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Healing the Rift

with an Ayin Tova

Rabbi Dr. Alan Kimche

S eventy-five years ago, as the State of Israel was are creating their own brand of secular subculture, with

about a quarter of them living in the no-man’s-land of
about to be declared, one of the most hotly dis-
puted issues was whether to include the name
being Israeli but not halachically Jewish.
of G-d in the Declaration of Independence. No
compromise seemed possible. The secular delegates These tensions are greatly exacerbated by demographic
trends. Religious communities are, predictably, growing
wouldn’t sign if it was included, while their religious at very much faster rates than their secular neighbors,
counterparts wouldn’t sign if it was omitted. The two who tend to marry later, less often, and have fewer
groups, both celebrating the birth of the new Jewish children. By 2050 it is projected that more than 50%
state, held radically different views concerning the sig- of first-graders in Israeli elementary schools will be
nificance and orientation of their momentous joint proj- religious. Naturally, such trends cause great anxiety
ect. Ultimately, the signers agreed upon an ingenious among secular Israelis, fueling anger about the future
solution. The declaration of the State of Israel would use character and composition of their state.
the phrase “placing our trust in Tzur Yisrael (the Rock of
Israel),” an ambiguous, symbolic phrase that was open Yet with all these tensions, I believe that mutual rap-
to a multiplicity of interpretations. prochement and collaboration is possible. Amid all the
difficulties, a few signs of optimism shine through. In
This clash was a dark portend of the unstable nature particular, two recent public speeches gave me hope for
of the State of Israel, in which a potentially explosive the possibility of reconciliation within Israeli society.
religious-secular divide was hardwired into it from
its very inception. While this inner tension has been Yoav Galant, a decorated military general and current
simmering ever since, we are currently witnessing an Minister of Defense, gave a poignant speech when
almost unprecedented outburst of interdenominational elected to the current government. Himself a non-reli-
conflict. gious Israeli, he acknowledged that it was only because
of the tenacity of Orthodox Jews over two millennia of
Today, many secular Israelis view the essence of their exile, who held firm to the Torah and prayed three times
identity as secular rather than Jewish, and stridently a day while facing Jerusalem, that we have a state at all.
reject the encroachment of religiosity into the public and In his eyes, it was the Torah, the Talmud, the siddur, and
private spheres. At the same time, religious communities the traditional rabbinic leadership that preserved the
have grown significantly in number, with many sectors Jewish people, providing them with a national anchor
utilizing their newfound electoral power to become which miraculously preserved them throughout cen-
more assertive and dogmatic. And finally, in the middle, turies of persecution in the Diaspora. Every one of us,
over a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union he argued, can trace our ancestry to Jews who lived

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