Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Israel has been here before.
In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Jewish state was caught off guard by a surprise attack from its Arab neighbors. The war that followed was one of Israel’s darkest hours — and one of its most transformative.
The complacency of the years after the 1967 Six-Day War, the arrogance of believing that military superiority equaled security, and the overconfidence in diplomatic “understandings” all came crashing down in the fire of that war. But Israel learned. It restructured its intelligence services, reformed its command systems, revitalized its economy, and rebuilt its national morale.
October 7th, 2023 (50 years almost to the week after the Yom Kippur War) was another shattering moment of awakening. The parallels are chilling. Once again, Israel was blindsided. Once again, it suffered from overconfidence, bureaucratic paralysis, and a dangerous illusion that the enemies on its borders were “contained.” Once again, it will have to rebuild not only its defenses, but its very sense of self.
After 1973, Israel’s leaders understood that the state could not survive without constant readiness. Intelligence agencies underwent major reform. The Israel Defense Forces began training with renewed seriousness. Civil defense measures were strengthened. And, crucially, Israel began investing in high technology; the seeds of the “Start-Up Nation” were planted in the soil of military failure.
Today, the lesson must be similar, but broader. It is not only the army and the intelligence services that must rebuild. It is the whole society. The illusions that lulled Israel into complacency are not only military; they are cultural, moral, and political.
One of the defining tests of post–October 7th Israel will be whether it can better integrate its ultra-Orthodox population into national life. This is not a matter of modernizing them, nor of demanding they give up their faith. It is a matter of shared responsibility. The Torah does not exempt Jews from defending the collective. The Talmudic principle Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh — all Israel is responsible for one another — must be more than a slogan. Israel cannot rebuild its strength while a significant portion of its population remains economically dependent on the state and absent from its defense.
The ultra-Orthodox world has intellectual brilliance, discipline, and deep moral conviction. Imagine if those qualities were brought into the army, the economy, and public service. Not by coercion, but by partnership. By creating paths for ultra-Orthodox participation that respect their values while affirming their obligations to the nation. The rebuilding of Israel must mean not only tanks and drones, but classrooms, training programs, and new bridges between religious and secular.
For secular Israelis, another kind of reckoning is due. For decades, much of the cultural and political elite in Israel embraced the belief that peace was a matter of goodwill — that if Israel showed restraint, empathy, and compromise, it would be reciprocated. That illusion is gone. October 7th made it brutally clear: There is no peace to be made with those who glorify death and worship Jew-hatred. There is no “love and peace” with the Palestinians, nor with the regimes and ideologies that fund and inspire them. There is only vigilance, deterrence, and strength.
That does not mean cynicism or cruelty; it means clarity. The Palestinians are not “just like us.” Their societies are built on different values — ones that exalt martyrdom, submission, and tribal revenge, rather than freedom, reason, and life. The Arab and Muslim worlds may contain friends, but not kin. Israel is a moral outlier in its region, and it must behave accordingly. To rebuild, Israel’s secular citizens must rediscover the wisdom of its ancestors: that peace is not the default state of the world, but the product of power. Only when Israel is feared will it be left alone.
This renewal must not be reserved for Israeli Jews. The same reckoning applies to Diaspora Jewry. Jewish schools must once again teach the meaning of being Jewish — the story of our people, the purpose of the Jewish state, and the moral distinction between Israel and its enemies. A generation raised only on tolerance and diversity will not stand up to hatred unless it first understands what it means to belong: to a covenant, a history, and a shared destiny. The Jewish People cannot afford another generation of Jews who are literate in everything but their own identity.
And yet, rebuilding is not only about defense, deterrence, and education. Out of the ashes of failure must come invention. Just as post–1973 Israel birthed the technologies that would define modern defense and entrepreneurship, so too must post–October 7th Israel harness its creative genius to anticipate threats before they arise — in cyberspace, in AI, and in civil defense. The next Iron Dome will not only be for rockets, but for truth, security, and resilience. The same spirit that once turned battlefield necessity into technological brilliance must now be applied to the next generation of national protection, to building a society that is secure not only from enemies, but from despair.
This renewal must extend beyond the borders of Israel itself. After 1973, the shock of war ignited global Jewish solidarity: fundraising, volunteerism, aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel). October 7th has done the same, but under far darker circumstances. The eruption of antisemitism worldwide has shown that the illusion of Jewish safety in exile was just that: an illusion. Just as Israel depends on the Diaspora, the Diaspora now depends on Israel. The war exposed the fragility of Jewish life abroad and the illusion of safety without sovereignty. Rebuilding Israel must therefore mean rebuilding the Jewish People — spiritually, intellectually, and communally.
In this moment, Jewish Peoplehood itself is reaching its next inflection point. Enough momentum has built up around the cognitive dissonance of modern Jewish life that we are experiencing what Rabbi Benay Lappe calls “a sociological crash.” When people’s worldviews are shattered by new realities, Rabbi Lappe explains, they face three choices: They can double down, fortifying their old beliefs and pushing away dissent; they can abandon the old way entirely, walking away from the faith, the people, and the story that formed them; or they can innovate — combining the old with the new, creating something faithful yet forward-looking.
