I heard the following sad event from the father of a childhood friend of mine, named Gedaliah. Gedaliah is a graduate of Lithuanian yeshiva and is ultra-Orthodox in his lifestyle. During the War of Attrition, he served as a soldier and a grenade exploded in the armored personnel carrier he was in. His aorta was damaged and he began to die, but his life was miraculously saved. A little over fifty years later, he suffers from a serious illness in his stomach.
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During his running around, Gedaliah was referred to a senior doctor who was an expert in the field. He came to him with his daughter, and the doctor they received displayed a condescending, alienating, not to say repulsive attitude toward him. He not only demonstrated a real physical aversion to his patient, but also asked, offensively and without a trace of shame, to move a little further away from him, no less.
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Gedaliah was obviously hurt, very hurt. When they went to take a photo of him, which the doctor fought for, he noticed that his daughter was even more hurt and told her: 'Don't worry, when we return to the clinic the attitude will change.' 'How is Dad?' she asked, 'Wait and see,' he replied.
With the X-ray results in hand, the two returned to the doctor, and as he sat down in the chair, Gedaliah began to scream in broken cries: 'Aye aye, aye.' Screams? Real screams.
'"What happened?" the doctor asked in shock.
'"The fragments in my legs move a little and this movement causes me immense pain," Gedaliah cried.
The doctor was interested, and Gedaliah told him, by the way, the truth about his injury in the War of Attrition, about his legs being full of grenade and iron fragments, and about the fact that he had been a disabled IDF soldier for 50 years.
The doctor's attitude, like a magic wand, changed from one extreme to the next. He sat down next to Gedaliah, inquired about his condition, promised him that he would do everything for him, and at one point almost physically caressed him.
'"'Do you see?'" Gedaliah asked his daughter, on their way back home.
So much for the real story that happened exactly a week and a half ago. And I ask: What did the daughter see? The polarization, the groupism, the tribalism that pervades the people. The sad expression of Gedaliah's visit to the doctor, with his ultra-Orthodox appearance, reveals that the discourse about 'cantons' and the division of the country into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, it seems, has never been more topical.
But it means something else, that when the doctor realized that Gedaliah 'belonged' to his group, since he was loaded with iron fragments that responded to the seasons, he treated him as a member of his own group.
But do just shrapnel in the leg make us members of one group?
Is there no other common denominator that binds us? Leibowitz always claimed that the existence of the 'Jewish people' is one of the great mysteries today, since we do not, eat, work, and marry one another. We could also add, do not fight, do not serve, and do not study in the deep and spiritual sense [as the Haredim perceive it] together.
On the other hand, is it right to break everything down to Leibowitz's pennies? Isn't there something greater, albeit abstract but with a real Jewish entity - that, despite all of the above, connects us?
I have no answer to these questions.
