

Wishing everyone a Gmar Chatima Tova, may you be sealed for a good year.