I’ve been marveling from afar at how New York City has come together to celebrate the Knicks winning the NBA championship. Here is a great city that has been struggling for years, divided and broken in many ways, and yet, one amazing victory has brought a kaleidoscope of humanity together.
Unity, that impossible and elusive ideal, can suddenly become real with just one event.
Here in Israel, unity is also an impossible ideal. The divisions are too real, the stakes too high, the nerves too raw.
But I can tell you this: If Israel had made it to the World Cup this year and won just one game, this country would look like New York City right now. If Israel ever goes as far as winning the World Cup one day, the president will announce the coming of Maschiach.
How can something be so impossible and yet so possible?
How can people be at each other’s throat one day and in the middle of a hug the next?
When we’re fighting, the last thing on our mind is what we have in common. Only an outside event, good or bad, can shock us into seeing it.
The Haredim who are demonstrating against being drafted are not thinking about what they have in common with fellow Israelis. Their commitment is to their ideology. Unity is a luxury.
The bare-knuckle politicians who are aiming to prevail in the coming Israeli elections have plenty in common with their rivals—but that’s the last thing on their mind. On the contrary: they’re looking to divide and conquer. They’re looking to crush. It’s win at all cost.
And even then, sudden events have the power to unite the most divided souls.
I was here a few weeks after the atrocities of Oct. 7, and what I recall the most was a sense of collective numbness. Every Israeli felt assaulted. Every Israeli felt the pain. Every Israeli shared one thing in common: an enemy had invaded their country and committed a massacre that was beyond description.
For a while at least, one could taste that impossible ideal of unity, however messy and conflicted. We can even taste it today, when Trump’s new agreement with Iran has triggered high anxiety across ideological lines.
It’s the same everywhere. Fear unites. New Yorkers united after 9/11. Antisemitism brings Jews together. When we focus on a common enemy, it covers up our differences. The challenge is always the same: After the “easy unity” from a common threat, can we attain the more lasting unity from appreciating the value of our differences– not to mention from finding the deeper things we have in common?
But that’s for another day. For now, let’s marvel at humans coming together.
When Jalen Brunson made those miracle shots to bring New York its first championship in 53 years, New Yorkers forgot how broken their city is and how divided they are about finding solutions. They had found that aphrodisiac that brought them all together—young, old, rich, poor, white, black, brown. “We’re all Knicks now!” is the new mantra.
Until Israel wins the World Cup, or until the real Maschiach shows up, or until a visionary leader arrives who can tap into our common bonds and shared destiny, Israel will have to settle for common enemies to keep it cobbled together.
For better and for worse, history has shown it will never run out of those.
Shabbat shalom.
