Hatanu Lefanecha

Tonight begins Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar — and, for many Jews, the only time of year they will set foot in a synagogue. (Or whatever theater, church, or community annex the synagogue rents to accommodate the annual crowd.) It is the first Yom Kippur since Israel began its slaughter in Gaza, in revenge for the Hamas attack at the tail end of last year’s holiday season. It comes amid the quickly escalating Israeli invasion of Lebanon — an invasion in which both civilian population centers and now U.N. peacekeepers are coming under Israeli fire. And of course, just weeks before the votes are counted in an epochal presidential election.

In other words, it will be an uncomfortable evening for many of us.

I’m sure there have been other times in the annals of Jewish history when our communities have been as divided as they are now. But not in my lifetime, and probably not in the direct memories of anyone currently living.

I got a reminder of that when on Monday. I sent out this newsletter with a brief marker of the Oct. 7 anniversary, only to get a handful of unsubscriptions from offended readers. One literally just wrote that: “Offended.” Another said: “I am shocked Jonathan that on October 7 when 12,000 (sic) of your fellow Jews were butchered that you write a column like this I’m extremely disappointed so I am unsubscribing as a progressive Jew.”

Pardon the pedantry, but not only does that overstate the death toll of the Oct. 7 attacks by more than a factor of ten — the actual official death toll was 1,139, with 251 Israeli and foreign hostages taken to Gaza. And b) not only does it try to make the instigating death toll commensurate with the skyrocketing death toll in Gaza — over 41,000 according to the health ministry, with as many as 186,000 total deaths potentially attributable to Israeli actions according to the Lancet medical journal. But it also erases the identities of dozens of those killed, including at least twenty-one Bedouins and thirty-nine Thai, ten Nepalese, four Filipino, and one Cambodian foreign workers and exchange students who died that day. It also papers over the fact — likely not known to the ex-subscriber — that a still-unknown number were killed by Israeli security forces on orders to prevent hostages from being taken back to Gaza, as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in July. (These are all things you can learn by subscribing to and reading this newsletter!)

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