For a time while I was a kid, I used to pray to Anne Frank. I wouldn’t kneel beside my bed or speak aloud, both because I felt silly and because I shared a room with my sister, but under cover of darkness I would lie beneath my bright quilted bedspread, close my eyes, lace my hands across my chest and silently send her my most fervent thoughts. God was remote, indifferent to my miseries and hopes. It seemed right somehow to supplant Him with Anne Frank, who I felt certain had His ear in heaven if she wasn’t a deity herself.

I felt entitled to claim a special connection with Anne, as I called her. Not only was she a girl about my age (even if she wrote like a vastly older, wiser, smarter one), but she was a Dutch Jew, just like my mother. If my grandparents, Oma and Opa, hadn’t got themselves and my mother out of the Netherlands during World War II, my mother would probably have shared Anne’s fate and I wouldn’t be here. In my mind Anne and my mother were fused, but since I harbored an outsized adolescent rejection of my mother, I removed her from the picture and inserted myself. Anne was my alter-ego, who allowed me to be something else—something more—than the impossibly fortunate California girl I was.

It was a new thought for me, this being Jewish. A short time earlier I’d had a school project—interview someone who had an experience with war—and decided to interview Oma. I screwed up my courage—she could be sharp-tongued—got her on the phone and learned that she and Opa had left the Netherlands so they wouldn’t be sent to concentration camps—“You know, like Sophie’s Choice,” she prodded. I was indignant: I knew about the Holocaust. I’d been shattered to learn about it in school and went on to read Anne Frank’s diary on my own. What I didn’t know was that the Holocaust had anything to do with my family. 

In subsequent years I tried getting Oma to tell me more, but she refused to speak. My mother seemed embarrassed to say she didn’t know more than I did: her parents never wanted to talk about it. I learned from others about Opa’s father and sister who were murdered in Auschwitz, notice I seemed to have a lot of relatives in Israel. Still, even as I prayed to Anne Frank feeling she was me somehow, my Jewishness was like an easily dismissible rumor. It was too incongruent with my life of Christmas and Disneyland, shopping malls and a vaguely intuited emptiness.

I eventually stopped praying to Anne and became an atheist, like the rest of my family. I spent high school lunchtimes haranguing anyone who’d debate me that there is no God, then took my opinionated, sublimation-prone self to Berkeley. I became a radical anti-apartheid activist, then joined a much more radical, Trotskyist organization. Not being a half-measures sort of person, I stayed with them for about twenty-five years.

I became a radical anti-apartheid activist, then joined a much more radical, Trotskyist organization. Not being a half-measures sort of person, I stayed with them for about twenty-five years.

In the party I found much that was good, including some of the most selfless, intelligent, funny, critically-minded people I have ever known. I found a precious sense of belonging and meaning. And I found the comfort of clarity between good and evil, progress and reaction. Enemies abounded, but none was so compelling as the preternaturally sinister, powerful, reactionary “Zionists.” As I’ve written elsewhere, I swam in a sea of antisemitism for years and didn’t notice the water was filthy.

After quitting the party in 2016, I was desperate to understand how I accepted so many hateful beliefs and, more broadly, what I believed. I returned to school, wrote my master’s on antisemitism and the left, then continued reading, writing and generally obsessing about antisemitism. But I was increasingly bothered. Antisemitism is hatred against Jews, but who are these people? I knew something about Jew-hatred now, but nothing about Jews, themselves—only as victims. I sensed something that could enrich my life, which had been the beating heart of my mother’s family generations ago. I wanted to seek a connection to those ghostly Jews—to honor not only their sufferings and deaths, but their joys and lives.

I wanted to seek a connection to those ghostly Jews—to honor not only their sufferings and deaths, but their joys and lives.

So I’ve set out not only to learn, but to open my heart. There’s so much turmoil in the world these days, such hatred and just plain craziness that sometimes it feels impossible, and even indulgent, to seek stillness. Yet every Friday I light Shabbat candles, say kiddush, gaze at the flickering flame. I don’t know what I believe. I have a sense of coming home, however—tempestuous as it can be—and that’s more than enough. Am Yisrael chai.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”

The Hebrew Bible (Ta’nach) devotes a great deal of attention to the complexities of leadership, the successes that qualified leaders can bring, and the national disasters that accompany failed figures. In presenting Moses and Joshua, followed by the portrayals of a series of flawed tribal strongmen (and women, as in the case of Deborah) in the Book of Judges, and then Shaul, David, Solomon and the split into two kingdoms, the biblical narrative is a valuable source for exploring different leadership characteristics and their implications. 

