To speak about Israel today is to walk into fire.
No matter what you say, it is not enough—or it is too much. You must choose a side. Declare your allegiance. Make it simple. Say the right words in the right order, or risk being cast out.
But Israel is not simple. It never has been. And the refusal to hold complexity—both from those who attack Israel from the outside and from those who tear it apart from within—is perhaps the greatest threat we face.
It has been 500 days since October 7th.
500 days since the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Since families were burned alive in their homes. Since children were taken hostage. Since entire communities were wiped out.
500 days of war—not just in Gaza, but against Hezbollah in the north, against attacks from Syria, against the Houthis in the Red Sea, against Iran’s proxies wherever they strike.
500 days of defending not just our borders, but our right to exist at all.
For 500 days, we have been told that this is simple. That there is a clear oppressor and a clear victim. That history does not matter, that context is irrelevant, that our survival itself is an act that must be justified.
But truth does not live in slogans. It cannot be flattened into a hashtag, twisted into propaganda, weaponized into a talking point. It does not fit into a single sentence, a single chant, a single demand.
Because truth—real truth—has always lived in the place where certainty fails.
In the space between darkness and light.
In the struggle.
In the Arafel.
The Human Mind and the Desire for Clarity
Last week, in a clinical course on mental health, I sat with rabbis who have spent their lives immersed in halakha, grappling with the complexities of human experience. The psychologist leading the session said something profound—not about politics, not about theology, but about the human mind itself: “The human personality always longs for unity. For coherence. For something whole.”
We want to see ourselves as singular, as consistent. We want to feel like one person, undivided, with a story that makes sense. But life does not work that way.
We hold contradictions within us. We change, we struggle, we wrestle with different parts of ourselves. There is always a tension between who we are and who we want to be, between what we know and what we feel.
And what is true for a single person is also true for the world.
From the moment of creation, the world was separated—light from darkness, land from sea. The very fabric of existence is rupture.
The Torah of the Arafel
This past week’s Torah reading speaks of Arafel, the thick cloud that covered Mount Sinai when the Torah was given. It was a moment of total revelation—when the Divine voice rang out, when truth itself seemed undeniable.
“And all the people saw the sounds, and the thunder, and the lightning, and the mountain in smoke; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and they stood at a distance.” (Exodus 20:15)
They saw sound. Rashi explains that in that moment, all sensory barriers were removed - sound could be seen, sight could be tasted. Reality itself was laid bare. Never before in human history had there been such absolute clarity.
And yet.
Moses saw nothing.
While the people stood bathed in revelation, seeing with a clarity beyond human comprehension, Moses walked into darkness. Into obscurity. Into the place where vision fails.
“And Moses approached the thick cloud…” (Exodus 20:18)
And then, the words that change everything—
”…where God was.”
Where was God?
Not in the total clarity.
Not in the light.
But in the Arafel.
The people, in their moment of ultimate revelation, thought they stood at the very heart of truth.
But they stood at a distance.
And Moses, stepping forward into the unknown, was the one who came closest.
Because the Torah is teaching us something devastatingly profound -
If you think you see with perfect clarity, if you think you have grasped truth in its entirety, you are still standing far away.
But if you step into the uncertainty… into the questions… into the darkness where nothing is certain -
That is where God is.
That is where truth is found.
A World That Seeks Simplicity
For much of the world, Israel must fit into a binary: oppressor or oppressed. Colonizer or colonized. Power or victimhood.
And so, they erase everything that complicates the narrative. They erase the fact that Israel did not start this war. That Hamas initiated October 7th with atrocities that defy language— babies burned alive, families slaughtered in their homes, children orphaned in an instant. That more Jews were murdered on that day than on any day since the Holocaust.
They erase the fact that Hamas fires rockets from schools and hospitals while burrowing tunnels beneath Gaza—not for shelter, but for terror. They erase that Hamas has no intention of building a state, only of destroying one.
