Shimon Shiffer of Ynet, Israel’s biggest newspaper, wrote that ” target=”_blank”>.” It is no secret that “Our nation is divided into tribes,” Shiffer wrote, and added that it is not the voters’ fault. I agree with him, and I would add that it is no one’s fault that we’re divided! But at the same time, it’s everyone’s responsibility to patch up the rift.
One of the readers of Shiffer’s column wrote that when push comes to shove, Jews unite. We’ve all seen how with each military campaign we somehow muster the strength to overcome our differences and face the common danger as one. At the same time, we should also note that our unity even in the face of tribulations is eroding. In last summer’s campaign, Protective Edge, the nation was not fully united behind the effort to protect Israel’s citizens more or less until the ground campaign began, weeks after the hostilities had started.
Now, less than a year after the (initially) contested military campaign, Israel and Jews worldwide are reeling from a polarizing and venomous elections campaign that looked more like an all out verbal war than a celebration of democracy. I think that urgent and serious introspection is required in order to reestablish ourselves as a sustainable nation. In view of the growing worldwide anti-Semitism, and the emergent anti-Israel campaign being touted by governments, academic institutions, and international organizations, I think we cannot afford to waste time arguing; we must unite our ranks, but especially our hearts.
This coming Passover is a great opportunity to begin to reinstate our unity. We normally associate Passover with family gatherings and a special seder (order) that we follow, reciting the Haggadah and eating the traditional Passover food. Somehow, we tend to forget that the Passover Haggadah also details an imperative element in the forging of our nation—the process of our unification that ultimately gave us our peoplehood.
We were declared a nation after we stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai “as one man with one heart” (as the 11th century commentator, RASHI, writes). But had we not been prepared for unity through the ordeals in Egypt, we would not have been able to unite right there, and our fates would have been very different. It is with good reason that the Talmud describes the offer we were given at the foot of Mt. Sinai as an “offer we could not refuse”: “The Lord had forced the mountain over Israel like a vault.” If we keep in mind that the name Sinai comes from the word, Sinaah (hatred), it becomes clear that Israel’s only way out of the vault was to unite through love.
Indeed, we had to unite “as one man with one heart.” But once we did, we were declared a nation, and were given the task to be “a light for the nations,” to spread the light of unity that had saved us at the bottom of the Mount.
Many days have past since then. The nation of Israel has dispersed throughout the world, and the task has been all but forgotten. But deep down, numerous non-Jews feel that the Jews are causing all the troubles everywhere, even where there are hardly any Jews. They express it toward the state of Israel, “the collective Jew among the nations,” as late historian Léon Poliakov said about the new form of Jew-hatred, but also toward Jews in general, as demonstrated by this ” target=”_blank”>Israel singled out at UN for women’s right violations.” The resolution was adopted by a vote of 27-2 with 13 abstentions, and Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor slammed the resolution saying it was further proof of the UN’s bias against Israel, as it was the only country singled out by the commission. “If anyone has ever doubted that the UN is biased against Israel, today we got further proof,” he said.
“Of the 193 member states in this institution,” he added, “dozens slaughter innocent civilians and impose discriminatory laws that marginalize women and yet they all get a free pass. The Commission on the Status of Women itself includes some of the worst violators of human rights, as Iran and Sudan.”
So this Passover, we must make it a point to pass over from division to cohesion, from hostility to unity. We are the nation that invented mutual responsibility, and we are now required to muster all of it, and show it to the world. Just as they now sense that we are spreading strife and disunity, they will sense that we are spreading the opposite as soon as we begin to unite.
If we unite not in order to save ourselves (although it is bound to be one of the outcomes), but to show the world how to unite above differences, how to climb a mountain of hatred, then we will truly be a light for the nations. The nations have no regard for any scientific or cultural achievements. The 2001 film, The Believer, expressed what more and more people feel today:
“Just take a look at the greatest Jewish minds ever. Marx, Freud, Einstein. What have they given us? Communism, infantile sexuality, and the atom bomb.”
The world needs something more now—it needs to find a way to unite because human society is falling apart. Since we, Jews, had once sustained such a society, and since we were once charged with the task of passing the knowledge of sustaining it to the rest of the world, the nations feel it is our duty to do just that. So this year, let’s really pass over from division to cohesion, not for the sake of remembering what the Egyptians did to us back then, but to redeem ourselves and the world from the shackles of egoism and liberate ourselves and the world in the festival of freedom from division and strife.
Happy Passover
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