First, Shmuel Klein from the Hesder Yeshivot Union called. "We have a huge conference this week with 200 Hesder yeshivot rabbis to conclude Operation Protective Edge and bid farewell to our CEO, but that probably won't interest the media because of the formation of the government, right?" Apparently he's right.
The elections erased Operation Protective Edge from public memory. Even during the turbulent election campaign, in which so many issues were discussed, the operation was almost forgotten.
But this week, on Tuesday, Sergeant Elad Horowitz stood on stage in the Hesder yeshiva hall on Kibbutz Shaalavim and reminded everyone present that the fighting was not actually over yet.
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And he remembers everything well. Just as the public agenda was dealing with the Netanyahu-Kahlon meeting, he talked about his own agenda: "I was injured eight months ago, on the 22nd of Tammuz, July 19. I studied at the Hesder yeshiva in Acre and later I was a company commander in the company commanders' course. At the entrance to Gaza, I was shot by a sniper in the head. I arrived at Beilinson in critical condition and they saved my life. I lost my right eye and the hearing in my left ear and I am still in rehabilitation. I will not lie, the injury is not an easy thing. The war of rehabilitation is a new war. But thanks to the injury, you learn to appreciate what you have. You become stronger from it. If you half don't see and half don't hear, you learn to rejoice in much smaller things.
""In the last elections we saw how much hatred and hatred there is in the country, but that's not really true. During the war I saw tremendous solidarity. Hundreds of people came to my room in the hospital ward to visit and encourage me, to the point that my brother who was sitting at the entrance wouldn't let them in because it was so crowded. He left a notebook outside the room and people just wrote and wrote. Today we have seven notebooks of love and faith and prayer. And know that this is not over, don't forget the wounded. We need to pray for them and visit them.
""I don't remember many things from that time, because of the morphine, but I do remember that one time I was lying in bed and opened my eyes and saw above me Rabbi Yossi Stern, the head of the yeshiva, and my RSP and MK Orit Struck and Revital Gantz, the wife of the Chief of Staff. They were all above me. I realized that they were all here for me. It was a very special moment.".
Later in the week, a guide from the "Agricultural Union" youth movement contacted me. About a month ago, a core member of the movement, Little Satochna, thought of an initiative: every time we get off a train, we leave a small snack and an optimistic note for the person who comes after us. This is the answer of these young people, volunteers of a year of service, to the chocolate videos. Israelis who don't demand chocolate by shouting but rather give it to someone else with a smile. "A small gesture like this can change someone's day and also change the way they look at the world. The idea is: pass it on. Big change starts with small actions," he explained.
The initiative spread not only on trains but also on Facebook. People who got on the train and found such surprises began taking pictures and sharing them. One of the statuses, of a passenger from Nesher station who was excited about a tasty snack with a lovely note left for her by trainee Netanel Bar, went a bit viral this week, but the instructor wanted to learn the rules of the internet in order to become a real phenomenon: "My trainees think this could be a sweeping trend and don't know how to break into consciousness with it. Is there a chance to publish something positive like this?""
That same day, Avraham Hayon also began rolling out a new online initiative – "Independence with Meaning." Hayon, director of a youth program in the periphery, was invited to a few barbecue celebrations last Independence Day and suddenly felt like there was something missing. "We need to introduce content to this day. It’s a day with tremendous potential. We need to rebrand it. It can’t be that after two thousand years, we got a democratic Jewish state just for a barbecue day. So I opened a Facebook page with friends, 'Independence with Meaning,' and we started formulating content. How do we make it popular and talked about?"
The next address in this vein this week was from Mirach Toker, who works day-to-day as the spokesman for MK Moshe Gafni: "I know that all the headlines now are just about politics, but I'm calling because of something else. I'm also the spokesperson for a huge and important event that will be held at Yad Eliyahu. There's been nothing like it in the Haredi world. An educational, historical, powerful, Hebel"Z evening.".
Tens of thousands attended this conference physically and tens of thousands more watched it live on Haredi websites. I looked. Usually basketball is played in this hall, but on Tuesday this week they played a different soul game there.
The official reason for the event was the end of the study cycle of the "Daf Yomi in Halacha" project. In reality, they simply came there to salute the Torah. One by one, rabbis and rebbes, Hasidim and Lithuanians, Sephardim and Ashkenazim entered the hall, with a huge choir leading them with melodies, and the excitement in the stands grew.
How different the ideal that emerged there is from all the nonsense we have seen in recent months – no videos, no costumes, no gimmicks. An entire public, including children and teenagers, who salute the written word, the elders of the generation, the most basic and ancient ethos of the Jewish people.
""I don't understand why this isn't a hot media item," Toker told me after the event. "Tens of thousands of Jews come to say that education is the main thing for them. Children without smartphones, who instead hold textbooks in their hands. In the face of the whole world and all its temptations, this is our true alternative culture, of the people of the book, and these are the heroes of this culture, and we are proud of it. They are not young and beautiful and cool, but old and full of wisdom.".
The fighters of the Hesder yeshiva, the youth from the "Agricultural Union," the young people who are rethinking Independence Day, the Haredi scholars and their children – who determined that they are not the headline of the State of Israel? I have something to say about the coalition negotiations, but I preferred to use this space this week to expose them.
This is the last Sabbath before Passover and the next Sabbath – Seder Night. For 3,327 years, the Jewish people have sat together every year and studied and read and sang and told stories and ate and talked – about the liberation from slavery to freedom, about the end of slavery, about exile and redemption. In fact, this is also a bit of a headline.
Jewish status: ""Every person includes within himself all four sons from the Haggadah: wise, wicked, innocent, and one who does not know how to ask" (Rabbi Israel Salanter)
• The column is published in Yedioth Ahronoth
