Looking ahead to the day after

To watch the return of the remaining 20 living hostages and to begin to imagine a day after the war, was an exuberant moment. Of course, I know there are still too many bereaved parents and families – an entire nation even – waiting for the bodies of loved ones to come home. And I know the road remains long before we will truly see the conclusion of this seemingly endless war. But it was exuberant, nonetheless.

Yet even in celebration, a nagging thought pressed at the back of my mind. How do we begin to ready ourselves for the day after? Not only as a society marred and plagued by antisemitism, but as a Jewish community stretched to its natural limits.

The Talmud hints at the perpetual nature of antisemitism in asking why the Torah was given at Sinai. Its answer: because at that moment of revelation, hatred (sinah) descended on the nations toward the Jewish people. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, addressing the European Parliament in 2016, observed: “The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown.”

We Australian Jews have seen our society deeply shaken by antisemitism. But perhaps the greater concern is what it signals, namely that our broader society itself is fraying. The urgent question now is not simply how to stop antisemitism, but how to piece society back together.

• How do we preserve spaces for storytelling and culture that invite difficult conversations from a place of learning?

• How do we recover political discourse that pursues nation-building and responsible citizenry through compromise?

• How do we nurture a civic culture of love, camaraderie and respect across divides of belief and origin?

At the same time, we must look inward. For two years, our Jewish community has sat in trauma. I would argue we are far from post-trauma. And in that trauma, we have drawn near-universal red lines: unity must come first; our hostages must come home at any cost; Israel cannot be publicly criticised.

These positions were necessary at the outset of the tragedy – and I believe they remain relevant. But they have also stretched our communal bonds to their natural limits, locally and globally.

The simultaneous beauty and challenge of community is that it is never monolithic. It is made up of individuals who share connection points while maintaining a diversity of thought and deed. Unity (achdut) is not conformity. What must lie at the heart of unity is instead an exponential growth of unconditional love (ahavat chinam): the ability to love one another not despite, but because of our differences.

We have also insisted – rightly – that our hostages must return at any cost. Yet watching the devastation of war has stirred deep human responses that many have felt unable to express. Expressing remorse or sorrow has invited condemnation from both extremes. From the right “Don’t believe the woke media!” From the left: “Complicity” and “Genocide.” That leaves little room for the middle space many of us inhabit – that we can love Israel, understand the necessity of this war, and still feel deep anguish at the loss of life.

And then there is criticism of Israel. For much of the war it felt inappropriate, and for good reason. But Judaism itself demands questioning. One of my rabbis, Rabbi Yosef Blau, spoke out against Israel’s limits on aid to Gaza. He did not deny Hamas’s abuse of aid. He simply pointed to the Torah’s imperative to provide sustenance. He was publicly vilified. But this is our challenge: Israel is miraculous, the herald of redemption, the manifestation of our two-thousand-year hope. And yet it is run by fallible humans, never beyond critique.

So how do we bring together a community that is traumatised, fractured, and divergent – yet still yearning to heal? Some views may indeed be beyond the pale: if one denies Israel’s right to exist, one has stepped outside the bounds of community. But within that boundary, we must learn to hold multiplicity.

The Talmud teaches that the houses of Hillel and Shammai, though divided on law and philosophy, still recognised each other as part of the same community. Their debates, sometimes fierce, did not fracture their shared sense of belonging.

I believe the remedy for our own moment, both within the Jewish community and in broader society, rests on three shifts. First, radical love. We must expand our tolerance, compassion and connection to one another. Second, a deep desire to learn. We are all “October 8 Jews”, marked by resurgence in pride and identity. Now we must channel that into deeper study – of Judaism and of each other.

Third, a commitment to compromise. Not capitulation, but genuine discourse. The willingness to offer perspectives and to be receptive to others, to give and to receive. To argue passionately yet stay bound to each other.

If we can model these practices within our own community, we can model them outward to society. And if we begin even haltingly, we may create something greater and stronger than what we knew before.

The day after will not arrive in a single moment of euphoria or relief. It will emerge slowly, in the difficult work of rebuilding bonds frayed by trauma, hate and fear. But if we can commit to radical love, to learning, and to compromise, then perhaps the day after can be not just an end, but a beginning.

Rabbi Alon Meltzer is director of programs for Shalom Collective.