These are quite painfully tense times in Israel these days. Ironically, Gaza in Hebrew is called Aza, which also, literally, means intense.
The news and media are constantly highlighting the dangerous social precipice Israel is shakily standing upon. You read, and can hardly believe.
There’s a real physical war taking place. There are real physical enemies of Israel bent on our destruction, on our border, willing to use any instrument of war to destroy us — from throwing deadly stones, to a wide range of weapons and artillery, including rockets, and even including their very lives as suicide bombers.
And after all that, will Israel’s destruction come about from within?
From dangerous hurtful accusatory words that can sow irreparable division, to a breaking point of no return?
Weapons and words, these are the different layers of war transpiring here right now.
The feeling is so fragile, like there is something dark and terrible looming. You go to sleep with a pit in your stomach; you sleep with one eye open.
What will be? What will be? is the refrain in your head.
It feels like things are spinning out of control.
It feels, sadly, all too familiar — like from the era of Oct. 6.
Only now an Oct. 6 atmosphere with the added tension of the traumatized pain and suffering of bereaved families of the fallen, the pain and suffering of the hostage families — still waiting, their constant mental state stretched, on sharp edge, toyed with, potentially eroded.
Fragile.
In the media, Israeli society is barely hanging on by a thread, threatened to rip apart at any moment.
And the issues are profoundly real. With the highest stakes.
Military conscription is no longer a philosophical discussion. It is war time. The army is in need of soldiers.
However, the concept of military exemption is part of our tradition.
The Torah provides three examples of people who are in the midst of a process who are exempt from war.
The person who is in the process of harvesting and cultivating a vineyard; the person who is in process of building their home; and the person who is betrothed to be married.
In other words, people who are on the cusp of creating and building life and living.
The idea seems to be that somehow, a basic sense of living ought to concurrently continue even as the horror of war is transpiring on the war front.
In WW I, it was the many mothers, sisters and grandmothers who were left to hold down the home front, who filled the many absent agricultural and manufacturing jobs, valiantly continuing the routines of living while their men were away.
Perhaps this approach is one that emphasizes the importance of building life, even as the horror of war rages. Or perhaps it is a more practical approach, in considering life after the war, during a painful, lonely and anxiety-ridden time, still aiming to keep infrastructure humming along as much as possible.
The things is, these exemptions are meant for a volitional war (a concept I struggle with, war should be the absolute last resort and fought only when strictly necessary!), not exemptions for a war that is mandated by the Torah to fight, or an existential war of survival.
At those moments, the opposite is true, and exemptions fall by the wayside. The Torah, conveying the urgency and emergency of the moment, illustrates this with a tangible and intimate example instructing that in such a case of mandated war or existential war, even a groom from his own chuppah, must disrupt it to leave and join the war effort.
Every sector seems to have their bottom line that they won’t budge from. But this bottom line, this rigidity and inability to compromise, is only serving to sink the tensions ever deeper, the only bottom line being achieved is hitting rock bottom for all if Israel.
This is the constant message the news has been drumming. And that the renewed protests express.
The thing is, when you take a stroll through Jerusalem’s the Machane Yehuda souk, where you meet and interact with people of all kinds, when you walk through Jaffa Gate and through either the Muslim quarter or the Jewish quarter on your way to pray at the Wailing Wall, where a microcosm of the Jewish people gathers, when you go to your local grocery store to run some errands, or have a work meeting that includes a cross section of Israeli society, the interactions are very warmly convivial.
I won’t sugar coat the very real and justified underlying tensions that at times are palpable here. That are extremely worrying. In Israel we are witnessing so many changes at warped speed right now, it’s overwhelming and concerning.
I can’t say I am sure how it will all turn out. Or how the rifts will be healed.
Yet, civilian street life here has continued a layer of real life on the ground, that through the constant pain and fog of war and losses and hostages, still feels like the quotidian Israeli life, with its signature heimish “only in Israel” vibe.
That’s the Israel that I hope will ultimately prevail and, that as shaky as things can feel, I still have my eye on.
That’s the Israel I hope we will ultimately find a way to circle back to, creating and living together in a healthy, more balanced social contract of one nation, one family, building homes and planting vineyards, with our betrothed.
No grooms needing to disrupt their chuppahs.
Instead sounds of rejoicing to be heard in the hills of Jerusalem.
For now, the aza, the intensity, centering around Aza — Gaza — and seeping within Israeli society, burns.
© IJN 2025
