Why did October 7th happen?

In the weeks leading up to Tisha B’Av, we often hear discussions of how sinat chinam, baseless hatred, was the cause of the destruction of the Temple.  We learned this growing up as a given, and it always bothered me.  In Tanach, it is common to tie tragedies to the sins that caused those tragedies, and perhaps this continued into the Talmudic period.  But we don’t do this anymore; although there were those who tried to pin more recent tragedies on some specific misdeed, there is no simple commonly accepted moral failure given for the Holocaust, pogroms, or wars.

In some sense, we do ascribe these tragedies to baseless hatred, but we refer to an external hatred, not internal. The reason for attacks against Jews, from the Crusades to modern attacks on Israel often comes down to antisemitism.  Antisemitism at its most basic definition is simply a hatred of Jews, and blaming Jews for whatever is going wrong at the time.  Whether it’s the plague, or an unsolved murder, or simply economic hardship, someone is always looking to blame the Jews, and this has led to many tragic persecutions over the centuries.  But while we are an introspective people, we generally don’t blame ourselves for being hated and attacked.  Nor should we.

So why does this explanation of internal baseless hatred as a cause of the destruction of the Second Temple persist?

The most famous story that the Talmud gives to illustrate the point is the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.  Without repeating the story here, essentially two Jews have such a significant conflict that one of them reports to the Romans a claim which results in the destruction of the Temple.  What is notable about this story is that it is not claiming that the Jews sinned, and the destruction of the Temple was a divine punishment.  We are not required to believe that our troubles are the result of our sins.  The story is entirely on a practical level.  Jews were in such conflict with each other that they saw the Romans as less of a threat.  This was a tragic miscalculation.

I cannot help but think of this message in connection to October 7th and the terrible war we find ourselves in now.  I do not think it is a stretch to say that October 7th happened because of sinat chinam.  It was less than two weeks before the attacks that a fight broke out on Yom Kippur between two groups of Jews regarding use of a mechitza (separation between men and women) at a prayer service.  In the months before that, the country was torn apart over the debate on judicial reform.  And that came after four elections where Jews were so divided that there was no way for any groups to come together to form a majority coalition in the government.

During the height of the judicial reform conflict, everyone I spoke to in Israel on both sides felt that this was the biggest threat Israel had faced in decades.  In other words, people on both sides felt that the biggest threat to Israel was not Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, but other Jews.  I assume no one thinks that anymore.

But not only were we distracted by the conflict and not focusing on the security threat, but the conflict itself emboldened Hamas to act.  I have heard multiple analysts say that the fact that people were threatening to refuse military service over the conflict made Hamas think that Israel was in a weakened state.  True, no one actually refused to serve after the attacks, but it was too late.  I’ve even heard the suggestion that the government may have downplayed warnings about the attacks, suspecting it was just a ploy to halt the judicial reform efforts.  Our infighting projected weakness and disunity to our enemies, and they took advantage.

After the attacks, Jews came together like never before.  Everyone showed up for reserve duty, even many who were not called.  Anti-government protesters mobilized to help the displaced.  Jews around the world who may have felt no connection to Israel or Judaism before suddenly felt part of the Jewish people and nation.

But why did it have to take such a massive pogrom to wake us up to the fact that we are one (small) people?  The message of Tisha B’Av is that there is always someone looking to destroy us, as we commemorate not just the destruction of both Temples and Jewish sovereignty, but countless tragedies throughout the past two millennia.  Do we need to be constantly attacked to remember that we are not our own enemy?  How long will our current swell of unity last before we again turn on each other?

This Tisha B’av, let’s recommit to finding ways to connect to a love Jews of all types across our broad and diverse nation.  The next time we want to publicly attack another group of Jews, even if we feel there is a valid argument, let’s also think about how it looks to the world, and what impact these internal arguments have not only on our community, but on our basic safely and ability to live as Jews in Israel or anywhere else in the world.  Let’s find a way to replace sinat chinam with ahavat chinam, love for no reason other than us both being part of this small, complicated, and wonderful community of Jews.