Elul is a season of awakening and a sacred invitation to return. It calls us each year to prepare our hearts and souls for the Days of Awe, through teshuva (“repentance/return”), prayer, and reflection. Yet this year, the call is different. It’s louder. It’s urgent.
Because the greatest awakening Am Yisrael needs to experience right now is not only to God, but to one another.
The rift between haredim (ultra-Orthodox) and secular Israelis has grown. Headlines amplify outrage. Politicians profit from polarization. Social media feeds us a steady diet of suspicion and disdain.
Still, beneath the noise, beyond the talking points, something deeper and more hopeful is happening, which the cameras do not show.
One-on-one we are family
As an Israeli, a mother, and a religious woman, I see it every day. When we meet face to face, the walls fall away. In workplaces, hospitals, schools, and most powerfully, in hevrutot (one-on-one study), Jews from across the religious and cultural spectrum discover something surprising: We are family.
We all saw how last Monday’s tragedy brought Israelis together. We should not and cannot have acts of terror be the catalyst that reminds us that we are one people.
My organization, Kesher Yehudi, creates pairs of study partners that commit to one conversation a week.
A single conversation with someone else in Israel who, on the surface, has nothing in common with you. (This is not the case, but it takes time to come to that understanding.) This is how we build a family, one pair at a time. To turn learning into listening and conversation into connection; to turn strangers into siblings.
A painful truth
Before October 7, we hosted 10,000 pairs of study partners. That day taught us a painful truth: If there had been 50,000 pairs of study partners, perhaps there might never have been an October 7. Because these partners don’t just share ideas; they build trust. They soften hearts. They create a social fabric strong enough to hold a nation in its most vulnerable moments.
Today, thank God, there are 27,000 hevrutot. This tells you that there is something deep, meaningful, and hopeful happening under the surface that belies everything the media wants you to believe.
But it is not enough; not yet.
Consider the story of Uri and Rabbi Yisrael.
When Uri Hanan lay wounded in a ditch during the attack at the Supernova music festival on October 7, he made two promises to the Creator: to put on tefillin daily and to keep three Shabbats, even though he did not yet know what Shabbat really was.
Awake with PTSD
Months later, awake in the night with PTSD, Uri saw one of our Facebook posts: “From Nova to Jerusalem. Spend Shabbat with us. We’ll tailor it to you.”
He showed up.
That same Shabbat, Rabbi Yisrael Goldwasser, a Jewish educator and guide, brought a Torah scroll stained with the blood of Holocaust victims. As Uri shared his story, Rabbi Yisrael looked at him and said, “Am Yisrael needs to hear this.”
A study pair was born. Today, Uri often accompanies Rabbi Yisrael to speak to Orthodox groups visiting the Gaza border communities, at the very site where he nearly died. It has become his therapy; his mission; his way back.
“When we meet one-on-one,” Rabbi Yisrael says, “there are no walls. If we had 200,000 hevrutot [Torah study pairs], we would solve all of Am Yisrael’s problems.”
Sheli and Margalit
Is he right? Maybe it is time to find out. Consider Sheli and Margalit.
When Sheli Shem Tov, mother of freed hostage Omer Shem Tov, was drowning in grief and uncertainty, Margalit Peretz entered her life, not as a counselor, but as a study partner, a hevruta. Their connection became a lifeline.
“She lifted me when I fell, and when she lost hope, I lifted her,” Sheli says.
Their bond is more than shared learning. It is sisterhood. In a year of heartbreak, it became proof that unity is not an abstraction. It is alive. It is transformative.
These stories are not the exception. They are the rule.
Every hevruta is one less stranger; one more brother; one more sister. One more thread in the national fabric we must repair – and strengthen. Two people from completely different walks of life sit down and encounter a text they both inherited, and grapple with it, with their worldviews, and with each other. It is so simple and yet so profound.
Awakening to love
As we move through the month of Elul, our awakening must go beyond the personal. We must awaken to ahavat Yisrael, the love of Israel, to the radical idea that we are one people, with one destiny. Unity will not come from Knesset speeches or trending hashtags.
It will come from us, from the thousands who choose to sit together, speak together, and learn together.
This Elul, let us commit not just to return to God, but to one another.
Do you have the courage to commit just one hour a week to encountering and grappling with the “other”? In the end, it is unity, not division, that has always been the true story of the people of Israel – and in the end, each one of us taking one small step to make a national difference may be the real secret to our national victory, two people at a time.
The writer is the founder and CEO of Kesher Yehudi.