Religious Zionism lost

We lost these elections and we lost big. We, the religious and Torah-observant public in Israel, lost. We, the national religious public, lost. We the religious Zionists, lost.

We lost because we were not smart enough to unite. The parties attacked one another; and the man on the street is really not interested in who or what is responsible for the divide, Uri Ariel, Yaakov Amidror or the politics of Zevulun Orlev. We lost because we were perceived as irrelevant. Habayit Hayehudi did not manage to generate the customary public search for a traditional Zionist home; and the National Union did not manage to present itself as an alternative to the large group of lovers of the Land of Israel, who do not pray in the synagogues of Ofra and Beit El.

We lost because we could not manage to force the Likud party to place Moshe Feiglin and Effi Eitam in respectable slots among senior party members. We lost because the possibility never even occurred to us that we could lead the nation. From the start, we defined ourselves as just an extraneous limb of the big parties.

But there is an even deeper reason for our loss. A reason that underlies all the ones I already listed. If we want to lead the nation, we must be capable of being more inclusive. We must emerge from our little bubble, open ourselves to addressing economic, social and environmental issues and be able to accept into our midst a much wider breadth of opinions.

In recent years, a number of controversies over important public issues simmered within the religious sector: the shmitta (sabbatical, when Torah ordains that the land should lie fallow), the heter mekhira (the temporary of sale of the land to a non-Jew to allow produce grown on the land during shmitta to be used) and yevul nokhri (produce grown on land owned by gentiles); a stringent or lenient approach to conversion; the advantages or disadvantages of a mixed society; the religious obligation or prohibition on visiting the Temple Mount, and the obligation or prohibition on refusing a military order. Our problem is the inability of each side to accept different views as legitimate: Anyone who dares to support refusing an order is destroying the fabric of the Jewish people; anyone who opposes refusing an order is mocking Torah scholars and collaborating with the disengagement; anyone who eats produce grown via the heter mekhira is mocking the Torah, and whoever eats produce purchased from gentiles is supporting Hamas.

But don't these voices exist simultaneously inside each and every one of us? Doesn't someone who supports refusing an army order also share a sense of how important it is to back the army? Doesn't someone who opposes refusing an order also feel the full intensity of the pain of uprooting? Don't we all want the shmitta to be expressed in the fullest way?

The same is true of the other issues. I was recently told about a rosh yeshiva (head of a yeshiva) who had heard that some of his yeshiva students visited the Temple Mount. The rosh yeshiva, who opposes such visits, gathered all of his students to hear a lecture by a guest rabbi about the severe prohibition on visiting the Temple Mount. Doesn't he know that there are other opinions? Does he think that his students don't know this? Wouldn't there have been much greater educational benefit to inviting rabbis with differing views and presenting their various positions to the students?

Our inability to welcome diverse opinions and appreciate the many different sides of our dilemmas is the main cause of our community's inability to unite and our unpreparedness to lead. If we are incapable of hearing all sides of our own internal dilemmas, how will be able to respond to the distress of the poor man or of the environmental advocate? Social organizations such as Ma'agalei Tzedek and Torah core groups in development towns were not featured in the election campaign. Inclusiveness means understanding that Rabbi Yuval Cherlow is not a reform rabbi and Rabbi Dov Lior is not a fascist. Baruch Marzel is not the bitterest enemy of Zionism, just as Zevulun Orlev is not trying to ingratiate himself with liberals. The day we realize that all of these people are acting for the sake of heaven and all their efforts stem from their desire to worship God and serve His people, and we invest our efforts in developing a leadership with a broad perspective, is the day we will also have a chance to lead.

The author is the director of the Temple Institute.