It is erev Yom Kippur, and I am sitting pondering the situation that we find ourselves in on a Jewish-national level, and I wonder how we should be approaching the current fast day on the back of what has been one of the most trying periods in recent Jewish history. Yes, certainly, we have suffered numerous tragedies over the years and have been subjugated to many attacks and been ridiculed and criticised on multiple occasions by other nations. So, what makes this recent tragedy any different, and perhaps all the more painful, and why has this seized my attention at this very moment before Yom Kippur?
In answering this, I think there is a simple answer, but as with many simple answers there is a depth behind the response which I would like to explore. However, to appreciate and internalise the message that I will be developing, I will first start off by stating in clear, and unapologetic terms the simple answer to the question that I am posing. Why, after two years of war in Israel, and with Trump's plan in the forefront of the news, is this the opportune time to stop and consider the current state that we are in? What can we learn from the current fast that can provide us with an opportunity to reflect on our current situation and actually provide us with guidance?
I think this is the answer - it is not clear what we are fighting for. I repeat, it is not clear what we are fighting for.
I will clarify what I mean by this. Obviously, we understand and appreciate the importance of fighting to save our people that have been taken hostage and are still being held by Hamas. Certainly, we understand the importance of fighting to protect our borders and to try to prevent the chances of any further attacks occurring in the future. It is definitely important to fight our enemies when they come and tear down our doors and fight us in our homes. All of this justifies without a doubt the need to go out and fight. However, these are not the only considerations for why we are fighting.
These are certainly reasons that are understandable for the longterm warfare and tactical calculations for battling Hamas. However, to say that this is what we are fighting for is only looking at the situation from a narrow perspective, which ignores the bigger picture. I hope that this essay can expand our perspective to appreciate the larger issue that we are fighting for. Again, I am not downplaying the current war and the need to fight against Hamas. Yet, I feel that it is important to delve a little deeper and connect to the current war from a broader perspective. Beyond the current fighting with Hamas, there is another battle that is also occurring at the moment, an ongoing battle that has been in conflict for so many years, too many years, so many that we are not aware that the battle is still going.
This battle is the battle for Jewish unity.
When the Jewish people were at Har Sinai they were one nation, one people, one body, united together to receive the Torah. We are all familiar with this description of achdut that was experienced at the time when the Torah was given. However, unfortunately, over the years this level of unity has been diluted, stretched, and shattered to the point that it is hard to even imagine that we could ever reach that level of unity again. It seems as if that state of unity has been lost forever. However, I would like to argue that the achdut of the Jewish people is not and can never be lost.
Ostensibly, it looks like we have lost any sense of unity, with friction and division ever-present within our people. However, we have not forgotten, and we will never forget. The body does not and cannot forget its limbs. Yes, the body can be experienced in a range of ways that distorts our perspective and experience of it, but that can be explained as a psychological phenomenon, rather than a reflection of reality. The reality is that we are still one body, we are still the Jewish people, all connected and bound to each other; however, we have forgotten what this experience feels like. It has been so long now that we have become accustomed to our disability, to our current way of functioning, that it does not seem possible to contemplate any other way of living.
However, as I said, we have not forgotten, and we will never forget.
This is the paradoxical state of our current existence. We are so lost but always looking to find a way back. So despairing, but always desperate to believe. Full of anger and frustration but forever seeking calm and salvation. We are engaged in a war and the fighting is long and difficult, but that is not just the war against our enemies. We are also fighting to restore the unity that we once had. When we received the Torah, the Jewish body was whole. However, over the years we have experienced one trauma after the other that have undoubtedly caused national, psychological pain. To cope with these traumas, the Jewish body and psyche has engaged in well-developed psychological defence mechanisms.
One example is splitting in which numerous psychological personalities are expressed within a single person due to the inability to hold the complexity and confusion within our experiences, to view our life and identity with all its variety and contradictions. ‘Splitting’ occurs when a person is unable to hold and contain the subtleties, nuances and complexities of their existence and the experiences they have, when they view their life as a dichotomous split between right and wrong, a “black and white” style of thinking. In order to diffuse this psychological discomfort, a person engages in ‘splitting’ in which multiple psychological personalities will develop in order to give expression to this complexity, as a means to cope with the pain of the trauma, as opposed to processing the experience within the single psychological entity of the self.
Consequently, we see the division that has emerged over the years within the Jewish people, we can even say that there are such extreme differences within the Jewish people that it looks like completely different personalities that are in no way connected to one, single identity. This psychological splitting is a result of the trauma that we have experienced as a nation, and whilst we can say that variety is welcomed and embraced, the inconsistency and pain that exists indicates the functioning of a psychological defence mechanism.
