Unprecedented polarization, or has Israel been here before? With Meir Soloveichik

Are you pessimistic about Israel’s future? Optimistic? Or somewhere in between? My new book – which I co-authored with Saul Singer – will you give you reasons for optimism. And there is a special pre-order campaign for my loyal podcast listeners. If you order the book between now and this Friday, simply email confirmation of your purchase to [email protected] and we’ll email you right back a special chapter sampler (in the form of a PDF document) that deals with some of the issues being debated in Israel – and about Israel – now. It may seem that everyone around you is arguing about what is happening in Israel, and this chapter sampler will give you the relevant historical context for these discussions. If you spent time at synagogue over Rosh Hashana this past weekend, chances are you heard a sermon about Israel. Many rabbis – in services across the U.S. and the broader Diaspora – focused on the challenges facing Israel today (specifically, internal challenges). What so many are talking about is the unprecedented polarization over reforms to Israel’s judiciary. But it goes beyond that. This unprecedented division is really about competing – perhaps irreconcilable - visions, for what it means to have a Jewish sovereign democracy. Today — and in the chapter sampler we will send you — we focus on whether these events are actually unprecedented. Is Israel facing unprecedented division? We do not think it is. Israel has been deeply divided before. And just as these divisions in previous eras appeared to push Israel to the brink, Israelis somehow pulled back, and their country hung together. The next book by Saul Singer and me is focused on Israel’s societal resilience. It’s called: “The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World.” There are a lot of areas and metrics we discovered in writing this book that spoke to the health and vibrancy of Israeli society. But there is one chapter, in particular, that speaks to this period in which there seems to be a sense of despair about what is happening in Israel. In this chapter, Saul and I look at Israel’s history and show that there have been comparable periods of despair. This is the chapter we will send you today to read in advance of the book’s publication. Today’s guest, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, has strong views on Israel’s history and its relevance to the current moment. He is the senior rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in Manhattan, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. He is also director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University. Rabbi Soloveichik has a must-listen daily podcast called Bible 365, and he writes a monthly column in Commentary magazine, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Mosaic, the Jewish Review of Books, and many other outlets. He is also the author of a superb book of his own, called “Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship.”