The Struggle to Build a Loving, Accepting, and Ethical Israel
A classmate recently snapped a photo of a billboard promoting Israel’s right-wing Yachad party that read: “So there won’t be a child with a father and a father!”
A classmate recently snapped a photo of a billboard promoting Israel’s right-wing Yachad party that read: “So there won’t be a child with a father and a father!”
After this long 500-day journey, it is a relief to finally have a government. Is it the government of our dreams? Absolutely not. But it is, hopefully, a functioning government.
This week, as we read the call to proclaim liberty throughout the land, as those in the Land begin to emerge from isolation, our freedoms are still limited. It is up to us to use this moment as a reset, a Jubilee, a chance to re-evaluate what we should hold dearest. To ensure that we are truly free, we must actualize the freedom of all the inhabitants of the Land.
We at the Israel Religious Action Center are eternal optimists.
During this time of social isolation, when we cannot physically be together, we are continuing to think about and plan for the day after.
As a family mediator and the parent of four children, I have found comfort and logic in the kibbutz response to this crisis – a laser focus on the responsibility to its members.
I’ve highlighted some poets and poems that speak to me for the moment we are in, but I encourage you, too, to poke around on your own from among Israeli writers and find what resonates with you.
With all of the stress, anxiety, and potential panic that this moment in time brings, may new of these political developments offer us a small silver lining with which to find and grasp a glimmer of hope.
With Netanyahu still in power, issues of religious pluralism, equality, and civil marriage will likely take a backseat, leaving the power of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate firmly in place and leaving little hope for progressive change.