Nine Words That Would Have Prevented Nine Months of Turmoil in Israel

From what I can see, and I have followed the crisis pretty closely, a real danger in Israel right now, in addition to the judicial crisis itself, is the possibility that the crisis may have caused the country irreparable damage.

There is so much water under the bridge– so much pain, agony, anger, division and mistrust over the past nine months– if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to decide tomorrow to freeze the judicial overhaul, it’s not clear there would be much improvement, let alone national healing. The crisis seems to have taken on a life of its own; the resentment and the bitterness are still burning, the scars are deep.

This is the price Israel is paying for allowing a civil strife to escalate and spin out of control. With the combatants emotionally drained and embittered, it won’t be easy to put the genie back in the bottle.

What is most disappointing, ultimately, is the lack of a concerted effort to heal the country, especially from the man on top, where the buck stops. Evidently, Netanyahu has higher priorities. Even one of his supporters, Amit Segal, said in a recent interview posted on X that Netanyahu’s motivation with the judicial reforms is “to extricate himself from his legal cases.” We can only hope that this personal imperative doesn’t lead Israel into an abyss.

The path to an abyss may start on Sept. 12, when Israel’s Supreme Court will  review the coalition’s contentious reasonableness law. If the Court strikes it down, a constitutional crisis will take an already traumatic civil strife to yet another level.

Maybe it’s par for the course in this annus horribilis. If the situation weren’t so tragic, one would think someone is playing a cruel game of “let’s see how far this thing can go.”

This “thing,” let us remember, started with a beginning. Indeed, everything in life, from a national crisis to a personal crisis, typically starts with a beginning.

It’s fortuitous, then, that we are entering the holiday of the ultimate beginning, when we commemorate the very first day of Creation. This gives us a chance this Rosh Hashanah to reflect more deeply on this crucial idea of beginnings: How do we begin a relationship? How do we begin a new venture? How do we begin a new government?

How did Judaism begin its very first day?

It turns out that our first day didn’t begin when the glorious sun came up; it began when the sun went down, when darkness fell. There were no bright lights, nothing to make us feel too cocky.

5784 years later, the Jewish day still begins at night, when we are humbled by the darkness and made to wait long hours for the morning light. For those who have trouble appreciating the holiness and humility of the night, however, all that is left to consume are the sunny rays of daylight.

This is the tragedy of that fateful day of January 4, when Netanyahu’s new government began its legislative journey with the arrogance of bright lights.

Instead of resisting the urge to abuse its newfound power, instead of going slowly with something that would deeply affect the whole nation, the coalition plunked down a plan to transfer virtually all judicial power to itself. Under the guise that “the Court has too much power,” it went in the opposite direction and gave itself too much power.

Defenders who argue that “it was just an opening bid” are missing the point. That opening bid was a statement of intent, an exposing of one’s true colors, a middle finger to the 52 percent of Israelis who didn’t vote for the coalition. The coalition led off, in short, with a message of arrogance: We’re running the show now and we will neutralize anything that gets in the way of our extremist policies that we know you hate.

Just as a relationship or a project can be ruined by a poisonous beginning, the most extreme coalition in Israel’s history never recovered from its abusive beginning.

Netanyahu himself was incapable of leading his government with the humility of the night. Instead, he followed his survival instincts and threw his lot with his radical and messianic partners, oblivious to the sun shining so brightly on the renegade coalition he felt compelled to cobble together.

Blinded by these partners, Netanyahu never could utter the nine words that would have positively transformed the beginning of his government:

“We are announcing a bipartisan commission for judicial reforms.”

As simple as those words sound, they represent a transcendent, unifying idea that would have prevented Israel’s worst crisis in 75 years. We can only look back with pain and regret.

But losing hope is not a Jewish thing. Since we’re entering the High Holy Days when we honor the miracle of Creation, and since Israel itself is a miracle country, let’s remember that we’re also a miracle people. In that spirit, let us hope and pray that despite all the damage Israel has inflicted upon itself, this plucky miracle country will find a way to forge a new beginning in 5784.

And let us hope and pray that our own beginnings in the coming year will be blessed with the humility of the night.

Shana Tova.