Who will live and who will die?" These words, at the heart of the Yom Kippur prayers, echo across the Jewish world uniting Israel and the diaspora. Yet there is a deep chasm separating the experience of Yom Kippur in the sovereign Jewish state and elsewhere.
In London, New York and Paris, while it is Yom Kippur in every synagogue, outside it's just another day, with all the usual hustle and bustle. Whereas, at the same time in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Modi'in, it seems as if the world has stopped, or at least paused to catch its breath from our frenetic pace of life. Not everyone is in synagogue, but no one is at work. The shops and cinemas are closed, Israeli TV and radio are silent and the streets are devoid of motor vehicles. Yom Kippur in Israel is a calm day, almost serene.
It is also boom time for bicycles. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so the absence of cars on the road is filled by children peddling up and down the streets of Israel on their bikes. Indeed, the loudest noise you are likely to hear on Yom Kippur is the ring of the bell on a child's bicycle.
However, back in 1973, the wailing sirens drowned out the bicycle bells as Israel was forced to respond to the surprise attack from Egypt and Syria. Trucks pulled up outside synagogues and took young Israelis straight to the front line. Defence Minister, Moshe Dayan, intoned that the very existence of "the Third Temple" was in danger. Over 2,600 Israelis died and more than 9,000 were wounded. Although Israel won, it remains a powerful national trauma, etched deeply in the collective psyche.
In the diaspora, Yom Kippur is a time of personal reckoning; in Israel it is also a time of national reckoning. Every year, the media sit in judgment on the military and political leaders of 1973, analysing and re-analysing the causes of the "mechdal" - the intelligence failure responsible for Israel's state of unpreparedness. The problem was not a lack of information, but a matter of interpretation. Israel's leaders did not believe Egypt and Syria would attack because the military balance favoured Israel. They were prisoners of this concept, which blinded them to the possibility that Egypt's strategy might be based on a different premise, as indeed it was.
In Israel Yom Kippur is a time of national reckoning
The War was a watershed. Israelis shook off the self-satisfied aura that reigned following the Six Day War and became less deferential to their political leaders. The public became more politically active and the courts and media more willing to challenge the government, all of which helped to improve the quality of both our democracy and security. Indeed, at the heart of Israel's hyper-argumentative political culture is the implicit belief that only a full-blooded airing of the issues, sparing the sensibilities of no-one, can prevent potentially fatal false ideas from holding sway.
Paradoxically, the resolve to remain ever-vigilant is matched by an equally strong determination to preserve and cultivate the small pleasures of everyday life. Hamas and Hezbollah lack the military capability to destroy Israel; they know Israel is stronger. But they seek to wear Israelis down with on-going attacks, to demoralise the people, hoping that this will result in the eventual collapse of the state from within. Embedded within a murderous dysfunctional region, remaining positive, "keeping calm and carrying on," are thus strategic imperatives for Israel.
One person who embodied this was Shimon Peres: the father of Israel's nuclear deterrent who became a relentless seeker of peace and an unrepentant optimist who radiated positivity and never lost his youthful enthusiasm for life. At his funeral, President Obama quoted Moses's speech to the Children of Israel prior to their entry into the Promised Land. Laid out before the people is the choice between good and bad, life and death, just as in the Yom Kippur service. Moses urges them to "choose life". Obama suggested that this phrase encapsulated Peres. He was right.
This, albeit by a circuitous route, brings me back to bicycles on Yom Kippur. Some might consider this phenomenon deeply disrespectful of the holiest day of the Jewish year. But I don't see it like that. As I glance through the window of our shul as we approach the end of the fast, I see a pile of bikes in the courtyard; a stream of children and parents enter to hear the shofar. While the shofar calls us to reflect and remain vigilant, the children of Israel on their bicycles symbolises our gentle affirmation of life.
