The People of Israel are one body: everyone remembered we are all limbs to one another

This week, seventy-eight years after its establishment, the State of Israel 'discovered' the secular public. It turns out they were here the whole time — paying taxes, doing reserve duty, inventing technologies, developing universities, and working in medicine. And then someone noticed the suitcases by the door, and from that moment on, there is no end to the displays of affection. Overnight, they were upgraded from 'disconnected leftists' to 'dear brothers' — brotherhood at an emergency rate.

Gevalt, the secular are leaving. Until recently, the emigrant was a national joke. Went to Berlin because of 'Milky' — spoiled, detached. They called him 'yored' (one who descends), without judgment, heaven forbid, just a word in Hebrew that is entirely judgment. And then the data was published, more than a quarter of a million in three years, and the joke was frozen. The People of Israel are one body, they suddenly remembered, we are all limbs to one another.

And if one body, then one brain, and the brain, as is known, has two lobes. The right is in charge of vision, faith, and the big picture. The left, known in our parts as 'leftist,' received the leftovers: language, arithmetic, logic, fine print. Between the two bridges the corpus callosum, two hundred million coordination fibers. In Israel, it has been under renovation since 2023. And then one morning, the left lobe files a request for a Portuguese passport, and the skull is in turmoil. In the right lobe, the standard proposal is already rising: let it go, who needs it, a lobotomy.

Fifty-fifty, but with the exclusion of women — a surprisingly generous deal is now on the table. You will bring the taxes, the reserve duty, the medicine, and the exits, we will bring the vision and the redemption. And if the left lobe dares to ask for partnership in the vision, an independent Supreme Court, universal conscription, public transportation, or just, heaven forbid, coffee on Saturday, it will be explained to it with condescending patience that it does not understand the mental structure. Neurology knows the structure: in a right-sided injury, the patient stops seeing the left side, eats half a plate, draws half a clock, and is sure that nothing is missing.

Equality in the burden will be discussed in a committee, the committee will be established after the holidays, and the holidays this year last a year. There is no point in looking for the Haredim and the Arabs in the panic columns, they are hiding there under the code name 'demography.' Your great-grandfather did not dare to dream of a traffic jam on the Ayalon Highway. True. But someone who is packing does not compare himself to the shtetl of his great-grandfather. He compares a kindergarten to Toronto 2026, and the result, how to put it, is not flattering because the secular person is an 'empty wagon.' That was decided seventy years ago at that meeting with 'The Old Man.' An empty wagon, hedonistic, chasing low-cost deals. It's just a pity that no one bothered to look at the cargo. Spinoza is traveling there, the greatest of Jewish philosophers, who was excommunicated in real-time — the excommunication is still in effect, by the way, humanity managed. Herzl, a Viennese journalist who did not wait for the Messiah, simply scheduled a meeting in Basel. And with them Einstein, Mendelssohn, and Freud, because the secular shelf does not check for a kashrut certificate at the entrance. Goods that all of humanity lives on to this day, in a wagon declared empty.

And it takes rare self-confidence to stand before this shelf, in the name of the wagon full of rulings on Shmita, Niddah, and Eruv, and determine that there is nothing on it, and that its owners are in urgent need of enrichment lessons in love for the land. And yes, I noticed. The previous sentence declares the other's wagon empty, exactly the sin for which we gathered. The inversion is intentional. Stings on the receiving side, right? Now imagine seventy years like that. A quarter of a million people in the rain for a clause in a Basic Law, and empty or not, a whole year this 'idiot' filled squares every Saturday night around one abstract idea — the rule of law. Without a rabbi, without a promise of the world to come, a quarter of a million people in the rain for a clause in a Basic Law.

In the protocol, the event was filed under identity politics, and two pages later it was written that this public has no narrative. It has one, by the way, an old one, written, with a catalog number in the State Archives and bearing the signatures of the members of the People's Council. There was once a Jew who suggested giving up real estate in exchange for peace. But in local grammar, giving up is a one-way verb. What was conquered will not be released, and what is for sale is registered in the name of the left lobe. And to those who are choking here, a new medicine is now being offered: 'to make loved' (leahiv). Pay attention to the binyan, the causative. Hebrew saves it for situations where you do something to someone: to feed, to put to sleep, to humiliate, to force, to make loved. A headquarters will be established, a national mission will be declared, songbooks will be printed. The institutions are collapsing, and the operational response is a sing-along evening, where the old song wondering if there is anything left to give is sung to the ears of the top decile that gave the most, and it is still required to join the chorus. And if the singing is not enough, the doomsday weapon will be activated — proportions.

Orwell once drew a ministry that deals with exactly this, and indeed on the last page Winston loves. The Ministry of Love made him love Big Brother. The Sages, as usual, preceded everyone. Love that depends on something, if the thing is gone, the love is gone. This great love depends on the suitcase. The moment the suitcase is opened and the shirts are returned to the closet, the love will evaporate, and the left lobe will return to being disconnected, this time clinically, hating Israel, a Berliner in waiting. Therefore, my dear secular friends, I have one piece of advice for you. Stay. Really, stay, this land needs you more than it is willing to admit. But do not unpack the suitcase. Leave it in the living room, packed, prominent, in front of the guests. Since you packed it, you have never been so loved.

Professor Alon Korngreen is a brain researcher at the Gonda Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University.