In this year's Jewish calendar, we have reached the fast of Tisha Be Av. We have realized in these long and exhausting months that everything we thought we knew is much worse, more complex, more cruel, and more distorted than what we were already struggling to conceptualize before October 7. And it is precisely this feeling of existential threat to the State of Israel as a whole and to Jewish communities around the world for the consequences that dramatically impact the reality in which we live that gives the feeling of gravity to this eve of Tisha Be Av. As if the entire narrative handed down and that we have always read in the Book of Eichà had materialized before our eyes, but instead of reading, we are watching it live.
Obviously shocked because history is not just history but revenge and millennial hatred that repeat themselves. The siege of Jerusalem is the siege of the Iranian threat, and it is clear that the suffocating question is that of the still unknown epilogue: will we make it? On whom exactly does it depend? What can and must we do? We are not mere spectators of what is happening in Israel and against Israel, nor do I believe that we are only concerned with the consequences—which reach us here on the media wave—of the threat to security and the distortion and antisemitic hatred that lends itself to new clarifications (first of all, what Zionism is and how much the demonization and Nazification of Israel is antisemitism).
To us, it seems insurmountable and like an untamable fire. We live on two parallel lines: one concerns our daily lives with our tiny but tiring challenges, personal, family, and daily efforts and joys; the other concerns the massacre of October 7, the shock, the pain, the overturning of every truth, the denial, and the dementia that rages in every international body. But these two parallel lines meet from time to time because the world is small and Israel is small, and often the wounded, the murdered, the hostages, the displaced, and the raped women are our children, sisters, family, and friends. But above all, it is a moral and institutional duty not to remain indifferent despite—or perhaps precisely because—the moral dilemmas are lacerating.
We are Jews and part of Jewish communities and institutions, and this war also depends on us, on the appeals we make to the people who make crucial decisions in the hours and days that seem endless, to be a nation, to be a united people who defend themselves but also defend Jewish values, to the material and concrete support that in our small way we manage to give for the hope of life that we try to convey.
For us, the duty of life—saving lives and reminding the world that this is what Israel is trying to do—is the warning. We respond to the culture of death and the plan of extermination with life. Reminding those who govern that Jewish values permeate the Jewish State in which everyone can find themselves together to live together; and must contribute to the development and survival of the country. While the cruelty and voracity of the enemy are evident to us and we also fight to make the madness understood by the madmen who crowd the squares, universities, and parliamentary assemblies, while we understand the cunning and the ability to abuse our democratic principles to assert instances that sow violence and hatred and we shout ourselves hoarse to make them clear and obvious to those who repeat unworkable slogans, what Tisha Be Av invites us to do is to focus on our interior.
Understanding that internal divisions and lacerations become points of breach and weakness means that we must and can focus our attention and our commitment. It is not easy to make decisions, and we certainly do not think of setting ourselves up as experts and wise men. On the contrary, we recognize the merit of those who dedicate themselves to leading in such hard times to save lives, souls, and spirits, to offer smiles, to provide relief and support in a thousand ways—but since the external enemy that besieges Israel and the Jewish people has been identified, for us the decisions are those of small moments and expressions: choosing to remain united, seeing and wanting the good, desiring coexistence.
The war and the rekindled secular evil cannot be turned off with a button, and what is sought now is not the illusion of peace blessed by international leaders but the barrier and protection of an entire population that lives in Israel, and for those who live in Gaza, and perhaps also in Lebanon, the liberation from the siege of terrorist groups that has lasted for over 20 years.
Let us pray and hope that the siege announced by Iran and Lebanon will not transform Tisha Be Av into yom muad le-puraanut (an auspicious day of persecution and revenge), nor will the worsening of the attacks come true in the coming days. Let us pray for miracles and prepare ourselves with our military knowledge and with our ability to be civilization at its best. It will be a long night of lamentations followed by prayers and hopes, a long fast that also reflects today's suffering.
This editorial was originally published in Italian in Moked.
