Day 23, as I write, and what is extraordinary is the way in which our new reality has become routine. By which I don’t mean that the pain has become dulled. If I am careless or undisciplined enough to follow one TV or radio story too many, I am still liable to find myself fighting back tears on a daily basis. And, yes, those individual stories of, on the one hand, unimaginable atrocities, and, on the other, inconceivable heroism, continue to surface, even more than 20 days later.

No, the pain hasn’t dulled. As one newspaper columnist put it, in the Shabbat supplement, the entire country is suffering from primary trauma, secondary traumatisation or collective trauma. On top of which, as Israel steps up its incursions into Gaza, the likelihood of more of our soldiers being killed or wounded is, once again, increasing

However, I don’t plan to write this week about the indescribable loss or the heroic altruism, or the trauma. I don’t even have any appetite to attempt political or strategic ‘analysis’. Instead, I just want to offer you a couple of snapshots of life under the shadow of the new reality, as the country becomes aware that this previously unthinkable reality is, for the moment at least, and for an indeterminate time to be, the new routine.

Overheard at the off-licence/liquor store. (Bernice and I are punctilious in ensuring that we always have a good supply of bottled liquid in the house; the Home Front Command suggested water, but we felt it was legitimate to interpret that liberally.) A conversation between the owner and a customer (these are both amcha – the ordinary man-in-the-street):

“Of course, it’s not enough to make sure your gun is ready to use; you have to make sure you have enough ammunition.”

 “At least they’ve relaxed the daily limit, and now you can buy 100 bullets a day, instead of 50.”

And I find myself feeling as matter-of-fact about that conversation as the participants themselves.

These days, when I am in shul, I find myself looking around to check which of the people who I know carry a gun are there. Since the mass call-up of reservists, our armed congregants are almost as likely to be carrying an M-16 semi-automatic assault rifle (the standard-issue Israeli infantry weapon) as a handgun.

Speaking of shul: we have started saying daily the Avinu Malkeinu prayer, normally said only during the 10 Days of Repentance and on fast days. This prayer comprises 44 supplications, each beginning Our Father, Our King; for example, Our Father, our King, forgive and pardon all our iniquities. The congregation read the first 14 lines as individuals; then the person leading the prayers and the congregation say each of the next 9 lines antiphonally (first the cantor recites the line, then the congregation repeats it in unison); then the last 23 lines are said again by each individual.

Now, for me this presents a problem, one I often encounter in shul. My Hebrew is good enough for me to understand what I am reading, but not good enough for me to absorb it instantly. I also have this madness that I like to think of my prayer as a conscious thought process, rather than a rote recitation. As a consequence, I seldom quite manage to keep pace with the congregation as a whole. I have various strategies for reconciling this situation.

In Avinu Malkeinu, I always read the first 14 lines at my own pace, knowing that I will be able to catch up with everyone else at some point during the 9 lines recited antiphonally. For the last 23 lines, I have no chance of keeping up, and so I usually read some of the lines without any conscious thought. This always includes five particular lines that I have never found it easy to connect with personally. They have always seemed to me to be harking back to some earlier painful period in Jewish history; I have always associated them specifically, for some reason, with the medieval massacre of the Jewish communities of France and Germany by the Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land.

In the new world we inhabit, these five lines have become, for me, among the most powerful lines in the entire prayer:

Our Father, our King, have pity on us, our children and our infants.
Our Father, our King, act for the sake of those who were killed for Your holy name.
Our Father, our King, act for the sake of those who were slaughtered for proclaiming Your Unity.
Our Father, our King, act for the sake of those who went through fire and water to sanctify Your name.
Our Father, our King, avenge before our eyes the spilt blood of Your servants.

We have also introduced, at the end of each service, the reciting of one or two from a list of eight or nine psalms that speak uncannily to our new reality. They serve as a vivid reminder of the majesty of the Book of Psalms in spanning the entire human condition.

These two acts of absorbing something additional into the daily routine of prayer make it easier to continue living day to day in these abnormal circumstances.

Changing the focus: I subscribe to two ‘weekly email update’ services: one from the National Library of Israel, and the other from the Academy of the Hebrew Language. (What can I tell you? I’m an intellectual snob…and if that hasn’t changed in 73 years, it’s unlikely to change now.) Both of these august bodies have succeeding in integrating the utterly new part into their particular same old with consummate ease.

