Beyond the Headlines: Mamdani's win moves Jews to reconnect with Judaism - opinion

Aliyah is the end of a long process of education, connection, identity, and learning. It begins from age zero, in a Jewish kindergarten, which most Jewish American children do not attend.

This is the reason why most of the new olim from North America in recent years tend to be very religious, very Zionist, and already deeply connected. Unfortunately, that is a relatively small group.

That said, October 7 has shaken things up. I’ve written often about the “October 8 Jews.” Recently, in an English-language podcast for Tablet Magazine with Prof. Liel Leibovitz, I gave out my personal email and asked people to send me their stories.

My inbox was filled with dozens of testimonies. If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I would have thought they were invented. It seems impossible: the Jewish spark awakening, simultaneously, in so many distant brothers and sisters.

Here are just a few:

Masha, born in Moscow and now living in San Francisco, wrote that after Simchat Torah, she realized she had been hiding the news from her daughter and decided to stop. As a result, the two embarked on a journey of Jewish learning. On Sundays, they attend a Jewish class at Chabad. The class is meant for children, but the mother and daughter attend without shame, eager to learn everything from the beginning.

Brad from New Jersey wrote that, in response to what was happening in Israel, he began putting on tefillin and making Kiddush for the first time in his life. He doesn’t understand the connection; he just feels deep inside that it is the right thing. He also started learning Hebrew, literally from the aleph-bet.

David from Atlanta wrote that he put up a mezuzah on his front door, wears a Magen David necklace, and is considering visiting Israel for the first time because his parents never took him. He’s 50.

None of these email writers know about the other, but together, they tell a story filled with optimism. It’s not only Israeli teenagers who are suddenly excited about Selichot and tzitzit. It’s also fifty-year-olds in California who have never heard a song by Yonatan Razel.

Last Shabbat marked the global celebration of the Shabbos Project, launched several years ago by Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein, Chief Rabbi of South Africa, and which continues to gain momentum.

Every year, he succeeds in uniting millions worldwide around a shared Jewish Shabbat. This past Shabbat in New York it was especially important as large numbers of institutions, synagogues, and communities urged Jews to come together to demonstrate a strong, public Jewish identity, and to stand with Israel in the face of rising hatred and antisemitism.

Will we now see the “November 5 Jews,” in the wake of Mamdani’s election? Will we see more and more awakening, clarity, and light emerging from the darkness?

That also depends on us.

The young Hadar had begun studying the famous work Mesillat Yesharim (“Path of the Just”) by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto—a foundational book about gradually refining one’s character, step by step. He listened to lectures on the book by Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel of the Eli pre-military academy, taking handwritten notes, and those notes were later published in a remarkable volume.

At the beginning of Mesillat Yesharim, it states: “A person was created only to delight in God.”

What does this mean? Hadar summarized for himself the meaning of true delight: “A person delights when he experiences something that aligns perfectly with his inner world. In daily life, we mostly see the world around us, taste it, experience it—but almost never do we see our own soul. All around us are countless screens and other concealments that hide a person from his soul, his personality, his essence.

“If I sink into pleasures that constantly change and fade, I will miss the possibility of lasting delight, the meaning of which is self-discovery. One must delight. Delight is the revelation of the soul. A person is obligated to find himself within himself, to discover and reveal his soul.”

May we merit true inner delight, and may we continue ascending the Path of the Just, in Hadar’s memory.

The 20th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, which this year falls on November 11, is the fifth yahrzeit of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Britain.

Here is an inspiring passage from “To Be a Jew,” a booklet that I was privileged to compile of Rabbi Sacks’ teachings:

“Sometimes it is when we feel most alone that we discover we are not alone. We can encounter God in the midst of fear or a sense of failure.

“Sometimes our deepest spiritual experiences come when we least expect them, when we are closest to despair. It is then that the masks we wear are stripped away. We are at our point of maximum vulnerability—and it is when we are most fully open to God that God is most fully open to us. “God is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalms 34:18).

“Rebbe Nachman of Breslov used to say: ‘A person needs to cry to his Father in heaven with a powerful voice from the depths of his heart. Then God will listen to his voice and turn to his cry.’

“We find God not only in holy or familiar places but also in the midst of a journey, alone at night. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me’ (Psalms 23:4). The most profound of all spiritual experiences, the base of all others, is the knowledge that we are not alone.

“There may be times in our lives—certainly there have been in mine—when the sun disappears and we enter the cloud of black despair. You can lose faith in humanity, or in yourself, or both. At such times, the knowledge that God has faith in us is transformative, redemptive.

“The real religious mystery, according to Judaism, is not our faith in God. It is God’s faith in us.

“We are here because a loving God brought the universe and life, and us, into existence—a God who knows our fears, hears our prayers, believes in us more than we believe in ourselves, who forgives us when we fail, lifts us when we fall, and gives us the strength to overcome despair.”