It is that third path that has allowed Jews to persist for over 3,000 thousand years. Time and again, we have rebuilt ourselves by fusing memory with modernity, revelation with reason. We have adapted, acculturated, and assimilated just enough to survive — but never so much that we lost our soul. Rebuilding Israel now requires precisely that kind of innovation: the ability to carry the wisdom of the past into the reality of the present.
Rebuilding is not new to Jewish history; it is the very rhythm of it. The Torah itself is a story of destruction followed by renewal, from the Flood and Noah’s Ark, to the Israelites rebuilding their covenant after the sin of the Golden Calf, to the commandment to “arise and build” after exile. God’s covenant is not annulled by failure; it is renewed through labor, courage, and faith. When Moses carved the second set of tablets, he was enacting the deepest truth of Jewish existence: that holiness can be rebuilt from fragments. Even the broken tablets were kept in the Ark, a symbol that brokenness itself can become sacred. So too with Israel: Its scars are part of its sanctity.
Every generation of Jews has faced its own destruction and answered it with rebuilding. After Babylon came Ezra and Nehemiah. After Rome came the Talmud. After the Shoah came the State of Israel. Rebuilding is not a break from Jewish destiny; it is its fulfillment. To build the Land, to defend it, to renew it, are not political acts alone but mitzvot (commandments). The Torah’s vision of dwelling in the Land means cultivating it, planting it, and sustaining it. To rebuild is to fulfill the covenant with God that this land shall never again lie desolate.
Israel must also confront its internal cultural fragmentation. The widening gap between Tel Aviv’s hyper-modernism and the rest of the country’s traditionalism has created two Israels: one secular, cosmopolitan, and globally integrated; the other rooted, observant, and inward-looking. The war revealed that both are necessary — and that neither can survive without the other. Israel’s internal identity crisis — “Start-Up Nation” versus “Jewish Nation” — weakened its defenses.
The rebuilding process must be not only physical or political but cultural: the restoration of meaning, purpose, and shared story. Israel’s greatest vulnerability was not its borders, but its belief that comfort could replace conviction. The next generation must be raised not merely as Israelis who live in a state, but as Jews who sustain a civilization.
Rebuilding also requires strategic rethinking. The threats Israel faces today are not the standing armies of 1973, but a web of terror networks, militias, and ideological movements guided by Iran, funded by Qatar, and animated by the same genocidal theology. The “periphery doctrine” that once guided Israeli diplomacy — forging alliances with non-Arab states to counterbalance Arab hostility — can be reborn for the 21st century.
Partnerships with Greece, Cyprus, India, and the Gulf states, as well as with emerging African and Asian democracies, can give Israel new strategic depth. Israel cannot afford to be merely reactive; it must build deterrence, preemption, and global alliances with the same precision that it builds technology.
But no amount of technology or alliances can compensate for a failure of governance. No army can defend a country whose leadership refuses to face its own failures. After Yom Kippur, generals resigned in shame. After October 7th, Israel must again rediscover the moral courage of accountability. Bureaucracy, political tribalism, and personal vanity cost Israel dearly. If rebuilding is to mean anything, it must begin with truth — an honest reckoning with what went wrong, who failed, and how to ensure that such failure never repeats. Leadership must again be understood as service, not survival.
If the 1973 war shattered Israel’s invincibility myth, October 7th shattered its unity myth. The internal divisions of 2023 — over religion, politics, and judicial reform — created precisely the atmosphere of distraction and fragmentation that allowed Israel’s enemies to strike.
Rebuilding must therefore begin with a renewal of civic spirit. Israelis must again feel that they are part of a single destiny. The state must speak not as a bureaucracy, but as a moral enterprise. Schools must teach not only math and science, but the meaning of being Jewish, the purpose of the state, and the moral distinction between Israel and its enemies.
Zionism was not meant to produce comfort; it was meant to produce courage. The rebirth of Israel after October 7th will depend on whether the country can recover that sense of mission — that it exists not just to survive, but to demonstrate the moral possibility of Jewish power.
The Torah commands the Jewish people to build, rebuild, and renew — in their land, in their faith, and in their hearts. Isaiah foresaw a day when “you shall rebuild the ancient ruins and raise up the foundations of many generations.” Rebuilding, in the Jewish sense, is an act of defiance against despair. It is the declaration that life and holiness can rise from destruction. To rebuild is to continue the work of creation itself, to partner with God in restoring order, justice, and sanctity to the world.
The post–October 7th Israel that emerges may be sobered, harder, and more watchful, and it can also be wiser, fairer, and stronger. A country where the religious and secular see each other not as rivals but as partners. Where national defense is not only the army’s job but everyone’s. Where economic productivity, moral clarity, and Jewish identity reinforce each other rather than compete.
To rebuild is to defy those who sought to erase us. Every home rebuilt, every soldier trained, every prayer uttered in freedom — these are victories. Israel’s rebirth will not only restore its security; it will reaffirm why it exists, to prove that even in the world’s darkest neighborhood, life can triumph over death.
Israel must rebuild its walls, its weapons, and its will. But above all, it must rebuild its soul, by remembering what it stands for.
A thoughtful and outstanding essay, Joshua!
Great essay Joshua. However, you carefully dodged an important element in the rebuilding: Bibi must go. It's time for a new generation of leadership to build upon the wisdom of the past, and unify the country. We can debate the effectiveness of his war time leadership, but he represents a symbol to Israel (and the world) of a moral lapse and a strategy and callousness that transformed "start-up" nation to pariah nation.