Just on Sunday, hundreds of people spontaneously sang "Prayer for the Poor" and "Our Brothers, All the House of Israel," in Rabin Square, in hope, in faith for a better ending. "Good" that we too can understand, and "good" that the boys will return home safely.
But as the hours pass, the terrible news seeps into my consciousness. Only one song they sang there keeps playing in my head:
""Our brothers, the whole house of Israel.".
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In the past year, it seemed that the rift between us would never heal. That the ideological gap was too great, too great to be bridged. The conscription of yeshiva students, the cancellation of income guarantees for avrechims, the freezing of budgets for yeshiva schools, and this is just the beginning of the list. There was a feeling that an abyss would separate us forever, and rightly so.
But then, the kidnapping happened.
Over the course of eighteen days, all disagreements were pushed aside, the gaps were forgotten, and only one common concern remained - the concern for the safety of the boys.
Over the course of eighteen days, we returned to practicing the "kidnapped procedure" – prayer notices were published in newspapers. Prayer gatherings at the Western Wall. Distribution of Psalms to be found quickly. Early lighting of candles. Passing out challah.
There is no boy or girl who does not know by heart the names "Eyal ben Iris Tishura, Gil-Ad Michael ben Bat Galim, and Yaakov Naftali ben Rachel Dvorah." These are not the usual names on the tongues of the students of the Haydar, but they are brothers and sisters, praying.
Above all, there was a shared anxiety, a real anxiety for the boys whose traces have disappeared and no one knows what happened to them. An anxiety that has been replaced today by a great sadness that surrounds us all. A feeling of mutual responsibility, because we are brothers and sisters. We also listened to the voice of the mothers and could not stand against them, against the strength of spirit that they demonstrated, and we cried too, we did not stop crying when we discovered that God had taken them and that the boys would not return to their homeland.
There will come a day when we will return to the debate. We will sit down at the negotiating table, we will fight again for another cut, another cut. But we have postponed it for other days, not today, not now. Not when the boys are kidnapped. Ideological disputes have their own place, just and necessary, but these struggles are a privilege. A privilege of quiet times. When there are no wars, when there are no disasters.
In contrast to other sectors that chose, ironically, to blame the boys for their kidnapping, or alternatively erased the incident from their agenda, the partnership that the Haredi public demonstrated with the fate of the boys stood out - from the stage of concern to the stage of mourning.
It was a testing time and we stood it with honor, and our ability to leap over the barriers that separate us in times of trouble, the ability to feel a sense of shared destiny even when the disaster did not occur in our backyard, continues to accompany me even now, and the melody plays in my head:
Our brothers, the entire house of Israel. All.
