Last week, a Chabad Hassidic group's rabbinical court forbade the movement's representative in Nepal, Hanni Lifshitz, from part taking in the traditional torch-lighting ceremony that kicks off the Independence Day celebrations.
How has Israeli society become so polarized? How have we come to this point where an ultra-Orthodox group openly forbids its members from identifying with the State of Israel?
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Chabad member Hani Lifshitz was barred from participating in the traditional torch-lighting ceremony in Mount Herzl
The week, bookended by two memorial days, one for the victims of the Holocaust and the other for those who perished while defending our nation, I am forced to contemplate the meaning of my Jewish-Israeli identity.
My mother, Hana Reizel Farkash, may she rest in peace, a Holocaust survivor who was raised in an ultra-Orthodox family in Transylvania and like many other Hassidic Jews in Europe, dressed ultra-Orthodox and lead an ultra-Orthodox way of life.
She survived 11 concentration camps between 1944 and 1945 and was freed by the Russian Red Army from captivity at Theresienstadt. My family lost 75 of its members during the Holocaust. Only six survived, among them my parents.
On the day she was freed, my mother woke up in a crowded barracks where she and 200 other women were interned. The guards were gone and a ray of sunlight, the first she had seen in a year, broke through a crevice in the fence.
My mother walked outside and knelt on the muddy earth, asking God: "What have you done? What has happened to my family? Why have I survived?"
It was at that moment that she decided she would not turn her back on her faith and would continue to maintain a religious way of life.
The survivors who went home to Romania to search for family members settled down and bore children. The first to be born after the Holocaust. I was one of them. Our parents saw us as miracles. Proof that the Jewish nation had survived extermination.
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The torch-lighting ceremony on Israel's 72nd Independence Day
(Photo: Herzliya Studios)
Life as a Jew in a communist country was difficult and our dream of immigrating to the newly established State of Israel came true after 13 long years. We traveled by train and by ship and in February 1962, we finally reached these shores, excited to build our future in an independent nation.
We struggled with the language, assimilation, and the cultural differences between us and our new neighbors, proud to serve in the military and take part in celebrating our Jewish and Israeli identity. When I got promoted to general in the IDF, my mother, her eyes filled with tears, told me: "Now I understand why I survived."
Israel as a melting pot brought out the best in us and helped us succeed as a nation. And then the coronavirus pandemic hit.
The deadly virus exposed our strengths as well as our weaknesses.
It brought the question of our identity as Jews and Israelis to the fold.
How is it possible that an ultra-Orthodox Israeli like Lifshitz was prevented from taking pride in her work for the benefit of her compatriots?
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IAF planes salute Israel's hleathcare workers on Independence Day
(Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Now, we have an opportunity to redefine how we all, religious and secular, can live here together with a common purpose. We must use the coronavirus crisis to create a social bond in society.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders who refuse to recognize the modern State of Israel, its symbols, and institutions must choose to be part of a country that Lifshitz can be honored in and in which she can take pride.
We have gathered here from the four corners of the Earth to build a society in which all members can enjoy security and prosperity.
Such a society can exist only when we find common ground uniting our Jewish and democratic values.