In the world before October 7, both the Library and the Academy would always include in their weekly newsletters some item relevant to the season. So, the Library might present, from their archive, at Rosh Hashana, early 20^th Century New Year greetings cards, and discuss the iconography used to illustrate the cards. The Academy might discuss the origins of the names given to the various notes produced on the shofar, and list the correct names for producing music on other specific instruments.

Last week, the Library’s email, and their site, featured the story of the printing press at Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the kibbutzim most horrendously attacked on October 7. It’s a fascinating and uplifting read in English.

The Academy, on the other hand, (and I apologise in advance to those of you who have no Hebrew) looked at the slogans which have sprung up on motorway bridges and inspirational newspaper announcements: נעבור את זה ביחד (‘We’ll get through this together’) and יחד נצליח (‘Together we shall be victorious’).There followed a discussion of the relative merits, and interchangeability, of יחד and ביחד in these slogans. This was followed by a piece about the traditional farewell to soldiers going off to the army: שוב בשלום…..or should that be שוב לשלום. (‘Return in peace’ or ‘…to peace’, respectively)?

I can put you out of your misery by telling you that the Academy rules that the two (-ל-, ב, ‘in’ and ‘to’) are interchangeable in everyday use. However, they then follow that conclusion by pointing out that our Sages distinguished between the two, and they follow that with a detailed discussion of Biblical sources that indicate nuanced differences. I warmly recommend the analysis (in Hebrew, of course), which you can read here.

Aside from this, what adjustments have I made in my own life. Well, on Shabbat I now carry my driving licence with me when I walk to shul, so that in any circumstances I will be easily identifiable. When I go out in the car, I make sure I have a full water bottle and take it with me when I park and walk to wherever I am going, so that, whatever happens, I will have half a litre of water to drink.

Does all that sound slightly paranoid to you? Well, it sounds slightly paranoid to part of me, but there’s another part of me that is prepared to ignore that and do it anyway. Earlier this week, I read the new revised guidelines for eligibility for gun ownership and realized that I am probably eligible, thanks to my three-and-a-half weeks’ basic training 33 years ago and my several years of reserve duty. I then mused, for a short while, about whether I should apply for a gun licence. In this particular case, one glance at Bernice’s face when I ran that idea up the flagpole one evening led me to reconsider.

Since you ask, Bernice and I are doing pretty well. Bernice is basically using me to pass all relevant news on to her, and blocks out the radio, because she finds too much of what leaps out at her without warning too painful. I have cut down on my listening, and particularly viewing, drastically. There is a thrice-daily Hebrew-language news summary that is distributed by WhatsApp that keeps me pretty tuned in, and I catch the hourly news bulletin between times. Beyond that, I am striving to be very selective. (This news bulletin has, in the last couple of days, begun to appear in English as well. I highly recommend it as a non-graphic snapshot of the news in Israel.)

Because of our specific generational position and the ages in our family (including siblings’ families), the generation beneath us are just too old to have been called up, and the generation below them are just too young, so that none of our immediate relatives are at the front. This is, naturally, one less thing to worry about. However, when I think of our friends in shul and elsewhere, and our more extended family, and count those who have children at the front, I realise that this only means I have more spare worry that I can deploy to share their worry.

As part of my effort to keep a handle on normality, I feel I can resume offering you pictures of the grandsons, who are blessedly still too young to be aware of the times we are living in. Tao and Ollie were on the train to Lisbon for a couple of days, and Raphael was on the train in gan, where he is now really feeling at home.

Last week I wrote about the mood in the country, as captured/created in the mainstream media, in the first two days of the war. I also wrote, but did not publish last week, a description of how that mood changed from the third or fourth day of that first week.

A couple of days ago, I started thinking about how I could expand and complete that description as this week’s post. However, having struggled with it for some time, I eventually realised that it made no sense to write an update that, by the time I published it, would be a week and a half out of date.

Instead, let me try to identify and describe all of the successive waves of national mood that we have experienced until now.

“All he wanted to do was to protect his family”

Let’s start by revisiting the same clip from Golda that I asked you to look at last week. You can view it again here.

After Day 2, stories began to emerge of individual heroism: of Israelis who, on that first Shabbat Chag, saw on their phones WhatsApp messages from children, parents, friends, acquaintances, and reacted by grabbing their handguns and ammunition, jumping in their vehicles, and driving to the scene of the carnage. If you’re not Israeli, that may sound surreal. What you must remember is that there is a large, self-selecting group of forty-to-sixty-something men in Israel who all served in combat units. Some of them became career soldiers; others joined police force special units. All have seen live action during their regular and then reservist service over the last twenty years. They all keep a licensed handgun at home. They keep in good physical shape, and practise at the shooting range.

