Putting Our Actions Where Our Prayers Lie

In the summer now and in the Selichos recitations leading up to Rosh Hashana, we mourn the loss of the temple. Yet when the remains of the temple are being destroyed before our very eyes, what do we do? Where are the massive protests and the rallies? The gay parade, as abominable as that was, seemed to excite far more outrage than a desecration of the temple itself. If the outrage was truly over the kedusha of Yerushalayim, then where are the massive protests now from the Haredi world or from any other?

Instead it seems the religious communities are each preoccupied with their own issues, from settlements to religious affairs budgets. Each community fights for its own but all the religious communities are not prepared to rally together to fight even for the remains of the Bayit. And if they are not prepared to do unify even around that, then why pray expecting it to be rebuilt?

The symptom of the disease is a complete lack of unity. We are not a nation. If we were then no force on earth could move us. Instead we are a collection of special interest groups, a collection of communities, alphabet organizations and causes that overlap only in fighting and in occasionally providing aid to each other. The picture of the Jewish world looks much as it did at the end of Bayit Sheini.

The "Divide and Conquer" that has so spectacularly shredded Israel and the Jewish consensus in support of Israel, abroad... occurred precisely because of that. The Labor Party was so desperate for relevance and to stay in power that Rabin endorsed Peres' wholesale adoption of a New Left platform to negotiate with the PLO and grant them a state within Israeli territory.

Despite general opposition and skepticism to the plan, it proceeded because multiple parties and MK's could be bought off, because they put personal and communal interests ahead of the welfare of the nation and the Jewish people. Today the Olmert government which the entire nation virtually without exception considers an unmitigated disasters and wants gone, remains in power for much the same reason.

To paraphrase the words of Tanach, There was no King in Israel and so each man did what he wished. Today that remains true. We have a government but no king, not a corrupt king of flesh and blood, who lives and dies, but G-d as our King. Today the House of G-d continues to be assailed. If we are serious about our prayers, then it is time for all the scattered religious communities in Israel, Haredi and National Religious, Chassidish and all the others to put their actions where their prayers lie.