We’d been planning something different for today, sharing one of the many new songs that have appeared in recent months, celebrating our young generation and its courage, or mourning what we’ve lost. And on Wednesday, we’d planned to air a podcast episode about the Netzach Yehudah battalion, which Joe Biden has singled out for a possible arms embargo.
Speaking of an arms embargo, it’s fascinating to me that while many American Jews are apoplectic about by Biden’s “decision” (which I assume will get reversed, especially since more and more Israelis are questioning the wisdom of a Rafah operation), the mainstream Israeli press was replete this weekend with timetables of how Netanyahu, step by step, made his relationship with Biden toxic (we’ll share an example or two in coming days). “Is this good?”, the papers essentially asked. “No,” they say, “but let’s be honest. We did this to ourselves.” Well, not “we.” Rather, “he.”
Turns out, you can lie to your constituents and fellow coalition members all you want, and get away with it; but when you do it regularly to the President of the United States, it doesn’t always work out very well.
Why many Israelis—while worried about and disappointed by the decision, to be sure—get that when many American Jews don’t is not entirely clear to me.
But over the weekend, I noticed something about Israel’s discourse. It’s all about “generations.” Everywhere one turns, it’s about the generation of the founders, this young generation that is at war. The generation or two in the middle.
So we’re delaying the song and the podcast about Netzach Yehudah (both will come soon) and are focusing this week on this ubiquitous “generation” discourse. Today, three examples.
First, above, a video posted onto social media by a woman named Naama Lupo, about whom I confess I don’t know very much. But many people I know found her clip very moving, especially the “it’s our generation. It’s our turn” line—we didn’t expect to have to live through this, but why, actually? Jewish history books make it clear that nothing about this should have surprised us.
She’s right, this isn’t new. “It’s our generation, it’s our turn.”
Following that video above, we’re sharing the front page of Makor Rishon’s Friday edition. The headline, which is actually an opinion piece and not “news,” is about this generational issue. It says a great deal about the mood, about the challenges, about our hope.
There is a span of three generations between 1948 and 2024: the generation of the Founders, the generation of the Builders, and the generation of Rebirth. Everyone reading this belongs to one of those three generations. Every one of you, of us, has accumulated here, individually and collectively, endless momentous events and powerful memories. Joy and exaltation, sadness and crisis. And too many Memorial Days.
The generation that founded the state is tied in our memory to the moment of declaring independence. Immediately after that came the War of Independence, the nation’s institutions were created, and the refugee camps that had been built for immigrants became towns.
The Generation that Built is tied in our memory to dozens of moments of victory: cultural flowering, wars, political upheavals, and economic successes. This was also the generation that solidified our sovereignty. But the Generation of Rebirth we’d never met until recently.
This is the young generation that some of us looked at with ridicule or worry, and we wondered—what does that generation have in common with us? What does it have to do with Israel?
In recent months, that generation has reminded us that as is the case in any chain, it is also tied to us. But no less than that, it also proved that we are dependent on it.
After the death and the attacks, this is the generation that revived Israel’s spirit, that reminded us what real power is. In the midst of the darkness that followed the horrors, this generation shined light. It left behind families, children and careers, work and peaceful lives, and went out to defend our home and in order to win.
This is the generation that lost friends, evacuated wounded, paid shiva calls—and pressed on. This generation was filled with feelings of guilt, believing it could have done more. It sounded the shofar, reminding every neighborhood along the Gaza strip, “My brother, I’m here at your side.”
This is the generation that transcended the divisions in the people, could tell the difference between what really mattered and what didn’t, between holy and profane. This is the generation that is now promising that we are here, and that we’re not going anywhere.
This is not an optimistic column. The divisions in the people are still here. The hostages are still living in hell on earth, and even victory on the battlefield, at least for the moment, is not certain. We’re going to be caring for the wounded for as long as the eye can see, but at least we will know that there arose here a generation in which we can trust. That on the day that we will no longer be alive, there will be those who will guide Israel with confidence.
Between 1948 and 2024 span three generations. On this year’s Memorial Day and Independence Day, it’s the Generation of Rebirth that is illuminating the path for us. That generation is Israel. And we, all of Israel, are casting our eyes on it.
Israelis are facing an unfolding crisis, but also an important opportunity to rebuild. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and what is happening here that the English press can’t capture, we invite you to subscribe today.