These assessments and discussions are essential in every generation, and particularly in the current crisis that has brought Israel to the brink of civil conflict.  And they remind us that beyond the specific issues of judicial reform, in order to end today’s dysfunction, we need leaders who focus on the national interest and are able to unite different groups and find common ground.  

In the Jewish tradition, Moses is the archetypal leader, who, under God’s tutelage, brought the Israelites from slavery to freedom and then 40 years in the desert. The portrayal of Moses is multilayered, beginning with a unique backstory – saved from Pharaoh’s brutal infanticide by the Egyptian ruler’s daughter, raised in the royal palace, but still able to identify with the enslaved Israelites. Although hot-headed in killing a brutal taskmaster, which forces him to escape to the desert, Moses is also painfully modest, repeating excuses when God tells him to return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh and lead the people out of bondage. A successful leader, then as now, must be a convincing orator but Moses stutters and God has to send his brother Aaron as spokesman. 

Gradually, Moses masters the job. In the desert, his speeches become cogent and powerful, and he acquires confidence and charisma, leading military operations against attackers, and putting down the revolt of Korach and his allies, who sought power for its own sake. At the same time, throughout the portrayal, Moses remains human, with imperfections and mistakes – such as striking the rock in anger when the people complained (not the first time) about being thirsty. For this, he paid a high price, when God precluded him from entering the promised land. 

In modern western democracies, including Israel, leaders are not chosen by divine intervention (at least not visibly). Instead, they must run campaigns in order to secure their positions, and this usually comes with a significant ego and sense of self-importance — qualities far removed from the reluctance and modesty displayed by Moses. To generate the headlines and social media buzz necessary to get elected, they need teams of spinners and influencers, and this costs money which must be raised, usually from wealthy patrons, who have their own interests. 

But none of these factors justify corruption or eliminate the need for humility, at least off stage. Leaders who lose touch with the citizens, or treat them with disdain, isolate themselves from the general public, and lose legitimacy. A successful leader must also have qualified experts and advisors (as distinct from career politician-supporters and yes-men or women), and be able to listen to and act on their analysis. One of the most significant moments in the Biblical narrative shortly after the Exodus takes place when Moses becomes overwhelmed with the demands on his time from the people. At this point, his father-in-law, Jethro the Midianite leader and management guru, advises him on setting up a hierarchical legal structure, which is immediately accepted and implemented.  

Leaders who lose touch with the citizens, or treat them with disdain, isolate themselves from the general public, and lose legitimacy. 

In modern Israel’s first decades, our leaders fit most of these criteria. Ben-Gurion and Begin were modest — neither led ostentatious lives, both eschewed the trappings of power and access to wealth, and stayed focused, for the most part, on the shared goals of the Jewish nation-state and its citizens. They were careful to not allow family members to benefit from their privileged positions and did not isolate themselves from the general public. They sought out and listened to different views and analyses before making fateful decisions. When responding to criticism, they usually demonstrated respect. (Ben-Gurion’s boycott of Begin and his Herut faction until 1967 was an exception.)  

In recent decades, these essential leadership elements have faded, at significant cost. Many of today’s political classes ignore professional experts on critical national issues, because their analyses are inconvenient. As in the times of the Judges, our government is composed primarily of sectoral leaders who are oblivious to the wider national implications of their narrow and divisive agendas. 

It is now the norm for leaders from different parties to use their positions and power in order to seek personal gain – a feature predicted by Samuel when the people demanded the appointment of a king “like the other nations.” The prophet warned them “He will take your sons and appoint them as his charioteers and horsemen … and your best fruits and vineyards and olives,” and this described many of the rulers that followed. Today, corruption takes different forms, but the results are similar. In contrast, the Bible gives us a standard set by Abraham, who told the King of Sdom “I will not accept even a thread, or a strap of a sandal … lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich,’” and by Samuel, who proclaimed “Whose ox or donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated or oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe and closed my eyes?” How many of Israel’s leaders today could come close to their records?   

It is now the norm for leaders from different parties to use their positions and power in order to seek personal gain – a feature predicted by Samuel when the people demanded the appointment of a king “like the other nations.”

Corruption, oversized egos, narrow horizons, manipulative and divisive policies, and misplaced priorities are some of the characteristics of what passes for leadership, as a divided Israel approaches the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in our homeland. This would be an appropriate occasion for voters from all sectors to demand much more from candidates and leaders.

Gerald M. Steinberg is an emeritus professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor.