On Trust And Teamwork

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

First, a few housekeeping notes:

1. MAZL — my new Magazine of the American Zionist Left — launched today with a poignant essay — Pretend You're A Tourist — by Alice Gomstyn. It’s about the strange cognitive dissonance that comes, for American Jews, from being at once long-time citizens of the U.S. and strangers in a strange land.
   
   If you’re a left-leaning Zionist with an essay of your own, please drop me a note! As I wrote in my welcome letter from the site, I am happy to link to your own substack, patreon or other platform whenever publishing your work.
   

2. The publication schedule of Never Alone will be shifted to a more organic frequency, rather than every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. With the advent of MAZL and a very exciting and huge new project I hope to tell you about soon, I need to write Never Alone whenever I have something pressing to say — which I hope and believe will still be serveral times a week! — rather than on a fixed and pressured schedule.
   

3. For months, I have been grappling with the question of how to bring Israelis into the Never Alone Book Club. Until now, the events have taken place almost exclusively on Thursday evenings, at 5 pm on the west coast and 8 pm in the east.
   
   But this time slot excludes Israelis completely and there was been increasing clamor in response to that.
   
   Recently it was suggested to me that we move the events to 10 am on Sunday morning for those on the west coast, which would mean 1 pm in NYC and 8 pm in Israel. I’m open to the possibility of making this switch but wanted to find out how all of you feel about that.
   
   Please, if you would, weigh in on the issue in the poll below.

Thank you so much in advance to all who assist with this decision!

Okay, onto the news:

Israel’s situation could hardly be more painful as the war in Gaza rages on with no end in sight. The civilian toll in Gaza is soul-crushing even to huge swaths of the most passionate Zionists, including me. And yet, it’s impossible to know what Israel should do. If we get our hostages back at the cost of letting Hamas continue to rule Gaza, then what will ever change in the region?

We all saw exactly what Hamas will do if it’s allowed to cross the border into Israel and if materials it can use to fuel terror are allowed to come in, so if Hamas remains in power, then so too the wall will remain, the blockade will remain, the checkpoints will remain, the reign of terror will remain, and the billions of international aid will continue to be funneled not into civic infrastructure but into weapons of destruction to be wielded against the Jews.

The Gazans who want to live, who favor co-existence, who want a future for their children and dare to say so, will continue to be tortured and murdered. Every dollar spent to re-build Gaza will be wasted on the cycle of violence, on the inevitable return to square zero.

One huge problem that remains for Israel, regardless of what course she takes, is the pervasive distrust in Netanyahu throughout the country. He has such a personal and pressing incentive to keep the war going at any cost, in order to avoid arrest, that no one can trust his decisions, right or wrong.

Here’s a suggestion that I haven’t heard and which I hope to put into circulation: would Bibi’s enemies, as a matter of pragmatic necessity, consider promising him legal immunity in exchange for stepping aside? I believe Israelis would be much more inclined to unify and follow someone like Yoav Gallant into any course of action. At least we would know that his direction would truly be intended to serve the good of Israel, rather than himself.

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And finally, a little more about my Sar-El saga:

We arrived at the base much later than planned because of the missile strike. Our madrichot gave us IDF uniforms and told us that we would only be doing around a half day of work that first day because we’d lost so much time.

They led us over to a truck in the parking lot. It was filled with heavy boxes, which we needed to unload into a warehouse. And it was during this first work session that we discovered two things:

1. This week would include serious manual labor; and

2. We were an incredible team of workers.

Within minutes, we switched from method one, in which everyone grabbed a box, walked it across the lot, and set it down along the back wall of the warehouse to method two, where we formed a brigade stretching from the truck to the storage area.

The brigade was stunningly efficient. The boxes flew off the truck in the steadiest, lightning-fast stream and were stacked in the back without anyone needing to walk more than ten feet.

Even the very heaviest boxes, which would have been hard to carry for any real distance, were easily passed from one set of hands to another.

Here I have to give credit where it’s due: the Evangelicals were incredible workers. They were enthused, cheerful, gung-ho, even ecstatic — and this was very infectious. The anxiety I felt about being among the older volunteers doing a very physically demanding job just vanished — and the harder and heavier the work, the more euphoric I felt.

There was a rule at Sar-El that the volunteers were not to say a single word on the topic of either religion or politics. We were cautioned ahead of time that people from every political demographic would be working together and things would go much better if we simply abstained from these subjects.

This felt very freeing at the outset. I felt nothing but love and admiration for the Evangelicals in the group, though I suspected I would abhor their politics. The absence of politics in conversation allowed us to bond over our shared love of Israel in a way that felt profoud and potent. And it made us a very powerful team.

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Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you soon, though I won’t try to say precisely when.

Thanks so everyone giving MAZL a try!

Heartfelt love to all of you.

Am Yisrael Chai.