Moreover, it can be suggested that the emotional distress that we are experiencing is not only an indication of psychological splitting, but also can relate to the experience of loss and bereavement. The unity that we once had at the time of ‘Matan Torah’ seems to have been lost and the pain that we are experiencing is the deep suffering and longing to be connected again, and to be reunited. Within the research for loss and bereavement, there has been a movement away from taking a pathological view of the experience of bereavement, one which holds that the grief is an inability to “move on” and disconnect from the deceased. On the contrary, psychological theories of loss and bereavement suggest how a person continues to function in their life whilst concurrently maintaining a connection with their loved one following their death.
Klass, Silverman, and Nickman (1996) in their theory of continuing bonds reconceptualized the goal of mourning as a transformation rather than detachment, positing that continuing bonds with the deceased can aid in adaptation to their loss. Successful adaptation, in this view, involves sustaining an enduring relational connection to the deceased while simultaneously forming new relationships and engaging in new activities. Consequently, a bereaved person will seek a range of ways to maintain a sense of connection to their loved one that has passed away, and this is seen as an adaptive response to the experience of loss.
Indeed, consistent with the continuing bonds theory, research found that bereaved people described a sense of an ongoing connection with their loved one as if they still existed within their body (Leichtentritt et al., 2016). The research interprets this finding through the conceptualization of a “phantom limb” phenomenon, meaning that bereaved people embody their experience of loss through the sense that the deceased person is still existing as part of their body. In other words, the loved one is still sensed, and they can connect with them through their own body; they are living on with them even though they cannot be seen on a physical level.
Subsequently, this can relate to the position that the Jewish people are in. As we said, the unity that we once had at Har Sinai when we received the Torah was a time when we were one single body. However, this unity has been lost to the extent that we are suffering and mourning for that lost unity. Perhaps it can be argued that this sense of loss is felt profoundly and there is an awareness of what has been lost and the psychological response to this grief is to try to maintain a connection with what has been lost.
In this sense, it is possible that the loss that we are experiencing is irreversible and the best that we can hope for is a “phantom limb” sense of connection to create an illusory feeling of wholeness and unity. Seen in this light, it seems that the unity of the Jewish people has been lost, and we are subsequently left in an ongoing state of adaptation to the loss through the experience of a continuing bond.
However, this is a spurious claim and one that must be clarified further in order to avoid any confusion and false conclusions. I will state again, the unity of the Jewish people is not dead, it is not lost, and it will never be lost. We are not trying to connect as a Jewish people through the psychological phenomenon of a “phantom limb”, because the limb is still there, the body is still intact. Consequently, I would argue that what we are experiencing now is a sense of confusion; we are fighting and trying to recover and be strong again, but at this point we have become so weary from the process that it is no longer clear to us what we are fighting for. The truth is that this battle is not a physical but a psychological one. Therefore, in order to win this battle, we need to appreciate what the therapeutic process is.
This can be understood based on the theory within loss and bereavement of ambiguous loss. This term is used to describe a type of grief where the loss is experienced as unclear and where there is a lack of closure (Boss, 2002). One example of ambiguous loss can relate to a case where a loved one is physically present but psychologically lost, such as in a situation of psychological or neurological illness. In such circumstances a person may be faced with the challenge of ambiguous loss in terms of coping with the dialectical confusion of presence and absence at the same time. So too, I would argue that the psychological, national pain that the Jewish people is experiencing relates to a sense of ambiguous loss.
The Jewish body is still in existence, it is still functioning and present with all of its different parts, but tragically on a psychological level we are so lost. We may still be in existence on a physical level, but we no longer remember what our life was like when we functioned as a healthy, complete and united entity. It may be that on a physical level we are still here, that after so many years the Jewish people continue to live on, and we will once again be celebrating Sukkot soon as a festival that reminds us of the unity of our people. However, we continue to live in this state of limbo; stuck within the suffering of ambiguous loss, trying to reconnect but unsure how, trying to find peace but unable to.
It is important to stress that this does not mean that by acknowledging the ambiguous loss we will then learn to just accept this reality. We must go through a difficult process of working on our national mental health, to go through a therapeutic process that is not focused on coming to terms with our loss, but in our case we can actually become healthy and whole again. This is not espousing a sense of false hope, or irrational optimism. No, we the Jewish people, will go through a therapeutic process of healing to return to a full state of mental health, and then the sense of ambiguous loss will be resolved.
Therefore, returning to how I began this essay: Yes, we are fighting and with Hashem’s help we will be able to return the hostages and win this current battle with Hamas, whether on the battlefield or through Trump's plan. Yet, let us make sure that it is also very clear what we are fighting for from a broader perspective. This battle is not just against Hamas or any other enemy that the Jewish people face. It is also a battle for our national mental health, to return the Jewish people to their full, healthy unity that we had at Har Sinai when we received the Torah.
I hope that this essay can alleviate some of the pain and remove some of the confusion that we are experiencing within the ambiguous loss, by bringing us closer together again as a nation, now and forever. Amen.
Jonathan Rosenhead LCSW, made aliyah to Israel in 2012, living and employed in Jerusalem as a social worker and psychotherapist. Currently a doctorate student at Ariel University, with a research focus on the field of loss and bereavement for parents of fallen lone soldiers.