When we left the protection of the sukkah - opinion

God’s judgment is beyond man’s comprehension. We do not know why events happen, especially when good things happen to bad people, and even more confusing, when bad things happen to good people. Any presumption of knowledge of God’s judgment is arrogant and ignorant. All too often people, even Torah scholars, state with authority that a specific tragedy occurred because Jews were violating a specific sin. These pronouncements always strike me as difficult because only God knows why a tragedy occurred and without prophecy, how do these people know why God allowed certain tragedies to occur?

That being said, our Rabbis taught us that the proper response to tragedy is to introspect and seek areas of improvement. 

There is value in using the heightened emotional state that tragedy brings to improve ourselves. I want to state clearly, pointing out areas of improvement during this time does not equate to a statement of cause and effect, it is merely a prescription of improvement.

Please do not jump to a conclusion and assume I am saying that I know, presume, or am even guessing what has caused this horrific tragedy to occur. I am not. There is a difference between stating a tragedy occurred or is occurring because of a specific sin and saying that amid a tragedy we need to look for areas to improve. I am suggesting the latter.

The past year has seen the Jewish people, especially in Israel, painfully divided. Whether the disagreements centered around judicial reform, settlements, or religious observance in public life, the differences among the Jewish people led to divisions. While Israel proudly boasted demonstrations without violence or rioting, those were low bars to set for a nation that prides itself on unity. Our people watched as the nation split into two, with the cracks widening and the divisions worsening. Civility and respect were hard to find, and yelling, insulting, and vilifying became the norm.

The divisions came to a head with the harsh pictures of Jew vs Jew on the Jewish people’s most sacred day, Yom Kippur. A prayer service that was always a moment of proud unity, where Jews of all stripes, practices, and beliefs, came together as one to beseech God as the day closed, turned into a moment of division. Jews stood in each other’s faces, yelled horrible insults at each other, and in the waning moments of the day, as the gates of heaven closed, stood against, instead of with, each other. It is hard to imagine a more horrific end to Yom Kippur.

Five days later, the nation celebrated Sukkot, a festival meant to commemorate God’s protection of the Jewish people. The Jews spent 40 years in the desert, and during that time they lived in flimsy booths, reminiscent of the flimsiest of today’s Sukkot, while a Divine cloud surrounded and protected them. The Jewish people sit in sukkot today, in a rejuvenated Jewish state feeling Divine protection at levels they haven’t felt since King Solomon’s days.

A lesson about God and the Jewish people

THEN IT ended. As the Jewish people left the Sukkah, and finished commemorating God’s protection, we were attacked. Much like when Aaron the Chief Cohen died, and the clouds left the Jews in the desert, their enemies immediately attacked, so too, when the Jews left their Sukkot this year, Israel’s enemy, Hamas, attacked.

There is a well-known lesson taught about God and the Jewish people. It teaches that God expects the Jewish people to be united, and when they are, God takes care of those looking to divide the Jewish people. But when the Jewish people are divided, God uses those aiming to hurt the Jewish people to bring the Jewish people together in unity. Instead of uniting in brotherhood and celebration, the people unite in pain and mourning.

It is hard not to see that lesson coming to fruition today. The Jewish people had every reason to use this year to unite in celebration. They had just started the 75th year of sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael. The nation wasn’t just surviving, it was thriving. Peace with enemies had just occurred and more peace was promising. Yet, instead of celebrating in unity, the Jewish people fought in division. Respect between Jews eroded and the atmosphere in Jewish communities in Israel and the diaspora was poisoned.

There is a tendency in today’s partisan atmosphere for people to extricate one idea from an entire thread of thought, isolate it, enlarge it, take it out of context and harshly criticize the author for extremist views the author neither intended, nor would an honest critique of their writings bear out. That will be easy to do here in a column discussing God and horrific events. I ask you, the reader, to read my writing carefully, see the nuance that I am employing, and don’t jump to conclude I’m suggesting I know the reason for these tragedies – I don’t. I am merely suggesting our people look inward and put more effort into uniting.

As we suffer the worst tragedies we’ve experienced as a people in decades, it behooves us to look inward and introspect. We must examine our actions for areas of improvement. I want to state clearly, pointing out areas of improvement during this time does not equate to a statement of cause and effect, it is merely a prescription of improvement. Some areas that need improvement that seem to be glaringly absent among the Jewish people today is unity, civility, and love of fellow Jews, even, and most importantly, with those we disagree with in divisive issues.

The writer is a senior educator at numerous educational institutions. He is the author of three books and teaches Torah, Zionism, and Israeli studies around the world.