A meme I received from a Jewish chat group captured it perfectly:
“To our enemies, I just want you to know, whatever you thought you were trying to accomplish, all you’ve done is make the Jewish people love each other more than they ever have in their entire lives.”
Before the attacks of October 7th, Israel was headed in an uncertain direction. A raucous debate over judicial reform was exposing deep rifts in visions for the future of the Jewish state.
The divisiveness was broadcast loudly and lead to months of mass protests, concerns of a constitutional crisis, even fears of violence. Outside of Israel, global Jewry, already on a slow path of splintering across religious and political lines, weighed in on all sides of the debate.
No doubt, Hamas saw this internal discord and sought to capitalize on it, figuring Israel was too fractured to offer a coherent response. They could not have been more wrong.
Hamas attacks Israel, sparks widespread unity
In an instant, the squabbles were dropped and the Jewish people united to meet the challenges of the day. The sleeping giant of the Jewish soul was awaken.
Activist groups that were organized to protest judicial reform repurposed themselves to organize myriads of volunteers and complex relief efforts. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been pitching in with everything from identifying the missing to arranging hospitality for the evacuated.
With the mass call up of reserve forces, volunteers are filling gaps such as milking cows and picking vegetables. Teenagers too – one hospital put out an urgent call for help at 10:00 p.m. when its cleaning staff couldn’t arrive. A youth group of 150 showed up at 6:00 a.m. the next morning to scrub.
Israelis from all over the world dropped everything to fly home and defend their country. A friend of mine asked his commander if he should return to Israel from the US to serve. No need, the commander replied, 130% of the called-up reserves already reported to duty. An anonymous Orthodox Jew stood by the El Al Airlines counter at JFK and bought tickets for anyone called up by the Israeli military, purchasing some 250 tickets in all.
One of the thorniest debates in Israel is between the ultra-Orthodox and secular populations regarding the typical ultra-Orthodox election of Torah study over military service. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox are now showing up at military recruitment centers to enlist; something previously unthinkable. With no time for combat training, those drafted are given jobs such as driving ambulances and making burial arrangements. Hassidic ultra-Orthodox Jews have been heading to evacuation centers to cheer secular Israelis with warm welcomes and joyous dances. These interactions often lead to hugs between groups that just weeks earlier had relationships better characterized by friction.
Outside of Israel, Jewish communities are assisting with matters both spiritual and mundane. Special prayer sessions are held regularly, days of fasting are being observed, and sermons are emphasizing the importance of increasing kind acts. Students at Yeshiva University launched a Global Day of Loving-Kindness in response to the Day of Rage declared by Hamas and Hezbollah.
Pro-Israel groups all over the world are organizing shipments of aid – bulletproof vests, flashlights, tourniquets – basically everything. Elementary school children are drawing cards with words of encouragement for Israel’s soldiers.
Support groups exchange thousands of messages daily with questions such as these: Can anyone take 17 duffel bags of supplies to Newark Airport this afternoon? Anyone have an inside track for bulk purchasing of kosher beef jerky for soldiers?
My daughter’s school assigned each student the name of an Israeli soldier to keep in their prayers. Although the names were assigned randomly from among hundreds of thousands, my daughter was matched to her cousin on the front lines.
Israel is one large family. If that lesson was forgotten, Hamas’s attack served as the ultimate reminder.
The feeling across many Jewish communities is that this outburst of unity must be a divinely-ordained correction of some sort for the earlier divisiveness. For some, this correction carries special significance. Rabbinic tradition teaches that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE because of Jewish disunity, leading to the forced exile of the Jews from their homeland.
Accordingly, a full rectification of this transgression requires widespread Jewish unity as the antidote. Only time will tell how long the current overwhelming feelings of Jewish togetherness will last, but at least as judged in the moment, I reckon we have made great strides along the path of rectification.
The writer is the chief investment officer of Geshem Partners, an Israel-focused investment firm based in the US.