Dear Anglo Israeli Voters

My experience since October 7th, which for us began with the savage murder of one of our son’s best friends at Nova, is that all our initial b’yachad n’natzeach hopes for the Hareidi community were not only dashed, the chasm has grown deeper and wider.

The tensions between the Hareidi community, representing roughly 18% of the country, and the other 82% of us—regardless of where we are on and social, political, or religious spectrum, have become dramatically, and dangerously worse.

In the days, weeks, and months following that nightmare Shabbat-Simchat Torah, many of our konseptziot, our long-held assumptions and rock-solid perspectives, lay smoldering on the ground like so many torched and bleeding homes in Beeri, Nachal Oz, and elsewhere. One of those konseptziot was that somehow we had reached a point in Jewish history where mutual contempt, hatred, and even being at the precipice of civil war, was no longer a threat to Am Yisrael. By the morning of the 8th, there was already a collective, wrenching gut sense that not only had our prolonged infighting thrilled and emboldened our enemies, but that seething Jew-vs-Jew enmity had again been exposed as our Achilles Heel.

We’re long past weighing and measuring the righteousness of anyone’s complaints about “the other side,” or trying to be fair and see both perspectives, because it no longer makes a difference how much truth is or isn’t fueling people’s rage. Because that’s where we’re at, widespread volatile rage has now become embedded in our collective psyche.

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know that we’re sitting on a rumbling volcano that can blow at any minute, and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)