This Rosh Hashanah, let us pray that "Jews" and "Israelis," however one chooses to define those terms, should no longer incite intolerance but come to know and care about each other.
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All of us – religious and secular, "Israelis" and "Jews" – will stand before the Creator of the World, each one of us different and unique. Diversity is essential to a healthy society and a prerequisite for the unity that we so crave. But it requires us to know people that are different, and most importantly, to accept them with the understanding that they are allowed to hold opinions contrary to ours.
We have not done the best job with this in the last decade because our lives have been clouded by a war of identities. From a politics of ideas, we moved to identity politics, which have blinded us and weakened our senses and pulled apart the gentle fabric of Israeli society. The storm intensified even more with the four election campaigns in the past two years.
Politicians needed identity politics to prompt debates and divides in order to alienate, but most importantly, polarize us. This battle of identities exacerbated the differences between Jewishness and Israeliness and between Jews and Israelis, instead of creating connections.
Israeliness and Jewishness, despite the closeness between them, and despite the fact that the two enrich each other, have fallen victim to politicians who want to keep "the other" distant, lest their identity be threatened.
Therefore, this Rosh Hashanah let us pray that sanity should return; that we should no longer define our identity based on how different we are from others, but by all that we have in common; that those who pray in synagogues should step out into a park to pray alongside "Israelis," and for "Israelis" to visit a shul to pray alongside the "Jews"; that we should discover new aspects in old treasures and elevate the mundane and discover its many sanctities.
For both grew up in different flower beds but get nourished by the same source of water – Jewish tradition, and its offshoot, secular Zionism.
In recent years, intellectual rabbis, poets, singers and artists have created plenty of channels for both the secular "Israelis" and religious "Jews" to connect.
This basket called Israel has many layers in it – with Torah, Talmud, ancient prayers and poems, along with poetry and literature that has been written by Jews throughout the generations to this day – in Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish and Ladino.
As poet Yehuda Amichai said, Israel is a blazing country that is in need of shade.
May the prayers of the many and the individual, from the heart or the prayer book – both worthy and desired – bring about shade for us. May we pray for the other and not to fear the other. May we pray that the coronavirus come to an end and we should have a good, healthy and connected year.
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