As a religious Jew, the fact that store owners can now sell chametz during Passover has little meaning to me. I won’t buy it and, knowing that a particular store is now selling chametz during the holiday simply means it will not be getting my business after the holiday ends – at least until any chametz they had would be sold. Or perhaps for

This is really about making a statement, about putting “in the face” of thousands of other Israelis the power to force change.

even longer as I accustom myself to stores that choose to honor what Israel as a state has honored for 60 years.



How absurd that some Israelis, supported by the courts, decided they couldn’t manage those mere seven days without buying chametz. No one was questioning what they do in their own homes. As untold numbers of Israelis have done for decades, they could have bought and put in their freezer enough supplies to get them through the long, bitter seven-day drought. But this is really about making a statement, about putting “in the face” of thousands of other Israelis the power to force change.



What is being ignored, perhaps, is that there is a far greater cost than the price of a package of bread or some crumb-coated shnitzels. What it means, in very real terms, is a further tearing of the fabric of Israeli society.
 
For years, I heard from left-wing friends that they had nothing in common with religious Jews, settlers and right-wingers. Back then, I rejected my friends’ claims that there were two Israels. That there was a national divide that ran down the center of the country. That the Tel Aviv culture was so drastically different than the Jerusalem one; that the religious and secular had virtually no cultural ties.
I spoke of my deep belief that we are all Jews, all Israelis. That we are united by a religion, a language, a culture, a history, a tradition, an army and sons we send to it. Keep the religious laws or not, we come from the same place, I argued back almost in desperation. I did not want to believe what they were saying and so I was blind, until the summer of 2005.



Something fundamental changed after the expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif. I finally understood that my friends were right. For the first time in my life, I have almost nothing in common with those “left-wing, anti-Zionists” whose children do not serve the army because they claim they are pacifists, but will fight over a parking spot or a pack of cigarettes.



For the first time, I didn’t want to see that I had any connection with their lack of religious belief, their disdain of our historical ties, their bowing and catering to the Palestinians in their endless attempt to serve the misguided and impotent god of collaboration and peace.



The anger has dulled over the last two and a half years, replaced by a constant sense of disappointment in how the government has handled the Gaza refugees, and how those who were so happy to see it come about have all but ignored the refugees' fate. The Jews of Gaza remain homeless and unemployed, a startling reminder that we

I have come to agree with my friends on the other side of the divide.

often treat the Arabs in Gaza better than we have these people.



I have come to agree with my friends on the other side of the divide. In great sadness, I surrender to their view. I am as foreign to you, as you are to me. Your values are completely at odds with mine, your priorities, your interests. I believe your reasons for avoiding army service are far less honorable than the reason people on my side of the rift use. On my side, they choose to spend their time learning Torah, and often, after a few years, still enter the army. Many are in elite units, become commanders, and serve for many years in the reserves while your youth grow their hair long, pierce their bodies, and fly off to foreign continents.



Generalizations are worthless, but isn’t that what you have done for years? We are extremist, fanatical, religious, right-wing settlers, in your eyes, our clothes all black and our hearts orange. We all tote guns and speak of the coming of the Messiah as our eyes roll back into our heads in religious ecstasy. No, you don’t know or understand us at all, it seems.



And now, I admit. I do not understand you. You want stores to have the right to sell chametz on Passover. You’ll follow your carbohydrates-free diet all year long, but on Passover, woe unto those who dare to deny you the right to buy pita.
On Holocaust Day and Yom HaZikaron, sirens sound throughout the land and places of entertainment are closed. I stand beside you and mourn and, like you, I condemn the act of some who desecrate these important moments. But if we are to leave the choice up to the individual when it comes to buying chametz on Passover, why not leave it to the individual how he wants to honor our 6 million+ martyrs? According to this new freedom you wish to give all to trample our base traditions and foundations, should we not give them the option to celebrate and be entertained according to their whims?



Ultimately, the sale of chametz products in Israel means another desecration of what sets us apart from the rest of the world; what makes us a unique Jewish State. All it will do is show us, once again, how far apart Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are – and even more importantly, it will convince those of us with orange hearts that it is useless to believe that we can ever really be one nation.



There was a civil war after the evacuation of Gush Katif. It did not play out in violence as the media and the left so gleefully predicted. It took place in the hearts and souls of those on the right. We surrender. Eat your chametz on

Even more important than the money is that you will lose our hearts, our determination to be one with the nation you want to maintain.

Passover and shop on our Sabbath. Desecrate the laws of the Torah if you will and demand your right to eat pita for those precious seven days of the year. But what you have lost, the cost of buying that chametz will be in the millions of dollars those stores will lose from religious customers. It is our right to buy OUR pita where we will.



Go ahead, refuse to buy wine from the Golan Heights and honey from the Shomron. Don’t buy products produced in Ariel or Maale Adumim. And we will refuse to buy from stores open on Shabbat and those who sell chametz on Passover – and we will all be poorer for the experience.



But even more important than the money is that you will lose our hearts, our determination to be one with the nation you want to maintain. We will not join a country that would desecrate what we value most – all for a loaf of bread, one time per year. We cannot be part of your Israel because it runs against everything that we believe in, our Israel, a land that we hold not by the might of the army, but by the right of all that we are, all that we have survived as a people.



What is the cost of selling chametz on Passover? Far greater than Israel can afford to pay.