Thank You, Shikma Bressler

Over the past few months, I have been using this space to kvetch about the pain the left has inflicted on the public through its endless days of disruption.

Don’t get me wrong! I hate being stuck in traffic. I deplore a reduction in security, health care, and  Israel’s global economic status, but thinking through what is going on, I have come to a newfound appreciation of the left– without realizing it, their revolution is a challenge to us to dream bigger dreams.

Look at their passion going out in all weather, day after day and night after night after night, shlepping their heavy flags, hoarsening their voices, and killing their feet because of us!

They are convinced that we will foist a halachic state on them which they define as another Iran or perhaps Iran on steroids.

And us? Is this what right wants to do?

No, not really.

The National Religious world is focused on settlements and security, and the Haredi world is on draft exemptions, housing, budgets, and modesty at the Kotel.  Notice that neither group is agitating for a Torah  State.

Why not?

Because we lack vision.

And that is killing us.

Just read through the Torah.  G-d gave us that land–amazingly, that point is widely accepted even among so-called secular Jews, but there’s more. Our residence here is conditional  To I’ve here in peace, something we haven’t managed to achieve we need to live by  G-ds rules eg the Torah on a personal and civic level or else disaster will struck and it has.

Note to all members of the Kohelet Forum — that entails far more than a judicial overhaul. To survive here, there’s a lot more we to reform our society from the ground up.

That doesn’t mean Pakistan or Iran.

Read the prophets.  A Torah state means a just society and a  society that takes care of its weakest links. A society of kindness, that is free of poverty, graft, corruption,  racism, discrimination, and cruelty. A true light to the nations.

Without realizing it Shikma Bressler and her partners are pushing us adopt a grander vision.  It’s time we rose to that challenge.