So now we can answer the question: What did I do on the eve of Tisha B'Av at the President's House?
Five years ago, Tisha B'Av.
The days, shortly after the election of Yitzhak Herzog as President of the State of Israel. In a phone call from the President's Office, I was invited to an event on Tisha B'Av - the purpose of which was: to bridge the divides between the people.
Anyone who knows me knows that I was born into a 'bridge.' The building where I grew up, at 3 Sokolov Street in Kiryat Ata, was an island of sanity and coexistence.
This building has grown out of it, among others, a judge in the Haifa District Court (Ofra Atias-Hamo, religious-nationalist, an amazing woman!), a Haredi Talmud Torah director in Tel Aviv (Noam Stern, one of the best directors in the Haredi community - and ask Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, whose children study with him), Eyal Pais (secular, formerly in the Navy in Haifa) and me (a Haredi journalist).
I think that when they discharged me from the hospital, at 3 days old, my father began to mutter in my ear: 'Be good to everyone, don't judge, don't differentiate between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, between secular and ultra-Orthodox.' He was a figure who was all bridge. He was a Jew dressed in black and white, with a long beard, the chairman of Degel Hatorah in Kiryat Ata and also the director of the local ultra-Orthodox Talmud Torah.
As a child, I remember MK Moshe Gafni coming to our house, and also the secular neighbor who came, from time to time, to ask my father various questions - and was always answered with a friendly smile.
So I'm going to refuse an invitation that's all a bridge? No way. With canvas shoes on my feet, I made my way to the President's House (forget the road, finding parking is the significant difficulty), I listened, I told him too, and I thought to myself: 'Well, nothing will come of this.'.
About three years later, another phone call came. The president asked me to join a group that would try to bring peace among us. That I would refuse an offer of mediation? No way.
There is time, there is no time, I devoted many hours to traveling to meetings, to the meetings themselves, to thinking, to discussions - some time ago we found out that there were other groups parallel to us (ultra-Orthodox and secular, left and right, Arabs and Jews - groups with a fascinating mix) and on the eve of Tisha B'Av we all met.
Will this lead anywhere? I want to believe, with all my heart, that it will.
