Today, you will step behind the curtain at a polling station for the first time in your life. You will choose a ballot slip, place it in an envelope and drop it into the ballot box. A simple, almost mechanical act that takes just a few seconds. And yet, there will be few moments in your life when so much of who you are, who you have grown up to be and who you aspire to become will come down to one small decision.
I have been watching you over the past few weeks. You talk about the elections, ask questions, weigh your options, listen, take an interest, consider different opinions and sometimes change your mind. I can see how genuinely excited you are, and not just about who will win, but about the realization that, for the first time, you too have a say in the outcome.
And I find myself thinking about the world you grew up in.
You and your peers, Generation Z, the first-time voters born between 2004 and 2008, have never known a world without social media. You grew up in a world where information is endless, but truth is elusive; where algorithms seek to decide what you see, what you think and sometimes even what you feel. A world where every opinion demands that you take sides, every disagreement becomes a battle, and the ability to listen to someone who thinks differently has become almost an act of rebellion.
Then came Oct. 7.
You were still teenagers, some of you just beginning high school, when you came face to face, with almost no warning, with evil in all its brutality. In an instant, the great abstractions of security, nationhood, enemies and survival became immediate, tangible realities. The fight to defend our home was no longer a chapter in a history book. It had become the story of your lives.
You experienced fear and the terrible cost of war, but also solidarity, courage and the realization that our country's existence can never be taken for granted. Something profound seems to have changed in you that day. You were forced to grow up all at once, and out of the devastation emerged a powerful sense of national identity, of belonging, purpose and responsibility. You understood, perhaps earlier than we would have wished, that the future is not merely something you will inherit, but something you will be called upon to carry on your shoulders.
And now, all those experiences will have to find expression in a single choice.
I want to tell you something I have learned over the years. Public life is full of compromises, competing interests, political calculations and forces larger than ourselves. Often, it seems as though the individual has less and less power to shape reality. But behind the voting booth's curtain, something almost miraculous happens: For one, brief moment, you are alone and entirely free. There is no algorithm making the decision for you, no audience to impress, no one demanding an explanation. There is only you, your conscience and the meeting of instinct and reason.
Perhaps that is why your excitement moves me so deeply. I recognize in it something pure that we adults have simply lost along the way. A simple belief that our choices matter. That we can make a difference. That we can bring about change. That the future is still ours to shape. Over the years, I have become a little more cynical. But the more I watch you, the more I wonder whether that innocence is not a weakness at all, but one of the greatest gifts your generation brings to Israeli society.
I want you to know that this moment belongs to you alone. You are free to think differently from me and reach different conclusions. In the deepest sense, that is what this moment represents: the recognition that you are your own person, and that your conscience belongs to no one else.
When you step behind that curtain, I hope you will take with you all the questions, doubts, values and hopes you have gathered along the way. I hope you will understand that even if your ballot alone does not change the election results, your willingness to believe that it matters is part of what keeps our democracy alive.
And if there is one thing I hope to learn from you that day, it is how to feel that excitement again. Not about the winners, not about the losers, but about the simple privilege of having a vote.
Dad.
