Pride Still Matters

Generosity is giving more than you can; pride is taking less than you need.

                                                                        Khalil Gibran

Aristotle described pride as a “crown of virtues” – all the things we do that make us feel good about ourselves. It is derived from the Latin term “prode”, meaning to be useful. Nevertheless, pride often gets a bad rap. Many view it as synonymous with arrogance, conceit, immodesty, superiority, lack of humility and other undesirable personal traits best left uncultivated. In her book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right, sociologist Arlie Hochschild takes a different view of pride, defining it as “an emotional skin” and a critical component of our identity that we present to the world – and significantly impacts how the world responds to us.[i]

As a Jew, Hochschild’s viewpoint makes a lot of sense. Being Jewish is the core of our identity and, for better or worse, the emotional skin through which we interact with the world around us. Our history of enduring hope, struggle, and perseverance as a people is a source of great pride and belonging. In our minds, the United Nations agreeing to partition Palestine was an honorable and just solution to restoring a sense of dignity and belonging to the homeless, stateless Jews who had survived the Holocaust. That in the time since Israel has had to continually fight for its survival is an unfortunate reality Jews have to live with – and while having to constantly defend Israel is not a burden we would ever choose, we proudly step up to accept this responsibility however we can.

The October 10, 2025 ceasefire and return of hostages taken in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, brought hope that another war Israel had been forced into that had gone on too long, and caused far too much civilian suffering, was finally ending. Not all Jews, myself included, agreed with Israel’s “kill an ant with a steamroller” war policy. Our national pride took a hit when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense minister Yoav Gallant, identifying them as war criminals. Our pride was further bruised when, nearly two years into the war, an independent commission established by the UN Human Rights Council found Israel responsible for committing genocide in Gaza.

While it is possible to be proud of Israel as a nation and disagree with its political leadership at the same time, it’s a difficult tightrope to walk, which is where I find myself. As I grieve for the nearly 60,000 Gazans who have died and the hundreds of thousands more whose lives have been decimated, I struggle to balance pride in Israel as a nation state against shame over the nation’s political leadership’s conduct of the war. Even though I don’t live in Israel, as a Jew, Israel’s war is my war, too, and my belief in Israel’s right to defend itself remains unshakable. Yet, I have profoundly disagreed with Israel’s refusal to allow consistent, desperately needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza.

Now, less than two weeks into the fragile October 10, 2025 ceasefire, Israel, claiming, Hamas violated the ceasefire agreement, has resumed powerful bombing raids in the region, killing more innocent civilians and further sentencing those who manage to survive to life in a nuclear winter-like environment. Humanitarian aid is inconsistent and unreliable, depending upon Israel’s willingness to allow it, and this varies widely. Sadly, in that sense, in addition to destroying Gaza, the war has destroyed the pride many Jews’ have in Israel, begging the question of why pride still matters?

The short answer is pride matters because it admits there is no rational argument in favor of Israel continuing its assault on Gaza, which has become a useless endeavor with no redeeming virtue, and demands that the damage we have wrought be restored. How do we, as Jews who love Israel, yet hate what she has done, retrieve the pride our country has stolen from us? History holds one answer and our faith holds another.

In order to win WWII, the allies bombed Germany, and much of Europe into rubble. As soon as the war ended, the US spearheaded the Marshall Plan, a European recovery program that provided billions of dollars in aid to help rebuild western European infrastructure and economies, foster political stability, promote free trade and democracy, and restore communities. The effort was driven by the pride the allies felt at having defeated the greatest evil the world had ever known and a desire to repair the damage the effort had inflicted – because it was the right thing to do.

Judaism has a long history of values that align with restorative justice. B’tzelem Elohim – the principle that all people are created in the image of God emphasizes the inherent dignity of every individual and is a foundation for restorative justice. The Jewish concept of teshuvah, to repent, return, and repair, involves the process of those who have committed a wrong seeking to repair the harm they have caused through confession, remorse, and making amends.

The pursuit of righteousness, and fairness, guided by divine law and personal responsibility for righting both the wrongs we commit and the wrongs we see around us, is rooted in the concepts of mishpat (fairness), tzedek (righteousness) and tzedakah (charity or righteous giving) and involves caring for the vulnerable and acting with fairness, compassion and mercy. It is the centerpiece of our obligation to not ignore the wrongs we see around us and the mandate to do what we can to repair the world.

Israel has inflicted a lot of damage and human suffering in the past two years as it defended itself against Hamas. Ignoring the ceasefire agreement in favor of pursuing any excuse to continue to inflict damage and suffering on innocent Gazan civilians steals the pride we, as Jews, have in the concepts of justice, fairness, and righteousness. Now is the time for Israel to remember that pride still matters, especially when it takes less than it needs. Now is the time to honor the Jewish mandate to repair the damage the war has wrought, to care for the innocent and vulnerable war victims, to actively support sustained humanitarian aid and to give back to Gaza more than was taken from it.

Shalom aleichem

שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם

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[i] Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and The Rise of the Right. New York: The New Press, 2024. p. 25.