So, when their daughters called them from the festival to say that they were being shot at and there were no police or soldiers to be seen, or when their children called from their safe-room on the kibbutz, where they were sheltering with the grandchildren, and said that terrorists were firing at the door of the safe-room, these men did what their instinct and their training both told them to do: they drove to the ‘front’. On the way they lied their way through army roadblocks by claiming to be policemen called as reinforcement’, or bypassed the roadblocks in their all-terrain vehicles, or pleaded with the soldiers manning the roadblocks to let them through, or, having failed to persuade, they simply said: “I’m driving through. If you have to shoot me, shoot me, but you won’t turn me back”. They passed bullet-ridden cars and abandoned corpses littering the road. They brought the fight to the terrorists in the kibbutzim, moshavim and towns of Otef Aza, and in and around the festival, and in many, many cases they rescued trapped civilians.

As the first week went on, more and more of these stories were featured on the mainstream media. If you have not heard any of them, here is one featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes. The point I want to stress is that, as outlier as this story sounds, it is one of many that I could reference, each with a storyline that, in a Bruce Willis action film, would make me smile wryly at its far-fetchedness.

Among those civilian first responders were many members of Achim LaNeshek – Brothers in Arms – the reservist group that has, throughout the year, been heavily involved in the judicial reform protests. After members of the group who are Air Force pilots stated, earlier in the year, that they would no longer turn up for their regular reserve training – a step that some commentators argued would significantly undermine the Air Force’s effectiveness – Netanyahu condemned their action in very strong and divisive terms. On that Shabbat, 7 October, when a member of the group who lives in Otef Aza posted what was happening on their WhatsApp group, members of the group responded by making their way to the front.

Over that first week, the country was reeling under the weight of details uncovered every day of atrocities committed. The number confirmed as killed on that first day continued to rise, as did the number kidnapped. At the same time, the country began to rally around and to be inspired by the stories of individual courage. Some of those stories ended as well as could be hoped– such as the father who, in his tender, rescued from a bomb shelter next to a bus stop not far from the festival not only his daughter but also another 29 girls who had managed to stay quiet under the pile of bodies covering the floor of the shelter. Others ended as well as possible; there was more than one story of an individual deliberately taking the full force of an exploding grenade and thereby saving the lives of others close by.

Start-up nation

As the days went by, and civilians were evacuated from Otef Aza, and then as the call-up of over 300,000 reservists began, the national mood changed again. Now the narrative became one of 360,000 responding to the call-up – even though only 300,000 were called. Israelis cut short post-army trips, or other holidays, fighting to get a plane home in order to enlist. In 1967, Israeli black humour asked the last person leaving the country to turn out the lights; now the request was for the last Israeli leaving Europe to turn out the lights.

The massive call-up (of 3% of Israel’s population, the equivalent of calling up over two million in the UK or 10 million in the US) of course meant that the entire population was even more closely involved in the war.. Taking our 50-member-family shul as a microcosm, two of our members have been called up, as well as another 40 children, grandchildren, siblings, brothers-in-law and sons-in-law of members.

With reservists being called to the front, and with communities being evacuated from Otef Aza, individuals and groups began organising volunteer activities: collecting clothes, toys and toiletries for evacuated families, or food, toiletries and ancillary equipment for soldiers at the front; organising activities for evacuated children; even going into the abandoned Otef Aza communities – before they were declared sterile (clear of all terrorists) – to rescue ‘orphaned’ dogs and cats from the homes of massacred or kidnapped families and arrange foster families for them. Some hotels and hostels opened their doors to the evacuees. Some builders made newly completed but not yet occupied apartment buildings available. Brothers in Arms used its existing highly organised structure to open a massive logistics centre for food distribution and other support.  

The whole country embraced the therapy of ‘doing something’. Alongside the countless modest neighbourhood initiatives, larger and more innovative projects were launched. As I write this, on Sunday evening, there are still several hundred bodies that have not been identified. Despite Israel’s forensic scientists working around the clock, with expert help from abroad, some bodies are so mutilated and so badly burnt that neither dental records nor DNA are available. There are still a large number of people officially deemed to be missing, whose families do not yet know whether they have been murdered or kidnapped.

