Teshuvah After October 7
Without any prodding or guidance from the Israeli government or Jewish communal organizations in the Diaspora, individual Jews spontaneously procured and delivered vital equipment for the IDF. Courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson’s Office
Generally, we think of Jewish religiosity as a two-dimensional scale stretching from secular to religious, with tick marks indicating levels of a composite of faith and mitzvah observance. We conceptualize teshuvah as movement across this scale, from less to more. But on October 7, a spiritual sea change seemed to sweep across our people that rendered this model simplistic.
Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen
We know that within days of the war’s outbreak, thousands of Israelis living all over the world streamed home. They came from Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, nearly every country in Eastern and Western Europe, the Caribbean and any other paradise that wanderlust could take a person. Except for the Israeli national carrier, El Al, every airline canceled all flights in and out of Israel, not just because there was military action in Gaza, but because they assumed no one in their right mind would buy a ticket. But returning Israelis filled every (scheduled and unscheduled) El Al flight, chartered planes, and played international hopscotch in a counterintuitive effort to run into the war zone as quickly as possible. “Everyone is coming. No one is saying no,” said Yonatan Steiner, twenty-four, who flew back from New York, where he works for a tech company, to join his old army medical unit. “This is different, this is unprecedented,” he said, speaking by phone from the border near Lebanon where his regiment was based.1
And even if this could be attributed to IDF military reservists’ loyalty to their former units, that wouldn’t explain why more than 20,000 Jews from around the world made aliyah since the war began; or why many times that number filed papers to begin the immigration process, some of whom had never stepped foot upon the Land before applying to permanently relocate to a country under siege.2
Without any prodding or guidance from the Israeli government or Jewish communal organizations in the Diaspora, individual Jews spontaneously procured and delivered vital equipment for the IDF. Between October 2023 and January 2024, they bought, packed, and shipped more than 10,000 pairs of combat boots worth upwards of $850,000.3 El Al was carrying 100 to 200 duffels a week just filled with boots. By June 2024, individual Jews from around the world had provided their Israeli brothers and sisters with an estimated $1 billion in helmets, drones, night vision goggles, body armor, rifle scopes, kneepads, pocketknives, gun straps, tactical gloves, flashlights and other vital equipment. These were beyond the generous donations from the Jewish Federation and many other institutions. It was as grassroots as grassroots gets.4
Support didn’t just flow in from the Diaspora. According to a Tel Aviv University/Ben-Gurion University joint study, within the first month of the war, 60 percent of Israel’s population made charitable contributions to the war effort, providing cash, blood, breast milk, hospital and rescue equipment, and anything else they thought their people on the front needed. Physicians, physical and occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists, professional chefs, drivers, mechanics and thousands of others with vital skills started working volunteer shifts in addition to their day jobs. The same TAU/BGU study found that 41 percent of Israelis volunteered in this way.
Starting the day after October 7, kindness flowed bidirectionally between Israel’s religious and secular populations. For example, a week into the war, many Tel Aviv restaurants became kosher so they could provide meals for the religious minority in the army. Then, in an unexpected twist, thousands of soldiers who considered themselves secular before the war requested tzitzit, and religious men and women all over the country went to work dyeing 60,000 shirts army-green, tying onto them 60,000 sets of white strings, and delivering them to the fronts.
A few weeks after October 7, posters that read, “There is no left and there is no right” went up in cities across Israel. It was one of the most refreshing ad campaigns ever.
Were we just witnessing an outpouring of appreciation and support for the army? That wouldn’t explain why only a few weeks into the war religious Jews in Modiin, Rechavia, Beitar and other Orthodox neighborhoods started standing at intersections in adjacent secular neighborhoods handing out Shabbat candles, Kiddush wine and home-baked challot, or—even more curiously—why their secular neighbors stopped to accept the packages and express mutual affection. By March 2024, Jews were giving other Jews over 1,000 of these Shabbat packages a week. And apart from the paper bags that were donated by a couple of large organizations, all the costs were borne by the same nonprofessionals who shopped for the candles and wine and baked the challot. This was spontaneous and grassroots. When asked why people from such different demographics were all so excited about this giving-and-receiving initiative, a Chareidi woman from Moshav Matityahu told me, “This is called unity, brotherhood and connection.”
