The Shepherd We Keep Forgetting 

If you follow My statutes and observe My commandments and perform them, I will give your rains in their time, the Land will yield its produce, and the tree of the field will give forth its fruit. And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten [you]; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your land. (Parshat Bechukotai, Vayikra 26:3-4,6) 

It’s election season again, and once more Israelis are being told that salvation is only one ballot away. 

One side promises a continuation of the last four years. The other promises a return to the years before that. Every campaign insists that this time will be different, that this coalition or that coalition will finally deliver security, prosperity, and stability. 

Yet beneath the arguments, speeches, and endless television panels, many Israelis feel something much deeper than political frustration. They feel exhaustion. 

For nearly eighty years, this country has lived in a state of tension that never truly ends. Wars begin and pause, but never fully disappear. Terror rises and falls like a fever that refuses to leave the body. Parents send children into the army while wondering whether their grandchildren will one day fight the same battles on the same soil. 

At times, it feels as though the nation is wandering in circles, like a flock moving endlessly through the desert while searching for a shepherd it no longer recognizes. 

And despite all our extraordinary achievements, despite the booming high-tech industry and military brilliance that astonishes the world, ordinary Israelis still struggle beneath the surface. Young couples wonder whether they will ever afford homes. Families feel crushed by the cost of living. Reserve soldiers leave businesses, wives, and children behind for months at a time while politicians argue on television. 

Something about the equation is not working. 

The Illusion of Endless Peace Processes 

For decades, the world has offered Israel the same solution in different packaging. More negotiations. More concessions. More diplomacy. More pressure to divide the land in exchange for promises written on paper. 

But what exactly has this process produced? 

The two-state solution, as it has evolved in practice, asks Israel to permanently coexist beside forces that openly declare their desire to destroy it. Even after decades of negotiations, withdrawals, aid packages, and international summits, the hatred has not disappeared. 

Egypt eventually chose stability over war. Jordan did the same. The Emirates pursued prosperity instead of perpetual conflict, and Saudi Arabia appears to be moving in that direction as well. Yet  Palestinians from Hamas and Hezbollah to Fatah and Al-Aqsa brigade still want to keep fighting  . . . after 80 years.  

Why? 

Because you cannot solve a spiritual and ideological war through bureaucratic agreements alone. You cannot negotiate away a worldview that sees your very existence as intolerable.  

Yet the nations of the world continue to demand the same formula repeatedly. America wants stability. Europe wants calm. The United Nations wants a manageable Middle East. But what they call peace, is really peace for them, but not for us.  

A Palestinian state in a constant state of war with us means we are still dependent on America for aid, Europe for passivity, and the UN to resolve things. Dependent like a colony.  

Many Israelis sense this contradiction instinctively. They may not express it in religious language, but they feel that the nation is trapped inside a cycle that no political party truly knows how to escape. 

The Promise Hidden in Plain Sight 

Thousands of years ago, the Torah presented a radically different model for Jewish survival. 

In Parshat Bechukotai, Hashem does something astonishing. He makes concrete national promises to the people of Israel. If we follow His Torah, He promises security in the Land, prosperity, abundance, and victory over our enemies who are far greater in numbers and strength. 

The IDF fights heroically. The Shin Bet and Mossad perform operations that seem almost beyond human capability. Israel’s military intelligence penetrates enemy networks with astonishing precision. Hezbollah itself has described Israeli surveillance abilities as nearly omniscient. 

Yet omniscience is not omnipotence. 

Our enemies, fighting for 80 years, are still fighting. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran are still trying to kill us. Our military might, which has compromised and weakened them, has not finished them off.  

They will never make peace with us. No military, technology, or political leader has ever or can  ever eliminate them.  

Hashem promises our enemies will not be a threat to us. Every day, right at the beginning of  Pesukei D’Zimra, we recite: Blessed is He Who speaks and does. Blessed is He Who decrees and fulfills.  

Why do we continue to put our faith in leaders who have never delivered? Why do we hope in men who can never deliver? 

The War Beneath the Headlines 

The Nation of Israel was not created simply to build another economy, another army, or another successful democracy. Those things matter, but they are not the center of the story.  

The center of the story is our covenant with Hashem.  

This idea makes many uncomfortable because it demands something deeper than nationalism. It demands purpose. 

And perhaps that is why so many Israelis feel spiritually exhausted even while living in one of the strongest Jewish states in history. A nation cannot build its identity entirely around enemies, trauma, and military resilience.  

We are the Children of Israel. Our mission is to fulfill the Torah of Israel in the Land of Israel to serve the God of Israel.  

This is the deeper battle unfolding beneath Israeli politics. It is not merely Right versus Left, religious versus secular, or coalition versus opposition. 

It is despair versus destiny. 

Do we see ourselves as a small nation trapped forever in an impossible region, dependent on foreign approval and endless military vigilance? Or do we believe that the same God who returned His people to their land after two thousand years will continue to bless us as He promises many times in the Torah? 

Returning to the Shepherd 

Teshuva is often misunderstood as merely correcting sins or becoming more religious. But at its deepest level, teshuva means return. A return to identity. A return to purpose. A return to the Shepherd we keep forgetting while wandering through the noise of politics, fear, and endless conflict. 

This does not begin only in yeshivot or synagogues. It begins in ordinary life: in honesty, in Shabbat, in prayer, in learning Torah, in rediscovering what it means to be a Jewish people instead of just a Jewish population. 

The politicians promise management. Hashem promises transformation. 

The nations promise temporary arrangements. His Torah promises eternal blessing. 

Politicians make promises they know they cannot keep, and we grasp onto any illusion of hope by deluding ourselves into thinking they can keep them.  

The Shepherd of Israel never abandoned His flock. Iran fired 1,600 missiles at Israel in the last war. There were less causalities on our side than there was from a single Iranian missile attack on Iraq in 1983. 

The real question facing Israel in this election is not which party will save the nation. 

The question is whether we are ready to remember Who always did. 

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