The People Have Changed. Our Leaders Have Not.
In the days following the October 7 massacre and the war that followed, many Israelis felt that something fundamental had changed. As the nation came together—”as one person with one heart”—to defend the country against the barbaric assault, a common refrain emerged: We cannot go back to October 6.
Despite our many disagreements, it seemed that we had rediscovered something essential: the shared foundation that binds us together. Never again, we hoped, would internal divisions bring Israeli society to the edge of the abyss. Poll after poll has since confirmed what many sensed instinctively. Israelis are exhausted by the bitter polarization that has torn at the fabric of our society. They have had enough of the contempt, venom, and dehumanizing rhetoric that have come to dominate our public discourse.
The tragedy is that many of those who shape that discourse appear not to have heard the message.
From the prime minister to the leaders of the opposition, from members of Knesset to protest organizers, television commentators, cultural figures, and, sadly, far too many rabbis, the old habits have persisted. Too many continue to inflame passions and deepen divisions as though nothing happened on that terrible Saturday. The people responded to catastrophe with courage, solidarity, and mutual responsibility. Much of the leadership simply resumed business as usual.
This is hardly a new phenomenon. The sages of the Talmud recognized the destructive power of toxic public discourse centuries ago. As we have just concluded the Three Weeks, culminating in Tisha B’Av—the day on which Jews mourn the destruction of both Temples—we once again heard the familiar teaching that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred, while the First Temple fell because of idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed.
Less well known is what the Talmud says next.
If the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred, the Talmud asks (Yoma 9b), was there really no such hatred during the First Temple period? It answers by citing the prophet Ezekiel’s description of people who “eat and drink together” while stabbing one another with “the swords of their tongues.” Then comes the remarkable conclusion: this behavior characterized the nation’s leaders, exclusively. Public figures smiled at one another in public while destroying each other with words behind their backs. They demonized opponents, stripped them of their humanity, and poisoned the public square.
Why, then, did it not become the defining cause of national destruction?
Because the people themselves had not yet embraced it.
Whatever their other moral failings—and the prophets describe them in painful detail—the broader public did not imitate its leaders’ culture of contempt. Society still possessed a reservoir of mutual responsibility and social cohesion. When the Babylonians besieged Jerusalem, the people fought with extraordinary determination in defense of their city and their Temple. Indeed, they held out against the Babylonians far longer than their descendants stood against the Romans, five hundred years later.
By the time of the Second Temple, the disease had spread. Hatred was no longer confined to the elites; it had metastasized throughout society itself. Once the social fabric disintegrated, national survival became impossible.
The message is strikingly relevant today.
The message for us is clear, powerful, and unequivocal. Our beloved people are healthy. It is our leadership (political, cultural, academic, journalistic) that is ill—very ill.
We, the healthy majority, must unite and take responsibility for our country, for our public discourse, for healing our relationships with one another, and for restoring respect for every human being and for the image of God in every Israeli. The people must stand up and say to today’s “leaders of Israel”: Enough! We will no longer tolerate the malignant disease that you have fostered and allowed to spread. If you do not change, we will drive you from office in disgrace and choose other leaders who will join hands with us to repair what has been broken, to restore dialogue, and to rebuild the ruins of Jerusalem and the Gaza Envelope.
Enough! Under no circumstances will we give our votes to cheap populists and professional agitators who thrive on conflict and discord, and who show no respect either for themselves or for the citizens they claim to represent.