The day after October 7, Kesher Yehudi, an Israeli nonprofit, was swamped by demand for their chavruta program, which introduces secular and religious Israelis to each other. Thousands of requests poured in from both cohorts, not primarily for opportunities to learn or teach Torah, but to grow a long-term friendship with someone from a different background. A Kesher Yehudi administrator told me that after October 7, the weekly requests from secular and religious Israelis to meet their counterparts soared by 350 percent and has not yet slowed. To date, Kesher Yehudi has provided introductions for more than 25,000 partnerships, creating unique friendships. Mostly secular families of the hostages asked Kesher Yehudi to run a Shabbaton for them where they could mix with religious people, and then both cohorts requested another one, and then the Nova Music Festival survivors asked for a similar mixed Shabbaton, and then another one. A religious participant told me, “We understand that the situation that existed before October 7 cannot continue. We need to learn and live together; each of us needs to know and understand each other.” A secular participant said, “What moves me the most is seeing the love of our people, how united and loving we all are. Nothing matters but one thing—that we are all Jews.” Moshe Leon, Jerusalem’s mayor, wrote about the Kesher Yehudi phenomenon, “This revolution is profound and stems from our very roots. It has begun a process of inner healing for our nation.”
A few weeks after October 7, posters that read, “There is no left and there is no right” went up in cities across Israel. It was one of the most refreshing ad campaigns ever.
Maybe this is just an expression of national solidarity, the intuitive reaction to close ranks when under attack. But many of us who are living and breathing this transformation feel that there may be something more profound afoot. It hit me a few months ago at the Nova site. I went there with some of my students to provide help and comfort to the mourners who gather there daily. There were parents, children, brothers, and sisters tending to makeshift memorials for their slaughtered relatives. An apparently secular woman took a sack of white stones out of her car and started arranging them around a stake planted in the ground with a picture of her deceased son. We offered to help her. She didn’t look at us, but conveyed appreciation. When we were done placing the stones, we stood in silence for a few minutes, and then one of my students asked the mother if we could say Kaddish for her son.
“I lost my faith a long time ago,” she whispered, staring at the ground.
“How about Kel Malei Rachamim?”
She was crying, but nodded to indicate that would be okay. When we finished reciting Kel Malei Rachamim, we were all crying. She remained standing with us for a while. Then another one of my students whispered to the mother again, “Would you like us to say Kaddish?” She made eye contact with us for the first time, scanned our faces, and then said, “Yes, please.” It is possible that when she scanned our faces, she saw something familiar. I will try to explain.
Teshuvah might be a broader, deeper process than just movement from less-to-more mitzvah observance. In a cryptic comment on a Talmudic passage (Avodah Zarah 19a), Rashi defines teshuvah as “l’hakir Bor’o—to recognize one’s Creator.” Avraham Avinu’s teshuvah process illuminates what the word “recognize” might mean here. According to the tradition, at age three Avraham knew there was a G-d, but by age forty he progressed from knowledge to recognition (Rambam, Hilchot Avodah Zarah 1:3). The Hebrew word for recognizing G-d (hakarah) implies more than just knowing (yediah) that there is a G-d. One who who only “knows” that G-d exists can still view Him as foreign and unrelatable. Recognition implies familiarity. By age forty, Avraham saw something familiar in G-d—his own Divine image. “From himself Avraham recognized the Holy One” (Bamidbar Rabbah 14:2).
Every member of the Jewish nation had such an experience at the Yam Suf. There each individual sang (Shemot15:2), “This is my G-d, v’anveihu.” Rashi (Shabbat 133b) translates anveihu literally as “ani v’hu—me and Him.” At the Yam Suf, every individual saw his or her own potential in the Holy One and yearned to bring forth that potential and become like Him.
