There are moments when a community must stop consoling itself with its own vocabulary.

Israel has become very skilled at speaking the language of unity, sacrifice, security, mourning, resilience, destiny, and survival. These words are not false. That is precisely why they are dangerous. Falsehood collapses quickly. True words can be abused for a long time.

A state may ask its citizens for sacrifice. Israel, of all places, knows this. It may ask young people to serve, families to live with fear, reservists to return again and again to the edge of exhaustion, and the bereaved to stand in cemeteries while politicians speak of national responsibility. It may ask a people to carry an unbearable history without turning that history into paralysis. But a state cannot ask some citizens for blood while allowing others to negotiate exemption as political currency.

That is not Judaism. That is not solidarity. That is not covenant. It is administrative idolatry wrapped in sacred language.

From within, not against

I write this from within the community, not against it. Difficult words are spoken out of care, not hostility toward the community of which one is a part. Sometimes loyalty does not mean silence. Sometimes loyalty means refusing to participate in a comforting lie.

Tochacha — rebuke — is not betrayal. It is one of the forms by which a community refuses to rot politely. The Torah does not say: remain silent when your people turns sacred language into protection for injustice. It says, “You shall surely rebuke your fellow.” The prophetic tradition did not flatter kings, priests, or religious elites when they converted holiness into cover for unequal burdens. It spoke because covenant without justice becomes theatre. And in a defensive war, the old language of shared burden........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)