Are Irreconcilable differences stopping Israel from healing societal fracture? - opinion

The soldiers were not armed. They were not provocative; they were reportedly dressed modestly. They were simply soldiers, young women serving the Jewish state.

And they were hunted.

I have spent much of my life preaching ahdut – unity. Am echad b’lev echad: one people with one heart.

I have written about tolerance, about nuance, about the dignity of difference.

I have given classes quoting our sages on machloket l’shem shamayim (disagreement for the sake of heaven) and urged my communities to hold complexity rather than fracture into tribes.

But this time, something inside me cracked.

Because when Jewish soldiers defending Jewish lives are chased by Jews, something foundational feels broken.

And I am ashamed to admit it, but my instinct was not to reach out and build bridges. It was to detach.

To say: They are not my people.

They do not see me as a brother, so why should I see them as mine?

For the first time, I felt the words forming in my heart: perhaps we need a divorce.

Not metaphorical disagreement. Not strained coexistence.

A divorce.

“Irreconcilable differences,” as they say in civil courts.

And I imagined standing before the Court of Heaven and filing the divorce papers.

What disturbs me most is not only what happened in Bnei Brak. It is what happened inside me.

If I can no longer preach unity with integrity, what does that say about me?

If ahdut only holds when it is comfortable, then it was never ahdut.

But let us not pretend this is easy.

To attack soldiers, especially unarmed female soldiers, is not abstract ideology: It is visceral rejection.

It feels like repudiation: like a redline has been crossed from which there is no return.

And so I ask myself: Is unity still a virtue when one side appears to reject the very terms of shared existence?

My wise old boss once told me, “You can’t reason with unreasonable people, so don’t try.”

There is a brutal clarity to that sentence. Dialogue presumes a shared moral grammar. What if that grammar no longer exists?

What would our giants say?

In moments like this, I find myself reaching backward.

What would my rebbe, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, have said?

Rabbi Sacks wrote that the supreme challenge of Judaism in the modern age is “to live with difference, without violence.” He did not romanticize difference. He saw its friction. But he believed that covenant binds even when consensus fails.

He warned that when we allow our internal divisions to become existential, we replay the tragedy of the Second  Temple: sinat hinam (baseless hatred) metastasizing into national collapse.

But Rabbi Sacks also insisted on moral clarity. Tolerance does not mean moral relativism. A society must defend its core institutions.

So, what would he advise here?

Perhaps this: condemn the behavior unequivocally, but refuse to amputate the limb.

Rav Abraham Isaac Kook would likely go even further.

He saw hidden holiness even in secular Zionists who rejected Torah. How much more so would he search for sparks of sanctity within haredi Jews, however fiercely he might disagree with their methods?

Rav Kook believed that Jewish unity is not tactical, but fundamental. We are bound not because we agree, but because we share a soul.

And yet, he also lived in a time when Jews threw stones at one another in Jerusalem’s streets. He knew the pain of ideological warfare. He did not deny the ugliness.

Let me speak plainly.

There is a growing segment of religious Zionist and traditional Israeli society that feels alienated from parts of the Haredi world. The military burden is uneven. The rhetoric from certain rabbinic leaders is dismissive or even hostile.

The street protests sometimes feel aggressive rather than principled.

It is tempting to redraw the boundaries of Klal Yisrael (the community of Israel). To say: you have opted out, so we release you – bye bye.

But history warns us where internal divorces lead.

The Sadducees and Pharisees once split Jewish society.

Zealots and moderates turned Jerusalem into a battlefield long before the Romans arrived. Each faction was convinced that the other had forfeited legitimacy.

The Romans did not need to defeat a united nation: They merely needed to wait and watch while we tore ourselves apart.

I do not write this to equate today’s tensions with the Hurban (destruction of the Temple) – not yet. But I do feel the tremor.

Anger can be holy.

The prophets raged against injustice. Moses shattered the tablets. Pinchas acted with zeal.

But none of them filed for divorce from the Jewish people.

There is a difference between condemning behavior and disowning a portion of the people.

When I say “they are not my brothers,” I may feel momentary relief. But I am also tearing at the covenant that binds us across centuries.

The tragedy is not that we disagree: it is that we increasingly doubt we belong to one another at all.

So what do we do?

I do not have easy answers.

Dialogue may indeed feel futile in certain moments. Law enforcement must act. Political leadership must be clear. Violence and harassment must be confronted without hesitation.

But on a deeper level, we must guard our own souls from calcifying.

If I allow myself to believe that millions of fellow Jews are no longer part of Klal Yisrael, I have surrendered something sacred, even if I can justify it emotionally.

Perhaps the work now is smaller and harder.

To distinguish between a violent mob and an entire community. To insist on responsibility without erasing belonging. To say: I am furious. I am hurt. I feel betrayed.

But I will not walk away from the Jewish people – and I will not send away a part of the Jewish people.

The truth is, divorce is not really an option. Divorce implies that the relationship was something we chose in the first place. It was not.

We did not become one nation at Sinai because we agreed on sociology. We stood together because we were bound by destiny.

I am still at a loss. My preaching about unity feels more fragile than ever. Ahdut is no longer a slogan I can toss lightly into a sermon or a lesson. It now feels like an almost unbearable discipline.

But perhaps that is precisely what it is meant to be.

Unity is not the absence of fracture – it is the refusal to abandon one another in the fracture.

I still feel the urge to walk into the Court of Heaven and file my divorce papers. But for now, I am holding them in my hand, unsigned.

And praying that we find a way not to need them.