Eventually, the recognizing-G-d type of teshuvah could lead to the mitzvah-observance type of teshuvah. How? People who want to become similar to G-d may notice the thread connecting all of His behavior. A verse in Tehillim (147:19) reads, “He tells His commandments to Jacob, His statutes and decrees to Israel.” Our tradition (Shemot Rabbah 30:9) asks why the mitzvot that G-d commanded to us are called His. They should be ours. The Midrash answers: “What He does, He also tells Israel to do.” In some unfathomable way, G-d keeps all the mitzvot, and for us to bring forth our Divine potential we must keep the mitzvot too. The Torah is a G-d-given system for self-actualization. Avraham Avinu recognized G-d and understood that the mitzvot are Divine behavior, and so he took upon himself all the mitzvot as well (Yoma 28b).
Knowing that G-d exists but not recognizing Him leads in the opposite direction. Healthy people not only intuitively sense their uniqueness but feel a need to express it. This human drive to self-actualize can be as strong as the desire to pursue life itself. If someone threatens another’s freedom to self-actualize, most people will fight back. Rashi teaches that both Nimrod (Bereishit 10:9) and the citizens of Sodom (ibid., 13:13) knew G-d existed, but felt no commonality with Him, and so they rebelled. So did many Jews throughout history.
This gets deeper. Perhaps Jewish unity and teshuvah are interlinked. The more thoroughly one recognizes the Creator, the more obvious it becomes that He has multiple manifestations (Sanhedrin 37a): “When a person stamps several coins with one seal, they are all identical. But the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, stamped all people with the seal of Adam, and not one of them is similar to another.” Every Jew possesses in potential one unique aspect of G-d’s complex Divinity. The more the individual brings forth his unique tzelem Elokim, the more he recognizes his own identity in the Holy One. At some stage in the teshuvah process, one may recognize in G-d not only one’s own unique potential but others’ very different potentials as well. This means more than just tolerating other Jews. It involves acknowledging that our differences may stem from a common Divine Source. It is a state of mutual responsibility, appreciation, affection and even connection. It is a place where diversity and unity become inextricably bound together in the Divine ideal.
That morning at the Nova site, my students and I recognized something familiar in a mourning mother, and she recognized something familiar in us. Differences like religious and secular, left and right, Israeli Jew and Diaspora Jew, all seem insignificant compared to the Divine image in us all. This feels like the teshuvah that many Jews are experiencing post October 7.
Notes
1. Helen Coster and Alexander Cornwell, “Israel’s reservists drop everything and rush home,” Reuters, October 12, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-reservists-drop-everything-rush-home-following-hamas-bloodshed-2023-10-12/.
2. “22,000 Jews Have Made Aliyah Since October 7, Jewish Agency Reports,” Yeshiva World, July 17, 2024, https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2297264/22000-jews-have-made-aliyah-since-october-7-jewish-agency-reports.html.
3. Sharon Wrobel, “Something is afoot: Volunteers fit IDF soldiers with US military boots amid Hamas war,” Times of Israel, January 14, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/something-is-afoot-volunteers-fit-idf-soldiers-with-us-military-boots-amid-hamas-war/.
4. Asaf Elia-Shalev, “Six months into war, Israeli soldiers still count on donations for basic supplies. Why?,” Times of Israel, April 25, 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/six-months-into-war-israeli-soldiers-still-count-on-donations-for-basic-supplies-why/.
Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen is rosh kollel of Ohr Chodosh in Yerushalayim. ArtScroll recently published Questions and Answers with Rabbi Leib Kelemen: Delving into Essential Matters on Faith, Practice and Hashkafah, where he addresses nearly 100 questions on topics ranging from shidduchim to childrearing, from Torah study to nurturing one’s talents, from shalom bayit to connecting to Hashem. Rabbi Kelemen’s lectures are available at www.lawrencekelemen.com.