Recognising the anguish of these families, a group of hi-tech workers set up what has become a massive database. They have collected from the families all possible photographic and video evidence of those missing. They have also collected all the video and photographic documentation available from the events of that Shabbat and subsequently. Using AI and specially written algorithms, they are searching for matches, both facial recognition and possible matches of clothing. When I watched a television report on this centre a few days ago, they had been able to pass to the relevant authorities positive identification of many individuals.

Where are our leaders?

As the first week drew to a close, there was another change of tone in the national debate, as conducted in the media, and, increasingly, on the streets. Where was the leadership? This was a two-pronged question: Where was the leadership before October 7? Where is the leadership now? While there was initially widespread agreement that the investigation of any military, security and government failures or errors of judgement in the days, weeks and months leading up to October 7 should wait until after the war, Netanyahu was quick to announce that he had not been made aware of any potential situation until 6:29AM on October 7, when the attacks began.

In the last few days, the Commander-in-Chief, the Intelligence chief and the Minister of Defence have all accepted responsibility for the failure. Netanyahu has not. Government ministers unfortunate enough to be interviewed in the media have given carefully-worded responses along the following lines: “Of course we are responsible”, without mentioning Netanyahu by name or the Prime Minister by position.

Channel 11, a very mainstream broadcaster not overly sympathetic to Netanyahu at the best of times, displayed photos of the other three leading members of the War Cabinet in one column, under the heading: ‘Accept Responsibility’; in the second column, headed ‘Does not Accept Responsibility’, was the lone photo of Netanyahu.

While voluntary initiatives seem to get up to speed in virtually no time, and to run with incredible efficiency and a spirit of co-operation, this weekend saw what seems to be an appalling failure to co-ordinate. The Government offered inhabitants of Kiryat Shemona, very near the Lebanese border, the option to evacuate to hotels in the centre. Individual families were told which hotel was holding rooms for them. When some of the evacuees arrived at the hotels, they were told there were no rooms for them. On the radio this morning, the Mayor of Kiryat Shemona was furious at the incompetence of the Tourism Ministry, while the Minister of Tourism was unable to provide a coherent explanation of what had happened.

Two weeks into the war, there is still no single body to co-ordinate the Government’s initiatives for the home front. Initial attempts to organise such a body under the leadership of the Prime Minister’s office failed, because the directors-general of several of the various relevant ministries simply refused to ‘waste their time’ attending meetings of a body which would not achieve anything. Increasingly, this breakdown seems like an inevitable consequence of offering Government ministries to inexperienced members of minority parties, as a reward for joining the Government, and to incompetent members of the majority party, as a reward for remaining faithful to Netanyahu,

Members of the Government were very slow in visiting affected families in the South. This is, in fairness, partly out of a very real fear that they would encounter hostility, as one minister did when she attempted to enter a hospital to visit the wounded. At least one family warned Government representatives not to attempt to attend the funeral of their family member killed in the attack.

Where now?

Without a doubt, the country is more united, at the grassroots level, than it has been since the beginning of the year. Tzahal has announced that it has received 2000 requests from ultra-orthodox men to serve, and that it will be launching a suitable program tomorrow (Monday).

However, this unity does not move upwards. The open criticism of the Government, and especially of Netanyahu, both in the media and on the street, is becoming more strident. Given the fact that we are at war, this criticism seems to me very troubling, although I completely understand it.

The one issue above all others on which the nation will, I am sure, be truly, and savagely, divided, is the question of the country’s priorities. The basic question to consider is: How do you rank in importance the following three goals: The complete destruction of Hamas; the safe return of the hostages; the minimising of loss of life among Israel’s forces.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is the question of what will happen in Gaza after Hamas is completely destroyed (if that goal is even achievable). Further added to the complexity is the question: How is Israel most likely to achieve the safe return of the hostages? I have heard experts argue that a prisoner exchange is the only way; others argue that when we have Hamas by the throat they will release the hostages; yet others say that we need to carry out an Entebbe-style rescue.

These questions are, of course, immensely complex. I have not even added in the question of how Israel’s action in Gaza, against Hamas, will affect the stability of the Northern border. Will our action trigger Hizbollah to escalate hostilities? Will Iran be drawn in through Syria?