And finally, a column by Rabbi Abraham Stav, himself a leading educator and author in the modern Orthodox community, who is the son of Rabbi David Stav, whom we just interviewed in a recent podcast about the Haredi draft issue. Rabbi Stav’s column appeared this morning. (Significant portions of it are translated below.)
I thought that Rabbi Stav’s metaphor, that Independence Day can be celebrated like a birthday but at times ought to be seen as a couple flipping through the images in their wedding album to remember and to try to reignite the love they once felt, was very compelling. And helpful on a day in which celebration feels so counter-intuitive.
This year, too, there will be dances on Independence Day. But they will express not joy, but something else.
…
Independence Day celebrations, in years past, were meant to enable us to see the glorious present that had emerge from a past that was difficult and challenging, not to mention miserable. … "Every year that passes," said the country's president on the occasion of the 70th anniversary, "our national enterprise strikes another root, deepens, becomes more established." And this is but a random sample from countless speeches and speeches that have been saying exactly the same thing for 75 years. …
With that perspective, it’s difficult this year to find strength. Much of what we have achieved, at least in recent years, suddenly seems like idle imagination. Despite the displays of bravery and determination, our sense of security and stability here have been dramatically reversed. The experience of partnership and togetherness in the media and political field was renewed for a few moments after Simchat Torah, and then was torn apart again in deeper and more painful ways than we could have imagined. So in many ways, rather than an atmosphere of a birthday, we have a feeling of Yartzeit. And indeed, it is permissible to grieve. Not only over the individual lives that have been erased, but also over the things that have been lost to us as a people and as a country.
But when you look at it a little more deeply, Independence Day is not just a birthday. It is also a wedding anniversary.
I remember how Uncle Moshe placed a heavy hand on my shoulder on the night of my wedding, and took me aside …. “Remember this moment very well,” he said. “Remember how much you love her now. How much you wanted her when you gave her a ring under the canopy. And in the years to come, and I promise you that there will be times that are not easy, you will return to this love and awaken it within you.”
“You once had a great love,” says the therapist in the second season of Couple Therapy, when Sarah and Nathaniel are about to give up on their future together. “There was friendship and there was admiration. And that means you have a base to return to. If you still long for that place, it means you have hope.” Just like a couple flipping through the wedding album to find a memory that might ignite some spark of love, so can this country celebrate its Independence Day.
Back then, in '48, there were no illusions here. … But despite everything there were dances. We knew what we were hoping to achieve and we decided to trust in God and in each other, and reach out to each other in a dance.
Our dance this year on the night of Independence Day will not be a dance focused on joy and pride in the present, but a dance of prayer and of longing for the past. A dance that evokes memories of those earlier dances, which we danced despite the horrifying security threats and despite the terrible internal divisions. A dance of faith in the impossible, a dance of renewing a covenant of destiny and a covenant of destiny. A dance that will continue, as Leonard Cohen wrote, until the end of love.
Due to the news cycle, the song we were going to introduce today (Sunday) and the interview about the army unit Netzach Yehuda (Wednesday) will follow soon. Obviously, our schedule is subject to the news cycle and anything could change yet again, but for right now these are the plans.
MONDAY (05/13): Yom Hazikaron, Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers— On this day of remembering, my thoughts on how Israel has become a patchwork of grief.
TUESDAY (05/14): Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day— Two young activist Israelis, one male and one female, both called up to reserve service in the army, share with us their deepest worries about the Jewish state but also what gives them hope for its future.
WEDNESDAY (05/15): - In this week of remembering, we turn to a project that has committed itself to remembering Israel’s founding generation. We will share a conversation with the founder of Toldot Yisrael, Aryeh Halivni.
THURSDAY (05/16): In 1982, a few Israeli soldiers went missing in a battle called Sultan Yakub. They were never heard from again, until decades later, Vladimir Putin helped get one of their bodies returned. The shadow of Sultan Yakub, along with the memory of Ron Arad, is growing darker in today’s Israel, for reasons we’ll explain.
FRIDAY (05/17): An interview this week with a legendary pilot from ‘73, and the subject of a popular Israeli TV series speaks about the malaise in which Israel currently finds itself. Think Tom Cruise and Top Gun. This is the guy, but in “real life.” And what he has to say will leave you thinking.
