(JNS) Before Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was deeply divided. Streets filled with protests, families were fractured over politics, and the sense of shared destiny, the glue that once bound the Jewish people, felt as if it were slipping away.
In the Diaspora, many Jews had grown distant from Israel’s story. The Jewish state became “someone else’s issue,” not the heartbeat of Jewish continuity. Too many assumed that Jewish safety was permanent. We forgot that indifference, too, can be dangerous. History teaches that when Jews disconnect from their people and homeland, hatred always finds its way back.
October 7 shattered that illusion. That day reminded us why Israel exists, and why Jewish unity can never be optional. Hamas’s atrocities were not only an attack on Israeli civilians; they were an assault on Jews everywhere. What followed was two years of unbearable grief, but also something else: a reawakening of Jewish pride, faith and peoplehood.
One of the most powerful sources of that spiritual renewal came from the hostages themselves. Those who endured the tunnels of Gaza spoke of a surprising truth:...
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