We Can't Let Animosity Become Routine

Following one of the most tragic attacks on the people of Israel, no strangers to hostilities, today millions of Israelis are showering their soldiers with supplies, gifts and support.

People from all walks of life give of themselves, not asking who will receive their help. At times of crisis, personal beliefs and goals are replaced by an outpouring of kindness and the spirit of unity that brings people together.

The people of Israel now feel a wave of that unifying spirit. Their hearts expand to help and encourage each other. They share a mutual anger about the cruelty they just bore. Stories and scenes of heroism inspire, while those of bloodshed and anguish sadden.

This swell of emotions has melted the icy barriers dividing them before the tragic events on October 7, 2023, and they are now opening their hearts to each other.

While a unified spirit awakens in the people of Israel, it is important to plan for the future, using common sense and learning from history. Why? It is because if animosity again becomes routine, it will freeze over today’s warmth.

The present and future of this nation depends on today’s promises. First, we need to gain a better understanding of the central role of unity in our lives. Unity should not only be from the heart but also from a place of wisdom. Otherwise, if in the next moment resentment, anger or guilt surface in our hearts, our unity shatters.

We see such an example in the very founding of the people of Israel around 4,000 years ago. It was a period marked by self-aimed desires in humanity growing and driving people apart. Everyone saw others as threats to their own wishes.

But Abraham stopped and asked why.

He deeply observed the world and how our desires operate on us in a constant self-serving direction, and discovered a single sublime force dwelling in nature behind and beyond our fragmented selfish desires.

Using this force, he worked out how to direct our desires in a completely opposite direction — giving. He found that reaching an optimal harmonious life requires striving to emulate and to acquire a giving intention above inborn self-aimed desires, even though it goes against natural human instincts.

Those who felt affinity for Abraham’s teaching joined him. These were people from all around ancient Babylon who formed a society based on the idea of exercising and attaining the ability to give, love and positively connect above their innate divisive drives.

Accordingly, they discovered the most fundamental law of nature that exists when people connect in mutual giving to each other. That law became known as "Love your neighbor as yourself."

In other words, we are born as self-centered beings who aim to benefit ourselves at every moment, and we have the ability to reach the opposite: to love and care for others as we do to ourselves. By doing so, we enter into balance with nature’s most fundamental law — the key to a complete sense of peace, harmony and happiness.

Under Moses' leadership, this society became a nation at Mount Sinai. They made a lifelong pact of mutual support — a pact that continues to rescue and strengthen the people of Israel in times of need, just like today.

Since that time, we have faced many challenges. We have gone from strong unity to deep discord, and back again. But every time, the pact — the promise to stand together — lifted us up.

There was a time during the Second Temple when our disagreements were so fierce that we broke apart. The pact shattered and has never been the same, and leading up to the tragic events on October 7, there were again high tensions among the people of Israel.

Moving forward, our hopes rest on uniting above division. I hope that we become aware of our need to unite, and also that it is beyond our own nature to unite, but that we need to awaken the ability to unite from the more fundamental and all-encompassing nature above our own.

If our unity is detached from the unifying force in nature, then we would be just a group of people with a few manners and morals, trying to hide our brewing divisiveness within. Unfortunately, we see how the latter approach continually explodes in our faces.

I thus hope that the unifying spirit now filling the people of Israel will stay with us, and that we will not let the next dissenting upshot in our thoughts sweep it aside.

Instead, I hope we make a promise to stay united — adding the wisdom of unity to our emotions of unity — and request the strength for such unity to flourish and spread not just among the people of Israel, but among humanity.