Yom Kippur, Oct 1st, 2025

Yom Kippur carries so many meanings across so many layers of life. It might be the most important day from a religious point of view, one that must be honored. Forty-two years ago, it gained the terrible weight of war and thousands of victims. Two years ago, it took on the tragic shade of the massacre in the Gaza Envelope, that happened just a week later. At the core of it all – as every child here knows – are three fundamental words: forgiveness and soul-searching. Three words, that in their very essence, teach us about change.

Doron Meinrath writes about Yom Kippur 2025.

Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us

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Yom Kippur, Oct 1^st, 2025

Doron Meinrath

“The earth spins 365 times on its axis before circling the sun, and it is an endless cycle. Humanity circles in this eternal cycle, which is larger than humanity and the wars it creates. Life is given to man, fleeting and unique. And within the human spirit lies a marvelous puzzle: it does not bow or despair. Because life has meaning. Because there is a past and there is a future, and life is but a fragment of eternity. Man is full of the drive to live and create. He faces the great task of organizing this life.”

This text was part of the Rosh Hashanah study series of Beit HaShita, my kibbutz. It was written by Israel Gat, one of the kibbutz founders, who tragically died in a car accident long before I was born. It’s a paragraph from an essay called “Approaching Days of Awe.”

Yom Kippur is a chance to pause the race of life, rise above daily routine, and try to look at life in perspective. To block out for a short while the endless noise of the news that overwhelms and threatens to crush you. To take a “soul reckoning,” meaning to examine your thoughts and especially your actions, to try to extract meaning from the details, reflect on the path you walk, and consider the need to correct your course.

Traditionally, soul accounting divides into three fields—personal, communal, and national. But these days everything is mixed together, the personal is tangled with endless worry and overwhelming sadness due to what’s happening on the national and global levels. Many go to sleep every night and wake up every morning to a disastrous reality echoing in their minds, which is rooted in national events. Communities break apart and others form based on positions toward the national issue. The national threatens family ties, friendships, and the ability to maintain relationships despite ideological differences. Debate turns into rivalry, a battle to win, because if not, life will change beyond recognition and beyond any chance of fixing within our lifetime.

The Philosopher Emanuel Kant guides soul reckoning with three questions: “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?”

“What can I know?” — Kant means epistemology, but I’ll apply it to the social and political world. Israel faces its most severe crisis ever, and the whole world is in its worst turmoil since mid-20th century. Powerful forces support and even view these processes positively. Progress and enlightenment disappointed many who see themselves as being on the losing side, though objectively their lives are drastically better than the lives of previous generations, and this improvement occurred thanks to progress and enlightenment. Likewise, secularism and putting humans at the center instead of religion, face serious attacks.

I’m not sure I fully grasp the deep reasons behind this. And more than anything, I don’t know what can be done, let alone what the future holds.

“What should I do?” — Uncertainty is one of the key components of human action. Acting among other people is different from the actions of a skilled craftworker, who takes steps that reliably lead to known results. Builders, carpenters, cooks, engineers, programmers, work on materials and can predict outcomes fairly well. But acting amid other people depends on their will and actions, so desired results aren’t guaranteed. This characteristic has always been true but intensifies in liberal democratic societies, where valuing individual free will is a basic principle. This characteristic makes many people paralyzed, passively consuming the terrible news and trying to survive the catastrophe by shrinking their world away from outside noise.

You can’t predict an action by its results, nor judge it solely by them, but acting is necessary, and action means combining doing with reasoning. Today, resisting the occupation and the crimes against humanity is a moral duty and a necessity, and one needs to try to achieve results but avoid measuring oneself by outcomes alone. The action I chose (with my friends) is a mix of reasoning and speaking to the minds and hearts of the public, alongside loud protests everywhere possible, plus action in the West Bank against settlers, as long as it is still possible. Anyone can do these. Additionally, international efforts in media, legal, economic fields are essential, who, by nature, can be carried out by few.

“What can I hope for?” — Today’s news, about the emerging ceasefire agreement (which hopefully will be realized realized), are an example for the possibility of hope to glimmer. We supported this plan in every protest, chat, and social media discussion for over a year and a half since Biden’s plan was introduced. Did we influence? Did we help? Is this a new start for a less grim future? I have no idea. We did what we could.

History, by definition, never ends. As long as people live and act, and new generations join the circle, there is hope. It is not our duty to finish the work, but neither are we free to desist from it

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Doron Meinrath is an activist in the “Looking the Occupation in the Eye” group.