When I started thinking about this week’s post, I planned to call it ‘The Start-Up Nation’ and I intended to focus on how Hamas’s miscalculation was to think that its pogrom would destroy our morale rather than uniting us and leading us to forget our differences. That was the mood a week ago. Since then, the mood has shifted. The government, and the Prime Minister, have appeared to lack purpose, ability, and sensitivity to the mood of the nation. In addition, the geo-political ramifications of the situation have become clearer to us. As our ground troops wait impatiently on the Gaza border, and drown in home-made cake and shaving foam sent from the home front, and wait, and wait; as our troops wait anxiously on the northern border, and drown in coca-cola and soap sent from the home front, the way forward through the next weeks and months seems very far from certain.

However uncertain they seem for us, how much more so must they be for the families of the hostages – and for the hostages themselves?

What seems like a lifetime ago, but was, so the calendar tells me, less than two weeks ago, Bernice and I went to see Golda. One of the most powerful moments in the film occurs during a telephone conversation between Golda Meir and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. To understand today’s post, you must first watch this clip.

In the cinema, at that moment, the feeling among the audience of national pride was visceral. You could taste it in your mouth.

I don’t intend to analyse in detail what made the events of Shabbat/Simchat Torah ten days ago possible, but it looks increasingly like a combination of a whole kitbag-ful of elements: a level of planning, training, and secrecy from Hamas that far exceeded anything they had previously displayed; a disproportionate deployment of troops to the West Bank leaving the border with Gaza woefully under-protected; an over-reliance on technology and an accompanying decline in the level of training and discipline of the troops on the ground. Underlying all of these was a mistaken confidence on the part of Israel – its political leadership, its military and security leadership, many of its people.

Ten days ago, the national pride we had tasted in the cinema was exposed as hubris, and the confidence we had felt was revealed to have been complacency.

We have been heartened by the many, many messages of support we have received from family and friends abroad. One such message expressed the hope that “this unrest ends very soon”. I hope that, by now, nobody abroad mistakenly believes that what Israel underwent in the first half of last week was “unrest”. I am not going to post any links to videos from those first days: messages from families trapped in their houses for more than a day and begging for soldiers to come and rescue them; videos of acts of unspeakable atrocity committed by Hamas terrorists and filmed by them on their victims’ phones then uploaded to those victims’ families via social media.

The residents of the towns, kibbutzim and moshavim in Otef Aza – the area inside Israel bordering the Gaza Strip to the North and East – and the thousands attending a music festival in the same area were subjected to a pogrom, or, perhaps even more accurately, an Einsatzgruppen attack. As the details of the full extent and the exact nature of that massacre emerged over Sunday, Israel sank into a mood that it has not known since 1948, and possibly has never known.

As always happens during a war in Israel, the mainstream Israeli broadcaster switched all of its programming to news, analysis and background stories around the situation. For the first two days, these programs all focussed almost exclusively on interviews with survivors of the massacres, or with the families of those either known to be dead or declared missing presumed dead or abducted across the border into Gaza. From Day Two, added to these were interviews with soldiers and civilians who had gone into the towns and settlements that had been massacred, speaking about what they had found. There was an almost exclusive focus on the loss, the deaths, the carnage, the suffering, the anguish.

It is true that the family that is Israel always embraces those grieving, and encourages them to speak of the loved ones they have lost. However, this time the media experience was qualitatively different in two ways. First, the focus was exclusively on the way in which the victims had suffered and died, or been abducted, rather than the usual focus on celebrating the life that had been lived rather than the murder that had been inflicted. Second, the radio station I listen to (Reshet Bet) devoted virtually no time to any story other than those of individual suffering.

Let me offer two statistical comparisons to attempt to put the ‘size’ of the suffering into perspective.

Every day last week, the numbers of total dead announced rose by at least 100. Only a handful of that number were ‘new’ deaths; the remaining 90 or more were bodies that had been discovered over the previous 24 hours, bodies from the carnage of one day, Shabbat/Simchat Torah. On that day, I estimate (at the time of writing) that 1000 or more civilians were murdered. (By the time you read this, that horrendous number may even seem optimistic.) By comparison, in the entire Yom Kippur War, which, until 9 days ago was Israel’s greatest security failure, not a single civilian died.

1000 civilians murdered in a single Einsatzgruppen Hamas action constitute just over 0.001% of the total population of Israel. An equivalent percentage of the population of the UK is 6,750 people; of the US: 33,500. (2,600 died in 9/11.)

