The country beneath the noise: Building our home
Screaming headlines are good for business.
Fear is good for business. Anger is good for business. Political theater is especially good for business when it convinces us that the people on the other side are not merely mistaken, but dangerous.
The result is predictable. We retreat further into our own camps, surrounded by people who think as we do, increasingly certain that the country is divided into those who understand what is at stake and those who do not.
So consider, for a moment, a quieter story.
Ashira Landau had been single longer than she wished. She organized other unmarried Israelis to contribute toward the writing of a Sefer Torah, as an expression of their hope to find partners and build homes of their own.
The symbolism was clear. The Torah would embody their hopes for family and continuity.
When it was completed, it too needed a home.
A synagogue.
That home was found in Yated, a small moshav near the borders with Gaza and Egypt. Yated was attacked on October 7, 2023, and its residents have been rebuilding ever since. The community includes Mizrahi and Ashkenazi families, religious and secular Israelis, younger and older residents.
Last Sunday, they welcomed the Torah – all together, with joyful celebration.
It would be easy to turn the event into a sentimental parable. That would miss the point.
What is striking about Yated is not that its residents agree with one another. Presumably, they do not. What matters is that they continue to live together as a community despite those differences.
That is a far more useful model for Israel than much of what passes for political debate today.
We are entering another election season, and once again we will be consumed by the horse race.
Who is ahead?
What happens if another party enters?
Who can assemble 61 seats?
Which bloc is gaining?
These are legitimate questions. But they are not the most important ones.
The more important question is what kind of country Israelis are trying to preserve.
Repeated polling by non-partisan researchers has shown that social cohesion ranks among the public’s deepest concerns. That should tell us something.
Most Israelis do not want a country in which every political disagreement becomes a test of patriotism and every opponent is treated as an existential threat.
They want to disagree without believing that the other half of the country is trying to destroy Israel.
They also want a government that functions.
They want competence to matter more than connections. They want institutions that answer to citizens rather than to political arrangements, ministries and coalition interests.
And they want something even more basic: the possibility of building a decent life here.
They want to raise families. They want their children and grandchildren to be able to afford homes, find work and imagine a future in the country they love.
None of these aspirations belongs exclusively to the left or the right.
That is precisely why they receive so little attention during election campaigns.
Division is politically useful. Common ground is not.
Which brings us back to Yated.
A group of unmarried Israelis helped create a Torah as an expression of their hope to build homes. A community that had seen homes attacked and families displaced gave that Torah a permanent home of its own.
There is no need to exaggerate the symbolism.
It is enough to recognize what the episode reveals.
Israel is full of people who differ sharply over religion, politics, identity and the future of the country, yet still want many of the same things: functioning institutions, economic and physical security, families, community and a society that does not tear itself apart.
The coming election will generate endless discussion about who should govern Israel.
The more important question is what kind of Israel you will ask them to govern.
