1.
Where lies the root of the withdrawals and the desire to rid ourselves of the most meaningful parts of our historical homeland, those very lands we returned to after such a long exile? Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure spoke of the relationship between words and things as that of the signifier and the signified. The word book, for instance, is a signifier that represents an object in reality, the signified. In Hebrew, the ancient language, words are the tip of the iceberg of vast cultural phenomena. Terms such as land, soil, Zion, Israel, Shiloh, Bethel, Hebron - and above them all, Jerusalem - have never simply marked geographical locations, but profound spiritual and cultural signifiers embedded in the core of our national identity. Just recalling Jerusalem was enough to sustain us for 1,800 years, without land and without access to our eternal city.
2.
At the dawn of our modern era, a vast social experiment took place: the Jewish elite, which until then had led rabbinical leadership, broke from tradition and rebelled. Young Jews looked around and saw their non-Jewish contemporaries enjoying rights and national recognition, especially in the wake of the mid-19th century Spring of Nations, and wanted the same for themselves. They blamed the religious establishment for the people's historical stagnation and lowly political, social, and economic conditions, and they sought to cast it off. In profound terms, what happened in the late 18th and throughout the 19th century was, as described by one of the nation's most gifted sons, Sigmund Freud, a form of "patricide." The Jewish elite eliminated what had until then been the nation's raison d'être - God, the ancestral Father who stood at the head of the Jewish family for thousands of years. Along with Him, they eliminated other value-laden concepts: Torah, commandments, traditions, and beliefs, all of which had defined Jewish identity in exile. It was a dangerous experiment. Without the religious framework, what could keep us alive as a people without land, without a common language, dispersed to the four corners of the earth?
3.
Jewish psychoanalyst Margaret Mahler developed the theory of separation-individuation, in which the child separates from their parents, first the mother, in order to form an independent identity. As a national metaphor, this aptly describes what the social and political avant-garde in Israel did: severing the umbilical cord of Jewish religious identity to form a new national personality. And it worked. The State of Israel was born out of that sacred rebellion. It is no accident that the God of Israel is referenced only obliquely in the Israeli Declaration of Independence ("Rock of Israel"). To this day, parts of Israeli society view that founding document as a declaration of independence from the nation's religious identity (for a broader discussion, see my 2005 article "Mother of All Disengagements," analyzing the disengagement from this psycho-historical perspective; available online).
4.
The Six-Day War was a historical accident. The immediate encounter with the cradle of Jewish history unexpectedly exposed masses of Israelis to a metaphysical return of the repressed. Descendants of the early socialist Zionists, long since disconnected from faith, identified the ultimate signified behind the newly acquired territories: the God of Israel. Initially, only a few cultural gatekeepers noticed the danger. But gradually, the entire secular establishment joined the effort. The truth must be said: the settlement enterprise beyond the Green Line was never granted legitimacy by Israel's founding elite. Even though the hilltop pioneers modeled themselves after the early kibbutzim, such as Hanita and Nahalal, their fate was sealed from the beginning. The media's campaign against the hilltop settlers was rooted in deep cultural fears. For the first time in Zionist history, and in 250 years of cultural revolution, a religious Jew was no longer confined to the periphery - but sought a place in the engine room of the Zionist train. A religious Jew in the driver's seat meant the return of theology to history, precisely the opposite of the foundational move that had removed God from the modern Jewish narrative. That is why the term "messianic" has become a slur in Israeli political discourse, and why there is constant alarm about the presence of kippa-wearing officials in the corridors of power.
5.
The primary motive for disengaging from these deeply symbolic territories was not demographic fear or the "occupation." It stemmed from a desire to sever ties with what these areas represented at the root of the Zionist return. As Theodor Herzl put it at the outset of the Zionist adventure: "Zionism is a return to Judaism even before the return to the land of the Jews." Back then, "Judaism" was a vague and amorphous concept. But with the conquest of biblical territories, that concept took on the face of the God of Israel, whose symbolic presence threatened much of the country's secular elite. In their eyes, it was like an abusive father who had long been locked away, only for his children to discover he was coming home.
On the eve of Tisha B'Av in 2005, just before the disengagement plan was implemented, I wrote in Makor Rishon, then the only paper opposing the plan: "The destruction of Gush Katif stems from the identification of the settlements beyond the Green Line with the set of values that Israel's semi-liberal founding elite had sought to repress for generations. Therefore, identifying and deconstructing the mechanisms of cultural repression is vital for the political and cultural development of the conservative camp. Freeing our consciousness from the century-old quest for cultural legitimacy in the eyes of self-appointed arbiters is a prerequisite for cultivating an alternative culture, one that dares to engage with the religious and popular depths of our heritage without succumbing to Jewish self-hatred. The destruction can become a moment of growth, setting long-term strategic goals not just in politics but in the core of Israeli culture."
6.
The disengagement from our southern territories was meant to be just the beginning, a prelude to a larger disengagement: from the heartland, the central highlands, and even from ancient Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount. Opponents of the plan still call it "the expulsion," highlighting the cruelty and alienation that surrounded it. But "disengagement" is in fact the more accurate term, as it reveals the deeper essence of the catastrophic move: an effort to disconnect from what these territories ultimately signify, the God of Israel or Jewish identity itself.
And our long history has already taught us: Anyone who tries to run away from their identity will find that it follows them, sometimes in brutal, unexpected ways. This is exactly what happened on October 7, a date that chillingly fell on the most symbolically charged holiday of all: Simchat Torah.