Two levels of remove: there cannot be a single family in Israel that does not have a relative, a friend, a work colleague, a fellow-congregant or a near neighbour who does not have a relative who was murdered or abducted or who experienced first hand the terror of the pogrom and survived deeply scarred emotionally, even if physically unharmed.

On a personal note: Bernice and I belong to a shul that has some 50 member-families. Two of those families have, between them, five cousins who are missing (presumed abducted), and our own daughter-in-law narrowly survived, thankfully physically unharmed, the massacre at the music festival. Every shul, every school, every social club in the country could tell the same story.

And even if you don’t know a particular victim personally… Here’s a piece that has been doing the rounds on social media that captures my point eloquently.

Someone asked me if I know anyone who was killed in Israel. I was puzzled by his question.
“I know all of them,” I answered. He was puzzled by my response.
So I wrote this to explain it.
——————————–
I don’t know you, but I saw you at that bar.
I don’t know you, but you took my parking spot.
I don’t know you, but our parents are friends.
I don’t know you, but I can hear you playing matkot on the beach.
I don’t know you, but your smile made me smile.
I don’t know you, but we argued in a WhatsApp group.
I don’t know you, but we ate together at Chabad.
I don’t know you, but you almost ran me over with your korkinet.
I don’t know you, but you were once my waitress.
I don’t know you, but you gave me your seat on the bus.
I don’t know you, but I saved your place in line at the bank, at the post office, and at the grocery store.
I don’t know you, but we loved the same music.
I don’t know you, but we learned Torah together.
I don’t know you, but we shared a joint in Sinai.
I don’t know you, but we stood next to each other at Mount Sinai.
I don’t know you, but we stood next to each other on Kaplan.
I don’t know you, but I know you.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
I don’t know you, but I will always remember you.

The mood in the radio studios was unnaturally subdued over those first few days; radio and TV presenters were sometimes close to tears, and even, occasionally, more than close. There was no sense, as there usually is during a war, of needing, of being able to attempt, to rally national morale. For a couple of days, until Tzahal was seen to be taking control in Otef Aza, the whole country felt powerless. The Prime Minister and the other political (and military) leaders seemed to be missing in action; there were no rousing addresses to the nation. A cartoon depicting all of the Government ministers cowering under the Cabinet table, some clutching their draft sectarian legislation, some wetting themselves, required no caption.

For over two days, we were that little girl hiding in the cellar, and those were the most chilling two days the country has ever experienced.

-o0o-

In the second half of last week, as Otef Aza was gradually cleared of all terrorists, and as 300,000 reservists were called up, some to the Gaza front, and some to the Northern border, there was a distinct and significant change of mood.

However, I want to leave writing about that change of mood until next week. (At this moment, I feel I want to switch back to publishing every week in the current situation.)

For today, I want to leave you with two last thoughts.

As I came downstairs to ask Bernice to read this post (as she always does, and offers her wise advice), I saw that she had lit a yahrzeit light – a memorial candle. She told me that we had all been invited to light a candle at 6PM as a mark of solidarity with Kibbutz Be’eri, a kibbutz less than five kilometres from the Gaza border. At that exact time, on Kibbutz Be’eri, the funerals were being held of 100 members of the kibbutz.

If what happened in Israel last week moved you, if your heart and your mind are with Israel at this dreadful time, please remember what this massacre is really about.

Some people will tell you it’s about removing Israeli control of Gaza. They don’t understand. Some people will tell you it’s about removing Israel from the map. They don’t understand. Some people will tell you it’s about removing Jews from the face of the earth. They don’t understand.

To understand what it’s really about, read and internalise the words of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Zahar, as reported last year by MEMRI: “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.”

And please read this week’s post as a dispatch from the world’s canary cage.

As soon as I have published this post, Bernice and I will be setting off for Zichron to visit Raphael. The grandparents of these children are, at this moment, unable to do the same.

I had a nice little piece of trivia all ready to be written up for this week’s post, a light-hearted look at dental flossing and the vagaries of Google searches. But then, of course, life intervened, as it sometimes does, and calls of ‘Hold the front page!’ were heard in the editorial room of my head. So, personal hygiene will have to wait for another time, while we contemplate, instead, events in Tel Aviv on Yom Kippur eve.

