Before casting his vote in Israel’s first national election, Rabbi Moshe Yekutiel Alpert told off the polling committee. Its chairman was two minutes late.
On January 25, 1949, Alpert got up at 5:35 a.m., put on his Sabbath clothes, and headed to a polling station in Jerusalem. His home in Beit Yisrael had been damaged by shelling; he was staying elsewhere while it was repaired. He carried his Israeli identity card with the joy, he wrote, of carrying a Torah scroll during Simchat Torah celebrations.
He arrived at 5:50. The chairman appeared at 6:02. Alpert reminded him that proceedings were supposed to begin at six. The man apologized.
As the oldest person present, Alpert was invited to vote first at that station. He received voter number 1, said Shehecheyanu, was blessed the reach a special occasion, and cast his ballot. His father and grandfather had never had that opportunity.
I shared the story this week. The Jewish state was eight months old, and Alpert already expected it to run on time.
It's a familiar mix of reverence and impatience. Israelis can be fiercely attached to their country and furious with it, often in the same conversation. People expect a great deal from a place their families have paid a great deal for. From abroad, the anger can be easier to hear than the attachment.
Today, Jewish and Arab Israelis will again choose the people who govern them. I hope we allow ourselves a little of Alpert’s pleasure before we begin arguing about the exit polls. The ability to vote a government out is worth appreciating, including when the government we favor loses.
Israel needs several years where its citizens can make plans again
What I want from this election is a few years when Israelis can make plans again.
Three years after October 7, consider what that would mean for a reservist trying to keep a business alive. Someone has to cover the work while he is away. His spouse has to rearrange work and childcare. Eventually, decisions about next month become decisions about whether the business has a future.
Families rebuilding their homes need to know that funding and official attention will last until the work is finished. They should be able to plan around a budget that survives the next coalition dispute.
I believe only a broad Zionist government can give this country the political stability it needs for that work. Likud, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party, and other Zionist parties should negotiate an agreement to govern together for several years.
That will require leaders to sit with people they spent the campaign attacking and explain the arrangement to voters who believed them. Some will have to accept a job smaller than the one they wanted. They should tell us which demands they are prepared to set aside. I would find that interview considerably more useful than another account of why everything is someone else’s fault.
These concessions are hard for a reason. In Israel, a political allegiance often comes with a family history. It may include a grandparent’s experience of immigration, a parent’s sense of being looked down on, or a lasting belief that people like us were denied a fair hearing. Calling an entire camp ignorant or dangerous reaches well beyond the politician at its head.
An election settles who has the votes to govern. People still have to live together afterward. A citizen should be able to lose an election and feel at home in the country. Leaders who want a broad coalition must show they understand each other’s voters.
Start the negotiations by asking what 70 or 80 percent of Israelis could support. I would begin with security preparedness, restoring damaged communities and arrangements that let reservists serve without ruining their livelihoods. Agree on what can be done, how much it will cost, and who is responsible. Give ministers enough time in office to be judged on whether they delivered.
A coalition agreement might even contain a deadline unrelated to the next leadership rotation.
Independent October 7 commission must be part of coalition agreement
An independent, credible examination of October 7 must be part of that agreement. Families deserve to know how the state failed them. Officials and commanders need to answer for their decisions. A coalition assembled to restore public trust must accept findings that may be uncomfortable for its own members.
Before accepting another promise, I want to know whom that candidate appointed, what improved while they were in office, and what they did when something went wrong. The politician I like deserves the same questions. Newcomers can be judged on their experience and the seriousness of their plans.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, described Zionism in 1904 as “a never-ending ideal.” Even after the Jewish people obtained a homeland, he wrote, the pursuit of “ethical and spiritual fulfillment” would continue.
In our time, that responsibility includes the treatment of a bereaved family by a government office, the education available to a child far from the center of the country, and the willingness of a prime minister to accept scrutiny.
The late chief rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook, approached the problem from another direction. He wrote about the religious, national, and universal human concerns within Jewish society, arguing that each had value and could restrain the others’ excesses. He also understood how hostility between camps could consume them.
A religious minister and a secular mayor can have different ideas about the purpose of Jewish sovereignty and still agree on how to get a school built. They can resume the philosophical argument after the classrooms open.
The Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors has been meeting in Israel this week. The gathering brings Israeli leaders and Jews from abroad into the same room on the eve of the election.
Having spent years covering Jewish life abroad, I wish more Israelis cared about what those communities are trying to achieve. A minister visiting a Jewish school should ask how it keeps tuition affordable and what its pupils know about Israel. People who have to persuade families to choose a Jewish education have a great deal to teach us.
We Israelis often ask Jews abroad to understand the pressures we live under. We should also be equally willing to learn about the pressures they face. The government answers to Israel’s citizens; its decisions can still affect a Jewish family thousands of miles away.
The next prime minister should put regular consultations with Jewish communities abroad in the diary and give the relevant ministers responsibility for following up. The Jewish Agency and other communal bodies can bring in voices from beyond the familiar leadership circles. Publish the commitments, then report back to them on what happened.
I would put affordable opportunities to study and spend time in Israel high on that list. Help young immigrants find their feet here. Give young Israelis more chances to encounter Jewish life abroad. A friendship formed over a semester has time to develop beyond the positions people take in an argument about the news.
A Jewish child abroad should be able to grow into a relationship with Israel that lasts through several changes of government. She ought to have friends here, places she wants to revisit and enough knowledge to form her own opinions.
I want my own children to make their lives here, and I want them to be able to plan beyond the next emergency. They will have plenty to complain about. I would like them to grow up expecting a government to finish the work it starts.