Unconditional love. How hard can it be? | Yona Bartal
A personal column for the Sukkot holiday, calling for listening and tolerance between different groups in Israeli society, especially ahead of the elections. The author suggests seeing the political rival as part of the same family and the same home, and encourages respectful dialogue instead of division and humiliation.
Yona Bartal writes a personal column for the Sukkot holiday, a few days after Yom Kippur. She describes the gap between the festive promises to improve and the daily reality where patience shortens and tones rise. The rarest resource, she says, is unconditional love – the ability to listen without preparing an answer that will crush the other. She notes that hatred toward Israel in the world is growing, but the real challenge is within the home: the debate takes place in the same family and the same country, and elections are approaching. Her call is to choose respectful dialogue, to see the person even when disagreeing with their opinion, and not to turn every dispute into a battle for the existence of the state. The sukkah, she says, symbolizes the possibility of sitting under the same roof even without agreeing on everything.