In moments of real danger, Jewish history reminds us that survival requires both strength against our enemies and responsibility toward one another.

The story of Purim that we are living through right now affirms the necessity of self-defense. When the decree against the Jews could not be undone, the Jews were granted the right to defend themselves. The Megillah does not romanticize vulnerability. It recognizes that when a people faces an enemy who seeks its destruction, courage and self-protection are moral necessities.

Yet even in that moment of justified defense, the deeper drama of Purim is not only about defeating an enemy, but about how a people holds itself together in the face of danger.

Jewish history offers a sobering warning.

The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE did not come only from Roman power. The sages teach that while the First Temple fell because of idolatry, violence, and corruption, the Second Temple was destroyed despite Torah study and acts of kindness because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred among Jews.

Today that baseless hatred can take the form of factionalism, arrogance, and ideological rigidity, fracturing Jewish society from within. Our inability to see one another as part of the same covenantal people becomes our greatest vulnerability. It was not only Rome that destroyed Jerusalem. We weakened ourselves first.

We weaken ourselves when we fail to make room for the full expression of Jewish values and ideals. We see troubling signs of this erosion in political and religious extremism, in hostility directed at other Jews from both the right and the left in Israel and abroad, and in Jewish voices that echo anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric.

One example that reverberates far beyond Israeli politics is the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the pluralistic prayer space at Robinson’s Arch, the section of the Western Wall designated for non-Orthodox prayer, along the remaining stones of the Temple complex destroyed in 70 CE. 

Ironically, at the very place where Jewish history once shattered, a sacred site that preserves the broken stones of our past, the question of whether the Jewish state can make room for the diversity of Jewish prayer carries enormous symbolic weight. When Jewish pluralism is narrowed rather than embraced, the fragile fabric of peoplehood strains.

As a committed Jew, though not an Orthodox one, I have prayed both at the Western Wall and at Robinson’s Arch. Over the years I have experienced sacred and profound moments in both places. Yet only at Robinson’s Arch have I been able to celebrate lifecycle moments and participate in fully inclusive prayer with my community in safety, without fear of disruption from fellow Jews who do not share or understand egalitarian practice. The existence of such a space is not a threat to Jewish tradition. It is simply an acknowledgment that the Jewish people have always contained many ways of standing before God.

Moments like these remind us how fragile the bonds of Jewish peoplehood can be. Yet our tradition does not leave us only with warning. Especially at fraught crossroads in Jewish history, it also offers a path forward.

In this week’s Torah portion, God reveals the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy to Moses after the sin of the Golden Calf: compassion, patience, forgiveness, and loving-kindness. These attributes are not only descriptions of God. They are also a model for how human beings are meant to behave toward one another.

The rabbis taught that when Israel acts according to these qualities, divine compassion is awakened. Even in the midst of war, perhaps especially so, we cannot forget our mandate to live in reflection of these divine attributes.

If sinat chinam helped bring about destruction, then living by these attributes offers its repair.

The story of the tablets reflects this truth. When Moses shattered the tablets after the sin of the Golden Calf, the broken pieces were not discarded. The rabbis teach that the shattered tablets were placed in the Ark alongside the whole ones.

Jewish memory does not erase brokenness. It carries it while continuing to move forward.

Rav Abraham Isaac Kook captured this hope when reflecting on the teaching that the Second Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred:

“If we were destroyed, and the world with us, due to baseless hatred, then we shall rebuild ourselves, and the world with us, with baseless love.” Orot HaKodesh III, 324.

Perhaps that is the deeper task of this moment: not to deny the fractures within the Jewish people, but to respond to them with the qualities our tradition places before us—dialogue, compassion, patience, forgiveness, and kindness.

The question we must ask ourselves is how we move from the shattered tablets to the creation of new ones. What use is there in standing at the foot of the mountain, staring at what is broken? Worse still would be to become those who cannot be bothered to look. Like Moses, our task is to climb the mountain again and claim the new tablets that await us.

If we can learn to see one another across denominations, across politics, and across the many ways Jews live their covenant, then perhaps, when the time is right, we can begin to transform a moment of fracture into a moment of renewal. And in doing so, we may yet ensure that the next chapter of Jewish history is written not in fracture, but in strength—within our people no less than against those who threaten us.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)