Over the past few months, we watched things happen in this campaign that should trouble every one of us, whichever ballot we dropped in the box. Candidates were cursed at and physically attacked. Some received death threats. Their spouses and children were harassed.
Some were hit with financial sanctions and threats from activists in rival parties who already hold positions of power and were willing to use them. Volunteers who gave up their evenings to staff campaign stands in cities and towns across the country were insulted and assaulted. Some of those stands were burned.
Months before the vote, President Isaac Herzog reminded Israelis that an election is not a civil war, and he begged politicians and activists to keep their rivals from becoming their enemies. Too many people ignored him.
Seeing the elections from a different perspective
I spent the week before the election somewhere that put all of this in perspective. I was in Poland.
I’ve been to Poland about a dozen times over the years, for all sorts of reasons, but I hadn’t been back in more than 15 years. This trip hit me differently. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s the work I do now. Maybe it’s that I’m a grandfather. And more than anything, October 7.
We had two Holocaust survivors with us, as well as a survivor of the massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7. While we were in Birkenau, one of the Holocaust survivors, a woman named Marion, spent an hour telling us what she had lived through in the barracks of Birkenau.
Raz Raviv, the survivor of the Nova massacre, spoke with Tova and Marion, and described what happened to him, how he ran for his life on that terrible morning. When he finished, the three of them held each other.
Two people who survived Adolf Hitler and one who survived Hamas, embracing in Birkenau.
I have never felt a deeper or more beautiful sense of what it means to be a Jew than I did in that moment. There is a video of it, and I’d encourage anyone to watch it.
That embrace is what I keep coming back to as I look at the country after this campaign.
Our enemies around the world love it when we are divided. They love it when we fight each other and sling mud at each other. Every clip of a burned campaign stand or a candidate being shoved is a gift to the people who want to see us fall.
Elections are hard everywhere. It doesn’t matter how strong a democracy is – campaigns bring out the worst in people. Israel is a passionate country, and that passion is part of what keeps our democracy alive. We all deserve to have our voices heard, and every one of us should speak up for what we believe.
But we have to relearn how to do it with respect and consideration for the person on the other side of the argument. That person is your neighbor, the reservist who served alongside your son, the family sitting near you in shul.
Any parent will tell you there’s no pain like watching your own children fight with each other. God is the same way. Again and again throughout our tradition, God speaks about the Jewish people fighting among ourselves, and about the terrible things that follow.
Our sages taught that the Second Temple fell because of baseless hatred. We know where that road leads. We’ve walked it before.
Taking the lessons for the day after
What do we do the day after?
We rally. We rally around God, around each other, around the Jewish people. We take the lessons of the Holocaust and of October 7 to heart, and the greatest of those lessons is that our strength lies in our unity.
The last three years have emboldened our enemies. They think they have us on the ropes. They’re wrong.
We are strong. We are incredible. We fought so valiantly these last three years; our soldiers, our reservists, our families, our volunteers, and the whole world saw what the Jewish people are made of. Let’s take that momentum and carry it forward together.
I want to make a plea, as plainly as I can. To everyone involved in Israel’s political system, to every Jewish leader in this country, to every Jew in Israel: the campaign is behind us. Let’s figure out how we come together, grow together, be together, and work together. Whoever ends up in the coalition and whoever ends up in the opposition, we remain one family.
Two Holocaust survivors and a Nova survivor found each other in Birkenau. Surely we can find each other in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Sderot, and Bnei Brak.
Am Yisrael Chai.
The writer is the International CEO of Aish, a global Jewish educational movement. He formerly served as Eastern Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he oversaw the Museum of Tolerance in New York City. You can find out more about Rabbi Burg at Rabbiburg.com