Like a tree which sprouts its new green leaves after a long winter, I’ve never grown more as a Jew than when I lived in Jerusalem. Every day of my first year of rabbinical school, I would traipse to the campus near the Old City and learn Modern Hebrew and Torah, Israel Studies and archaeology in a whirl of old and new together. In the mornings and before Shabbat, I would ride my bicycle through the Jerusalem mountains and stare in wonder at their beauty. It never failed to amaze me how the first spring leaves appeared at Tu Bishvat, the almond trees blossomed with flowers just before Pesach, and the OId City was dusted in white snow for Chanukah. One could walk down any given street on Shabbat and hear wisps of melodies coming out of shuls and see bored children playing ball. It felt like a cornucopia of Jewish life.
But over the last year, I have—counterintuitively—begun worrying less about Israel’s body and started worrying more about her soul.
Our tradition teaches that souls are pure (as we say each morning in the prayer of Elohai Neshama). When Jewish dreamers conceived of a State of Israel and our people began to imagine a homeland, our hopes were similarly pure. When my grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, made aliyah, he imagined finally settling in a land that he could call home; he was looking to build and dwell in his very own “world”. Yet, the Talmud says that too much of the world is problematic for both the body and the soul (Gittin 70a).
It seems to me that over the past decades, the body of Israel has experienced more war and terror than anyone thought possible. Having seen pain, Israel has defended its body., But I worry about what the past year of war—which has included a terrifyingly high number of casualties—has done to Israel’s soul. Too many posts from Standing Together evidence that soldiers increasingly normalize inflicting pain. Just a few days ago, Standing Together posted a particularly horrifying picture of three soldiers “proudly posing on top of a pile of bound and humiliated Palestinians”. It reminded me of the Stanford Prison experiment, where subjects began as equals but, twisted by the power dynamics at play in their environment, eventually were willing to submit others to extreme pain. People willingly became numb to other people’s suffering. We no longer count innocent deaths in ones or tens but in tens of thousands. These are images and numbers that any soul should be disgusted by. I wonder what is happening to the soul of the Jerusalem which I loved so much.
Even if its elected leaders find justifications for the state’s actions, the damage to Israel’s soul remains. Standing Together says that “Palestinians pay the price of death, destruction and annihilation – Israelis pay the price of the loss of humanity and the collapse of society”. In other words, cruelty is damaging both Israel’s body and its soul.
Jewish tradition teaches the same–that every action we perform leaves an imprint on our soul. Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer (34:12)—the midrashic text—teaches that the soul is like its Creator in that “just as the blessed Holy One sees and is not visible, so the soul sees and is not visible…Just as the blessed Holy One bears the world, so the soul bears all the body”. Somehow, at some point, pain experienced became pain inflicted.
When our cohort of Elissa Froman Social Justice Fellows met Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, an NIF supporter and Director Emeritus of UCLA Hillel, he emphasized that if we don’t act to end the cruelties being perpetrated at present, “the State of Israel will remain as a reminder to humanity not that a people has risen from the ashes with a vision of hope and justice, but that, given the opportunity, the Jewish people has acted no differently from any other conquering power.”
It is not too late to look after our collective soul. Akeidat Yitzchat, a medieval philosophical work written by Isaac Arama, reminds us that we always have the chance for teshuvah—to repent for misdeeds and return to a place of wholeness. During the upcoming holiday of Tu Bishvat, some Jews eat different fruits during a seder. The fruits represent the different kinds of people; those with a hard exterior and a soft interior, those with a soft exterior and hard interior, and those who see themselves not as an island, but as part of something greater. In his 2023 book, “End of Days: Ethics, Tradition and Power in Israel,” Mikhael Manekin offers a simple way for us to move forward: our Jewish and activist intentions should be rooted in the question, “What good do I need to do?” Teshuvah can follow from there.
I still hold hope for the land with music floating down the road on Shabbat and new spring buds on Tu Bishvat. I look forward to again riding into the Jerusalem mountains, in awe of their beauty. May we have the strength to return to her again.
This piece was written by Sarah Livschitz, a 2024-25 Elissa Froman Social Justice Fellow and rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College.