Like many other residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, I have been phoning and visiting Likud members in a campaign against the Disengagement Plan. I hope the voters reject the plan, as I believe it would be very dangerous not just for the settlements, but for the whole country.
I was at a Torah class for women, and the teacher read us a quote from Eim HaBanim S'maichah. This book was written by Rabbi Shlomo Teichtal, a Hungarian rabbi who had been anti-Zionist, but regretted his original position during the gathering Shoah, in which he perished. Rabbi Teichtal describes the Bible portion in which Moses sent spies to check out the land of Israel. The spies came back to the camp of the Children of Israel with frightening stories of a land which "eats its inhabitants".
The spies went from house-to-house all night, undermining the morale of the Jews, persuading them that there was no military solution to gaining the land of Canaan. "Propaganda" was the modern word Rabbi Teichtal used for their evil speech. The divine punishment for believing this propaganda was another 40 years in the desert. In pre-Holocaust Europe, many rabbis and secular leaders rejected the Zionist appeal to settle the land of Israel, including, Rabbi Teichtal. When he reversed his attitude, he said that the tikkun, the moral rectification for the sin of rejecting the land of Israel, should be a similar door-to-door propaganda campaign singing the praises of the land of Israel and urging Jews to settle there.
This idea seemed to attract the sudden notice of many people simultaneously at a critical time. Various people read out this passage publicly many times in the last few weeks to encourage the campaigners throughout the country. It was not easy for many of us to overcome our natural shyness in knocking on strangers' doors. Women especially were uncomfortable with this kind of assertiveness. My teacher, however, had an even more uncomfortable lesson to teach us.
We, residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the "settlers", have inadvertently allowed a "disengagement": a disengagement between ourselves and the rest of the country. We live in our isolated settlements, with our own schools, our own rabbis, our own ideologues, our own fashion in clothes and many other things, and we don't frequently share the wonderful things we have with others. Arutz-7 was a bridge between the settlement movement and "amcha", the people; and before the government could try to hurt settlements, they first had to silence Arutz-7, at least in its most accessible form, the radio.
Leftist extremists in the media, academia, and government have spent years marginalizing the settlement movement ("money for the poor neighborhoods, not for the settlements!") in a "divide and conquer" approach. We didn't know how to stop their propaganda, and we all had many other things to do, like build the settlements, and raise our large families within them, which appeared more important, and perhaps rightfully so. Anyway, the leftist propaganda appeared beneath contempt, so we innocently assumed that truth would prevail. That was our mistake.
Maybe it was even a sin, a lack of enthusiasm for the mitzvah of loving our fellow Jews. We should not have allowed ourselves to be marginalized, "disengaged" spiritually from our fellow Israelis and Jews. As the Israeli Left became increasingly more extreme, we, who believe in the unity of the people, land and Torah of Israel, should have been the vanguard of the outreach movement, the leaders of Israel. We should also have noticed, in our contacts with people outside our communities, that even our modes of speech were different, and that should have caused us to make a more concerted effort to communicate.
On the rare occasions when groups from the Judea, Samaria and Gaza communities met with groups such as urban residents or kibbutzniks, the results were warm and exhilarating. Apparently, our own modesty and unselfishness as a group may have prevented us from doing more. Nevertheless, the failure to have more of these meetings is still somewhat inexplicable. But the past is over and done.
Today, the elections will be held, and the Likud voters will decide whatever they decide. Sharon will do whatever he does. The campaign against the Suicide Plan will be finished, for better or for worse.
But we settlers need to hold on to those addresses. We now have an opportunity to rectify our community's shortcoming. We should contact these people again, this time without pamphlets, discs and propaganda, but only with warmth and love of our fellow Jews. We can become friends, share our history and mutual values, and help each other. We started out strangers, but we are strangers no longer.
We also need to change our attitude towards the people we have known for years, taking a more proactive role in communicating. We don't have to jump onto a soapbox and rant ideological speeches at family gatherings, but we do need to be frank about our beliefs, our hopes and our lives. We should contact people frequently, so they will remember that they have a cousin (or old school friend, old army buddy, former neighbor, etc.) in such-and-such a settlement, and that we work and have kids, and other details of our lives. This puts a human face on "the settlers" and prevents the demonization that the media seems to love doing to us.
