This evening is Tisha B'av, the day in the Jewish calendar marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem some 2,500 and 2000 years ago. According to the rabbis, civll strife and needless hatred were among the causes of the destruction of the Second Temple.
This year, the observance of Tisha B’av is taking place during some very difficult days for Israel and the Jewish people, given the current judicial crisis and resulting civil demonstrations. Please see moving speech given by former Israeli Prime Minister and current Opposition Leader Yair Lapid a few days ago in the Knesset before the legislation was passed.
Let us all hope that some compromise can be achieved in our beloved Israel and that the spirit of unity and common purpose will be renewed in the days ahead.
Eli Rubenstein
Former Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid at the beginning of the Knesset debate on the judicial overhaul
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“Yesterday, I marched with tens of thousands of others on the road to Jerusalem. I marched and recalled what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said after he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery: he said, “I felt today that my legs were praying.”
Yesterday, our legs prayed for the State of Israel. For its unity. Its security. It was a happy march of sad people. They see how the government is destroying everything that’s sacred to them, and they’ve decided not to be silent.
I say to all those who marched throughout the weekend, and to those who came to Jerusalem today… your voice is heard. They’ll pretend they don’t care – but they do. They’ll pretend it won’t change anything – it changes everything.
Even if, heaven forbid, the repeal of the reasonableness clause passes tomorrow, they already know they’ve failed. The Government of Israel launched a war of attrition against the citizens of Israel, and discovered the people can’t be broken. We won’t give up on our children’s future.
This government wants to turn us into Hungary or Poland. We’re not Hungary and not Poland and we won’t be. Those are countries with anti-democratic histories. Israel was born a democracy, and its citizens have a democratic instinct.
That democratic instinct is the secret of our hi-tech economy, which is entirely built on people who think outside the box. And it is the secret of the IDF, an army in which even the last soldier in the unit knows if something doesn’t look right, he can say so.
This government, this law they’re trying to pass, and the laws they want to pass after it are built on them wanting citizens with blind loyalty. People who unthinkingly obey, clueless, faceless subjects.
That won’t happen. Yesterday, the kids marching sang “you’ve fallen on the wrong generation.” So did their parents. So did their grandparents. You’ve fallen on the wrong country.
I don’t know who thought, who is so disconnected that they believed, they could take this large, amazing public and tell them that from now on, they don’t live in a democracy… and to hope that would work — it won’t work. It’s doing precisely the opposite: it’s redefining the people of Israel.
We’ve remembered that we’re not ready to leave Judaism to the extremists. They won’t tell us what’s Jewish and what’s not. The Bible is ours as well. The Shabbat table is ours as well. Jewish history and tradition is ours as well. The great, amazing cultural richness of Jewish history and thought is ours as well.
The job of a Jew in the world is to give himself to God. Not to use God. Not to launch a war between Jewish men and women, between gay and straight Jews, between Jews and non-Jews, all in the name of God.
This government is trying to present this battle as one between the periphery and the center. The periphery has answered that claim. For 29 weeks, the periphery has responded through protests in Beer Sheva, Ashdod, the Gaza border region, Karmiel, and Hatzor HaGlilit.
Yesterday, the periphery marched with the center. It’s legs also prayed. They said: “we’re together. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved up until today, we’re proud of how far we’ve come, and we choose to build Israel’s future together.
Yes, there were many years of deprivation, there is still inequality, there are still gaps, but we don’t want to argue about it, we want to fix it together.
We’ve remembered that people know how to talk about facts and complex ideas, and to deal with the poisonous machine of fake news. People have taught themselves, and others, about the reasonableness clause, the judicial selection committee, and the complex mechanics and gears of democracy.
This government counted on ignorance, there is no ignorance. This government counted on people not going to check the facts, and the people turned facts into their strongest weapon. This government thinks if it shouts at us loudly, crudely, and violently, we’ll panic and be silenced. We won’t panic and we won’t be silenced.
We’ve remembered, and we’ve reminded the political system: the government’s job is to work. Not to shout and fight all day. It's job is to wake up in the morning and go deal with the economy, personal security, mortgages, Hezbollah, the education system, and our relations with the US.
Above all else, Israeli society, the Israeli majority, remembered and told itself “we’re not puppets. We’re not just numbers. We’re the people who work and serve and we’re not prepared to let anyone bulldoze our values.”
We want to live in a Jewish and democratic state; and we wanted to live in a positive, optimistic country. To preserve our relations with the world, to preserve the entrepreneurial spirit of the start-up nation and the IDF as a people’s army, and to remember our enemies are external, not here at home. Hate isn’t a way of life, and certainly not a form of government.
We didn’t march yesterday to declare war, but to prevent one. To tell the government, if you still have any sense of fairness, stop. If you meant a single word you’ve said about national unity, stop.
If you stop, we’re here. We talked at the President’s Residence. The doors there are open, waiting for us all. Waiting for us to come back and talk to prevent a disaster. To prevent collapse. To prevent an extreme minority from seizing control of the lives of the Israeli majority.
I want to tell the Government of Israel, from this podium, we don’t want to defeat you on this, because then we all lose. The truth is everyone wants a compromise, but nobody knows how to reach one or what it’ll look like.
There’s only one way to find out: to keep trying. To stop the legislation. To go to the President’s Residence. Our legs will pray the whole way there. We need to go there and argue, fight, and speak again and again and not stop trying, because Israel’s fate depends on it. Thank you.”
