Grapevine October 11, 2024: For the sins of...

Tonight at Kol Nidrei services for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Jews around the world will recite a long collective confession of their sins several times throughout the service.

At a Slihot (Penitential Prayers) service that  President Isaac Herzog and his wife Michal hosted at the President’s Residence on Tuesday night, he said that he had often wondered why the confession (in Hebrew) is in the plural form but had come to realize that it is the highest expression of mutual responsibility that Jews have for each other.

The Herzogs, who interrupted a three-day tour of 26 towns, villages, kibbutzim, and moshavim in the Gaza envelope which had been directly affected by the event of October 7, returned to Jerusalem for the slihot event after joining with residents of the South in remembering and mourning lost loved ones, members, and neighbors. In addition to honoring the memories of the dead, they came to praise and encourage the resilience of the living and to spread some light about hopes for the future.

Back in Jerusalem, the air still hung heavy with the cost in human life, the urgent need to bring home the hostages still languishing in Gaza after more than a year and the need to restore unity to the nation.

The slihot were held in conjunction with 929, an initiative headed by Rabbi Benny Lau, which five days a week brings together people of different backgrounds and different levels of Jewish observance to study a chapter of the Bible. The Bible has 929 chapters which inspired the name of the initiative. In a sense, the name is also a symbol of unity in that  the figure nine,”9,” with a closed circle at the top, and an opening at the bottom indicates protection of tradition, yet openness to dialogue, and the figure two “2” is the link to dialogue. Moreover, two nines add up to 18 which in gematria totals chai, the Hebrew word for life.

Remembering the fallen

Among the audience were parents and other family members of people murdered by Hamas or killed on the battlefield. Among them was the family of 929’s former CEO Moshe Ohayon, who together with his son Eliad was killed on October 7 as they fought valiantly to defend Ofakim from the Hamas onslaught. Also present, though already out of office for a year, was former President of the Supreme Court Esther Hayut.

The heroism of both Moshe and Eliad Haroush will be honored at a state ceremony at the President’s Residence on October 30, when their family will receive medals for civilian heroism on their behalf..

Prior to the actual prayers, appropriate songs were sung by a soul-stirring ensemble of singers and musicians led by Yagel Haroush who is also a composer. The melodies ranged from North African to Ashkenazi with a little Shlomo Carlebach and Leonard Cohen thrown in for good measure.

Herzog read out a confession in plural form, which was considerably briefer than what will be read in synagogues tonight, but which was definitely meaningful and listed the sins of conceit, lack of sensitivity, failure to listen to each other, incitement of hatred and hostility among ourselves, alienation of the other and of different groups, isolating people, closing our eyes to internal and external challenges, seeing only the bad in others and losing the right path. Despite these and other sins, Herzog found a lot in which Israel could take pride.

There were several references to defense and security throughout the evening. Lau, the son of a Holocaust survivor, recalled how there were tears in his late father’s eyes, the first time that he saw him in his army uniform. One of Lau’s sons, who is currently in the army, telephoned him to say that he was fighting in the North. With all the things that a father wants to say to his son under such circumstances, Lau cast his mind back to his family’s history and the history of Jews in general and told his son that he was fighting for generations of his people who did not have the privilege of fighting as soldiers in an Israeli army.

On the following day, Herzog was back in the South to wind up the tour of remembrance.

Chabad rubs elbows with Trump

■ It's quite remarkable how Chabad succeeds in developing close relationships with top-ranking politicians. A most vivid example of this was seen on October 7 when past and would-be future president Donald Trump, prior to his later appearance in Miami that day, first went to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, where he placed a note calling for the return of the hostages. The Miami event was also a Jewish one. It’s hard to tell whether Trump is simply courting the Jewish vote or whether he is concerned about the safety of his Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren in an America which will have to be less antisemitic if it wants to be great again.

Due to the dangerous hurricanes sweeping across the state of Florida, Trump was somewhat hesitant about going from New York to Miami, and called his mega donor Miriam Adelson to suggest that perhaps he wouldn’t come. But Adelson, who had organized the event, was adamant that he must attend. Speaking later to his Miami audience, Trump acknowledged that it was difficult for him to “say no to Miriam,’ who he said, is a very special woman.

Love has been lost

■ Prior to the terror attack in Hadera on Wednesday, the two main topics of conversation on the airwaves were the PM’s ego superseding national security interests, and the deliberate targeting of Arabs by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his use of illegal means to do so. It was well publicized that just hours before Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was due to fly to the United States for important meetings at the Pentagon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled the visit and said it would not take place until he received a call from US President Joe Biden – which as it happened, was not long in coming. In past years, Biden said of Bibi “I love that man even though we disagree politically.” Judging by the cold-shouldering over the past year, it is painfully obvious that this love has waned. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, imagine the comparison with Netanyahu. In an early morning broadcast on Wednesday, Avigdor Liberman, who has served as foreign minister and defense minister in Netanyahu-led governments, said that it was the old story. “Netanyahu always puts his ego ahead of state security.” As for Ben-Gvir, his publishing of photographs of a young Arab woman with her hands in chains, whose “crime” was making the mistake of dancing on October 7, and posting herself in action on social media. Ben-Gvir is convinced that she is a Hamas supporter. And before she had a chance to defend herself, he posted her photograph on his own social media account.

Radio journalists were aghast at such a breach of law and went on to speak about other things that Ben-Gvir has done that not only endangers Israel’s democracy but also Israel’s security.

Battle for security

The volume of literature that has been written and published in numerous languages since October 7, 2023, defies the imagination. Some people might ask why write such a book when the war is still raging and the hostages remain in captivity, Seth Frantzman, one of the first authors of such a book in English acknowledged. Frantzman is no newcomer to territorial and other conflicts in which many lives have been lost. He was in Israel as a university student during the Second Intifada and has written about almost every conflict since then, albeit more as a journalist than as an author.

Yet because of all the confusion and controversy that accompanied that bestial day in the calendar, and because he actually entered Gaza on the afternoon of that day and its aftermath and had spoken to soldiers, medical first responders, survivors, displaced persons and many other people, he felt a need to put it all into a book. The result is The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza.

The book is going through a series of launches, and on Wednesday of this week, it attracted a full house in one of the large meeting rooms in the Begin Center. Frantzman gave a brief talk about what prompted him to write the book and roughly how its content is divided into three parts. He then sat down for a conversation with JNS journalist Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, who is a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem. The two discussed the intelligence failure, the fact that Israel underestimated Hamas and became too complacent, the threat posed by Iran and other related issues to a very attentive audience. Some book launches are embarrassing at the end because no one raises a hand to ask a question. In this case, the opposite was true. Hands were raised again and again as people had questions about the possibility of ever eliminating Hamas; whether there will be peace; how and why Israel had trusted Qatar, which clearly is a supporter of Hamas, the real power of Iran, and many other queries.

Frantzman did not allow himself to be dragged into making predictions. He’s much too experienced for that and knows that in this part of the world, anything can happen any minute to effect radical change. October 7 was certainly evidence of that.

May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life and Peace.