Surrendering land to our enemies is a victory for terror. Surrendering the public discourse to leftists is a victory for post-Zionism.
I was at a Torah class for women, and the teacher read us a quote from Eim HaBanim S'maichah. This book was written by Rabbi Shlomo Teichtal, a Hungarian rabbi who had been anti-Zionist, but regretted his original position during the gathering Shoah, in which he perished. Rabbi Teichtal describes the Bible portion in which Moses sent spies to check out the land of Israel. The spies came back to the camp of the Children of Israel with frightening stories of a land which "eats its inhabitants".
The spies went from house-to-house all night, undermining the morale of the Jews, persuading them that there was no military solution to gaining the land of Canaan. "Propaganda" was the modern word Rabbi Teichtal used for their evil speech. The divine punishment for believing this propaganda was another 40 years in the desert. In pre-Holocaust Europe, many rabbis and secular leaders rejected the Zionist appeal to settle the land of Israel, including, Rabbi Teichtal. When he reversed his attitude, he said that the tikkun, the moral rectification for the sin of rejecting the land of Israel, should be a similar door-to-door propaganda campaign singing the praises of the land of Israel and urging Jews to settle there.
This idea seemed to attract the sudden notice of many people simultaneously at a critical time. Various people read out this passage publicly many times in the last few weeks to encourage the campaigners throughout the country. It was not easy for many of us to overcome our natural shyness in knocking on strangers' doors. Women especially were uncomfortable with this kind of assertiveness. My teacher, however, had an even more uncomfortable lesson to teach us.
We, residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the "settlers", have inadvertently allowed a "disengagement": a disengagement between ourselves and the rest of the country. We live in our isolated settlements, with our own schools, our own rabbis, our own ideologues, our own fashion in clothes and many other things, and we don't frequently share the wonderful things we have with others. Arutz-7 was a bridge between the settlement movement and "amcha", the people; and before the government could try to hurt settlements, they first had to silence Arutz-7, at least in its most accessible form, the radio.
Leftist extremists in the media, academia, and government have spent years marginalizing the settlement movement ("money for the poor neighborhoods, not for the settlements!") in a "divide and conquer" approach. We didn't know how to stop their propaganda, and we all had many other things to do, like build the settlements, and raise our large families within them, which appeared more important, and perhaps rightfully so. Anyway, the leftist propaganda appeared beneath contempt, so we innocently assumed that truth would prevail. That was our mistake.
Maybe it was even a sin, a lack of enthusiasm for the mitzvah of loving our fellow Jews. We should not have allowed ourselves to be marginalized, "disengaged" spiritually from our fellow Israelis and Jews. As the Israeli Left became increasingly more extreme, we, who believe in the unity of the people, land and Torah of Israel, should have been the vanguard of the outreach movement, the leaders of Israel. We should also have noticed, in our contacts with people outside our communities, that even our modes of speech were different, and that should have caused us to make a more concerted effort to communicate.
On the rare occasions when groups from the Judea, Samaria and Gaza communities met with groups such as urban residents or kibbutzniks, the results were warm and exhilarating. Apparently, our own modesty and unselfishness as a group may have prevented us from doing more. Nevertheless, the failure to have more of these meetings is still somewhat inexplicable. But the past is over and done.
Today, the elections will be held, and the Likud voters will decide whatever they decide. Sharon will do whatever he does. The campaign against the Suicide Plan will be finished, for better or for worse.
But we settlers need to hold on to those addresses. We now have an opportunity to rectify our community's shortcoming. We should contact these people again, this time without pamphlets, discs and propaganda, but only with warmth and love of our fellow Jews. We can become friends, share our history and mutual values, and help each other. We started out strangers, but we are strangers no longer.
We also need to change our attitude towards the people we have known for years, taking a more proactive role in communicating. We don't have to jump onto a soapbox and rant ideological speeches at family gatherings, but we do need to be frank about our beliefs, our hopes and our lives. We should contact people frequently, so they will remember that they have a cousin (or old school friend, old army buddy, former neighbor, etc.) in such-and-such a settlement, and that we work and have kids, and other details of our lives. This puts a human face on "the settlers" and prevents the demonization that the media seems to love doing to us.
Surrendering land to our enemies is a victory for terror. Surrendering the public discourse to leftists is a victory for post-Zionism.