For the last three years, Rosh Yehudi, an orthodox religious group, in a conscious act of outreach, has held two prayer services, at the start and the end of Yom Kippur, in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv. These services have become very well attended by a range of congregants, from orthodox to secular (albeit a breed of secular that seems characteristically Israeli – secular but with a sense of respect for the traditions). The services have, in the past, accommodated both separate seating areas for men and women, with a dividing mechitza of wood or metal, and, further back, an area of mixed seating. The services have been largely celebrated as an inspiring example of mutual tolerance and of across-the-board identification with the Jewish nature of the state.

This year, in the build-up to Yom Kippur, the following happened.

1. Rosh Yehudi applied for a licence to hold its traditional services.
2. The Tel Aviv – Yafo municipality, under mayor Ron Huldai, refused to license gender-separated prayers in Dizengoff Square, arguing that gender separation is not permitted in the public space in the city.
3. Rosh Yehudi appealed the decision, and both a local court and, subsequently, the Supreme Court, upheld the municipality’s decision.
4. Rosh Yehudi decided to proceed with gender-separated prayer, as in previous years, albeit with Israeli flags replacing the solid mechitza of previous years.
5. On Yom Kippur eve itself, police made no attempt to enforce the municipality’s ban as upheld by the Supreme Court.
6. Demonstrators, finding the square impassable, then prevented the erection of the ‘mechitza’ of Israeli flags; some disrupted the prayers by shouting, sitting on seats designated for the other sex, and, in some cases, eating in front of congregants.
7. There were angry scenes between congregants and protestors. Many congregants appeared deeply upset by the anger. One protestor who dismantled a flag was detained and questioned by police.
8. Rosh Yehudi eventually decided to withdraw to a nearby synagogue and hold the service there.

Let me start with a couple of observations on the ruling of Ron Huldai and his municipality. Presumably, in the public swimming baths and in the beachfront facilities in Tel Aviv, there are separate changing rooms for men and women. Similarly, public toilet facilities in Tel Aviv are gender-separated, In other words, it is accepted by everyone that there are exceptions to the general rule that there is no gender separation in the public space. The municipality has therefore made a conscious decision that the halachic requirement to segregate the genders during prayer services should not be supported as an option at a prayer service in the public space. This is a decision that the municipality needs to explain, rather than hiding behind the general rule, to which it recognises that there are exceptions.

While it is at it, the municipality could also explain why it did not, at the end of June this year, similarly refuse a permit for the gender-segregated Muslim prayer on Tel Aviv beach marking Eid-al-Adha.

Let’s turn now to the leaders of Rosh Yehudi. Having, quite legitimately, taken their protest at the municipality’s ruling all the way to the Supreme Court, and had their appeal rejected, did the organisers genuinely think that creating a mechitza out of Israeli flags was not in contravention of the court’s ruling? Even if they did, did they honestly imagine that opponents of this plan would let it pass in peace? Are they really so tone-deaf to the discord that has been sounding on the streets of Tel Aviv and elsewhere for nine months now? Did they truly believe that their action would further their declared aim of creating a space for inclusivity, of attracting secular and non-religious traditional Tel Avivians. Or did they rather feel that to back down would look like weakness and would reward victory to ‘the other side’?

Next, consider the demonstrators. Their concern that the public space not be blocked or closed off and that the law be upheld does not appear to extend to every Saturday evening, when parts of central Tel Aviv become impassable, and when breakaway groups of demonstrators repeatedly, and illegally, block the major artery of the Ayalon, frustrating hundreds, if not thousands, of drivers and passengers. Equally, their outrage at Rosh Yehudi taking the law into their own hands and defying a municipal order led to them taking the law into their own hands, rather than allowing the legal authorities such as the police to decide on the appropriate action.

Following the events of Erev Yom Kippur, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Minister of National Security and head of the far right-wing Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, announced that he would hold a gender-segregated prayer service on Thursday evening in Dizengoff Square. After many other politicians publicly condemned this idea, Ben-Gvir backed down. In displaying what seemed suspiciously like restraint (but mat simply have been political expedience), Ben-Gvir ended up looking like the closest thing to a mature adult in the room. This in itself gives some indication of just where we are as a country. As I may have remarked in an earlier post, we are never going to be able to begin our essential journey back to a feeling of national unity until key players start caring less about who is right and more about what is right.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, supermarket shopping in Portugal is clearly a more enjoyable experience than it has been recently in holiday-season Israel, and, in Zichron, the first rains arrived this Sunday, bringing Raphael toe-to-toe with his first rain puddle. Does life get any better than this?