Were we ever united?

On October 8, 2023, we saw a united Israel. On October 8, 2024, we saw a bitterly divided Israel. What event re-divided Israel in less than a year? If someone would ask me to pinpoint such an event, I don’t think I would be able to. True, the ultra-orthodox draft was an event that helped divide Israel’s society, maybe also Netanyahu’s staying in power, the hostages, and the protests at Sde Teiman. But are these conflicts big enough to divide an entire nation that was united after the shocking and heartbreaking attack on October 7? I don’t think so. So how come we are so divided after being so united just a year ago?

Maybe it is because we were never united in a practical level. Yes, on October 7th we decided from the depths of our hearts to love all Jews. We even carried that out on a physical level for weeks or maybe even months. We donated, we helped. But then, the ‘momentum’ was gone, the inspiration disappeared, and we were back on our daily lives, which unfortunately meant that we were divided again. We never transformed our inspiration, our feelings, into a practical commitment of being united. Because there isn’t such a thing. Nobody could just decide to suddenly ‘accept all Jews and love all Jews’ on a practical level.

In order to accept all Jews and love all Jews we must first study what it means to be united, divided, and what makes us be either. I think that the main aspect of being united is that we accept each other even if our ideologies do not. Someone once described love as ‘the ability to accept someone else even if you disagree with what he does’. Being united does not mean that we have the same ideologies. So yes, my ideology could clash with yours, it could consider right anything you consider wrong, and we could still be united. We have strong ideologies. They conflict with each other. But we don’t have to have conflict with each other!

We are not our ideologies, people with opposite ideologies are not opposite people. The moment we distinguish the individual from the ideology, the conflicts cease. Now that we have a clear picture of what causes us to be divided (looking at our brothers as living ideologies) and what causes us to be united (looking at our brothers as individual human beings with opinions), we could be united on a practical level. And that’s what October 7th showed us. When those terrorists (they are not individuals but living ideologies) entered Israel and massacred anyone they saw, regardless of their political affiliation, they showed us one thing and one thing only – we are all Jews. If they hate us simply because we are Jews, then we might as well love each other simply because we are Jews, and then debate our ideologies. But never forget that the individual is not an ideology, so you don’t have anything personally against him. Let’s learn the lesson that Hamas taught us and use it in our private life. Let us make a new October 7th, 2025.