The brief from my editor was clear: “It’s time for a column, but write something new. No more ‘coalition of shame stuff; no more ‘cursed Netanyahu.’ Focus on anything else. Give us something completely different.”
The suggestion seemed sensible and sane. I fell asleep scratching around for an interesting initiative and woke to the brand-new ritual of the ancient people of Israel. For close on two years, we now awake – in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in temporary homes of the displaced – and reach for our phones. We check WhatsApp messages, emails, our bank accounts. We wonder if we should try to go back to sleep. Anything, anything to avoid clicking on the news.
When we can no longer delay, we reluctantly log on to the daily dramas. And we pray, oh how we pray, that we won’t be confronted with a black-rimmed photo of another beautiful kid, or multiple young men, killed at 19, or 27. As the homepage emerges, we force ourselves to peek: Even a shot of Netanyahu’s oily visage is a relief; even a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) riot is better than another snapshot of a smiling face snuffed out before it developed a single wrinkle.
No new news
There is nothing in the news that is new: nothing to kick creativity into high gear. For interminable months now, despite expert opinions that this war could’ve been won and done a year ago, our finance minister is still steadfastly opposing a ceasefire.
Bezalel Smotrich, who knows dangerously little about finance, aches to resettle Gaza and create a country in which to welcome the Messiah. Smotrich, whose Religious Zionist Party consistently polls at under the electoral threshold and would not make it into the next government, is unmoved that our boys are reportedly breaking their own limbs to escape from Gaza, where some of them have served for more than 300 days.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, impossibly our security minister, was notoriously rejected by the army as unfit to serve. Deemed too unbalanced to fight, he, too, is relentlessly keeping our children and husbands in Gaza, fighting for his own messianic agenda and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political survival, and causing chaos for Israel’s image abroad.
But this is stale news. What can I add to the crescendo of criticism about this caricature of a man?
In an effort to move my mind past hostages and soldiers dying for the Netanyahu dynasty, I decided to visit my hairdresser to lift my gray mood with a bit of color on my gray roots.
Carelessly, I opened Oren’s aluminum door right onto my sandaled foot: The ensuing pain and bit of blood immediately sent my thoughts spiraling to bullets bashing into our wounded youngsters’ bodies; and the inevitable follow-up thought: How are our hostages still breathing?
Can’t we even stub a toe anymore without losing our minds?
Friends from abroad still check in, asking how we’re coping. I hesitate now, for how much longer can we moan that we are smashed? Can we repeat that we’re still running to shelters when sirens shriek, still feeling weak as the best of our next generation fall in a battle to keep a coalition intact, still watching in heart-stopping paralysis as that same coalition tramples on our democracy in the middle of their war?
Haredim are still sticking to their guns and refusing to carry guns; rampaging settlers are now attacking our soldiers, as well as Palestinian women and kids; and the eye-popping sight of our prime minister’s wife in luminous green getting involved in matters of state is a lunacy too far. It’s enough to tip us into madness. Yet none of this is new.
The civilian death toll in Gaza is mounting, but it’s not breaking news. Our leaders are spitting on the Supreme Court, but they have been for years. We feel lost in limbo; it’s beyond me to think of a new spin. Things keep falling apart, and the center cannot hold, but it’s all been said before.
Turning to the Talmud
So, as more mere anarchy is loosed upon our world, I go back to the sources to find solace. Perhaps by trawling the Talmud each day, I’ll find something to spark a thought. With that purpose, I jumped into a recent folio, Tractate Avodah Zarah 17, which introduces the uber-promiscuous Rabbi Elazar ben Durdayya, who patronized every working prostitute worldwide, until one inelegantly passed wind while earning her keep. There’s a moral to this astonishing tale – Rav E ben D’s soul soon whooshed into the World to Come – but so help me, I couldn’t see how to fit this into my column.
Still, leaving aside that this is what our cultists in black are studying while our soldier kids are struggling to prevent their souls from leaving their bodies, that self-same daf does gift us a startlingly relevant gem.
Rav Huna says: “Anyone who occupies himself with Torah study alone is considered like one who does not have a God.” Sitting unremittingly in a house of study is not godly, it appears. Surely, this is a juicy, original scoop? Rav Huna versus Rav Goldknopf: Which worldview condemns our bearded bochers (religious young men) to an eternity sans afterlife delights?
I considered this for a column, but I’m too wiped to work on rhetorical swirls. At present, it’s taking our last vestiges of strength simply to cling to our core values: to still stay proudly Jewish; to defend our rights to remain staunch Zionists despite the hijacking of the concept by our deranged government, which continually commits all manner of crimes in Zionism’s name.
Holding onto hope
In bleak moments, I give myself pep talks: “I chose to live here; my children and grandchildren are in the land of our ancestors. I enjoy Judaism, I enjoy not eating pork; I enjoy fasting on Yom Kippur. I like the davening, I get the beauty of Shabbat.” But what is going on in Israel is not Judaism; on every level, it is cult and it is dangerous.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir cannot dictate policy to our desperate leader, who knows that the end of the war almost certainly spells the end of his reign of pain. The sane majority of Israelis are not messianic; most do not believe that dying in Gaza is part of a redemptive plan. On the contrary, we abhor the thought that the Holy One, blessed be He, would dream of sacrificing our babies.
I am writing this on the day that our prime minister and his unusual wife left Washington, again with no statement of hope. Their son, who once more hitched a ride home to Miami, has returned to his high life, guarded by security personnel, funded by you and me. The Netanyahus delight in cozy-wozy presidential chats; they are in no hurry to bring anyone home – not the hostages, not our soldiers. It’s not new that this is messing up a whole country’s mental health; but it’s worth mentioning again, I guess.
I desperately hope that by the time this is published, it will all be out of date – that, happily, will be something new. May a ceasefire have been signed, our hostages home at last, our soldiers back in their classrooms and in our arms, and may the people of Israel be beginning to heal.
May elections be standing tiptoe on the misty mountaintops, heralding much gentler times. I dream of the day that we can wake from our dreams and not dread the daily news.
And then I will find endless new initiatives for optimistic columns. It’s a promise.
Pamela Peled lectures at the Reichman University. peledpam@gmail.com