During the snowy winter season, a Jewish tourist once arrived at a resort on the heights of the Swiss Alps and settled in one of the famous hotels there. Before leaving, he complained to the hotel administrator about the anti-Semitic behavior of one member of the staff. The director raised an eyebrow surprisingly and said: "Anti-Semitism in our hotel? During tourist season?!"
This anecdote was brought to mind in wake of the announcement of the Blue-White political party determining that the campaign for the upcoming elections will eschew anti-chareidi propaganda. In the previous elections, their slogan was "A United Secular Government," which raised acerbic criticism. The rejection of the chareidi public and incitement against it activated bells of alarm.
Chareidi Jewry, fully aware that Lapid and Lieberman were stoking the furnace which sought to incinerate and efface every vestige of a rule of Halacha from Zion, found itself in the Rightist bloc, attempting to defend the vestiges of Judaism within the public domain. Even though in its political views it does not necessarily lean to the Right and perhaps even to the opposite pole, while United Torah Jewry does not lean to the Right or the Left but, according to its name, is a party founded to protect Jewish tradition and values — it was forced to distance itself from the Left which traditionally has an agenda of "Jewry like all nations," erasing the special status of the Jewish people.
Upon this background, the ridiculous announcement of Blue White determines that they did not learn a lesson; they're still the same as before. In order to maintain balance and arrive at some conclusion, the parties will have to talk about qualitative issues and values, and reveal what their platform is vis a vis economic, social, defense and diplomatic matters.
This is primarily a time when the two parties will realize what President Trump understood. Last week, a ground-shaking announcement was released: "In order to fight BDS, Trump will recognize Jewry as a nationality." Perhaps the President doesn't even understand why and to what extent this imports, but he was right! In the mirror of history, there is only one way of creating nationality: a group of people who have a shared territory, a shared language and a united national definition, [rightfully] becomes one of the recognized families on earth.
With regard to the real Jewish nation, territory, language and national identity are irrelevant. One can be a fine Jew without any of these. We are a people because of and through our Torah.