To acknowledge these facts would be to accept that there is no easy answer. No clear moral calculation. And so, the world does what it always does—it demands that Israel be the sole bearer of complexity while granting simplicity to those who seek its destruction.
Israel is expected to fight an enemy that hides behind civilians, yet somehow remain beyond reproach. It is expected to defend itself, yet be condemned for every measure it takes to do so.
It is expected to protect its people while being told it has no right to exist at all.
This is not about criticism of Israeli policy. This is about a fundamental refusal to acknowledge the reality of what Israel faces.
Because to hold complexity would mean acknowledging that the images of suffering in Gaza—real suffering, real loss, real grief—do not exist in a vacuum. That Hamas thrives on that suffering. That it engineers it. That it uses human shields not as a desperate tactic, but as a strategy—because it relies on the world’s refusal to hold complexity.
And that strategy works.
Because the world sees an image of a bombed building but not the terror tunnels beneath it. It sees the grief of a Palestinian mother but not the weapons stored in her apartment block. It sees the suffering but not the system of terror that created it.
And so, the world chants. It marches. It calls for the destruction of a nation it does not understand.
It demands that Israel lay down its arms against a genocidal enemy.
It demands that we cease to exist—not in so many words, but in every demand that would make survival impossible.
And all of this is because the world refuses to enter the Arafel.
The Arafel Within Israel
The arafel—the thick cloud of uncertainty—is not just something imposed on Israel from the outside. It is within Israel itself.
Israel is a country of extraordinary unity in times of war. When the crisis began, people who had bitterly opposed each other came together—volunteering, fighting, grieving as one. But as the crisis began to recede, we saw the fractures re-emerging in full force. Protesters returning to the streets. Deep anger resurfacing. The old divisions pressing back into view.
This has always been a country of contradiction. A nation built not on sameness, but on a people pulled from exile—different lands, different histories, different dreams of what this place was meant to be. A country that has survived not by resolving its contradictions, but by carrying them.
And yet, in this moment, those contradictions do not feel like something we carry. They feel like something pulling us apart.
The secular and the religious. Each feeling threatened by the other’s vision for the country.The left and the right. Each seeing the other as an existential threat.
The battle over democracy and identity. Over who holds power, and how it should be used. Over whether Israel is first a Jewish state, or first a democracy.
The divide between those who serve in the army and those who do not. Between those who bear the burden of defence and those who live under its protection.
The growing distrust in Israel’s institutions—the army, the courts, the government itself. Some see them as the necessary foundations of a functioning state. Others see them as broken beyond repair.
The fractures are deepening. And as in the world outside, the refusal to hold complexity has become a crisis of its own.
Each side speaks in absolutes. Each side insists that the other is destroying the country. The secular declare that the religious are dragging Israel toward theocracy. The religious insist that the secular are erasing the soul of the Jewish state. The left sees the right as authoritarian; the right sees the left as traitorous.
But having a vision does not mean refusing complexity. And seeking truth does not mean denying the tension that has always defined this people and this land.
Israel was not founded on a single, rigid idea. It was built on a covenant—given at Sinai, carried across generations, debated and wrestled with, shaped by history yet never abandoned. A vision vast enough to hold contradiction, strong enough to withstand time, demanding enough to resist simplicity.
And the moment we forget that—when we demand total victory over our fellow Jews, when we start to believe that the nation can only be saved if the other side is defeated—we begin to destroy the very thing we are trying to protect.
Stepping Into the Arafel
We are in the Arafel now.
The world demands simple answers. Inside Israel, we do the same - dividing into sides, refusing to hold complexity.
But these are false choices: security or morality, religion or democracy, tradition or change.
Truth is not found in these simplifications. Truth is not found in certainty.
Truth is found in the Arafel.
Moshe did not fear the Arafel. He walked into it.
So must we.
Not only Israel. Not only the Jewish people. But all those who have been handed certainty and told it was truth. All those who have been given simplicity and called it wisdom.
Because even in the fog—Sham haElokim.
That is where God is.
And that is where we must be.