The camera captured a moment of raw desperation. A secular Israeli woman stood screaming at demonstrators near military headquarters in Tel Aviv, her voice cutting through the political chaos: “We’re in the greatest pain now. This isn’t what we should be doing. We need to be together, we need to be unified.” Her son had just been kidnapped by Hamas terrorists, dragged across the border into Gaza’s hellish tunnels. Yet even in her darkest hour, Shelly Shem-Tov understood something that escaped the angry crowds around her ā that Israel’s survival depended not on political theater, but on the ancient bond that connects every Jewish soul.
Miles away, Tzili Schneider, founder of the Kesher Yehudi unity organization, watched that viral video with growing conviction. She immediately charged her project director, Margalit Peretz ā an ultra-Orthodox mother who had lived her entire life in the insular ultra-Orthodox world ā with an urgent mission: “Find me that woman from the video!” Within days, Margalit and Shelley ā two women who represented everything the other was taught to mistrust ā would forge a connection that offers hope for healing our nation’s deepest wounds.
How does this unlikely connection hold the key to something far greater than personal friendship?
We are now in the midst of the Three Weeks, that somber period when we mourn the destruction of both Temples and contemplate the forces that brought about our national exile. The Sages teach us that while the First Temple was destroyed because of the three cardinal sins ā idolatry, murder, and forbidden relations ā the Second Temple fell for a different reason entirely: sinat chinam, baseless hatred between Jews. This hatred was so severe, the Sages tell us, that it was equivalent to all three cardinal sins combined.
The implications are staggering. Our ancestors could survive foreign armies, economic collapse, even spiritual corruption ā but they could not survive the poison of Jews hating other Jews without cause.
King David’s words ring across the centuries, not as mere poetry, but as a survival manual for the Jewish people. When we achieve true unity ā not uniformity, but unity ā we tap into a divine force that makes us undefeatable. When we fracture into warring camps, we become vulnerable to every enemy that seeks our destruction.
The friendship that formed between Shelly and Margalit illuminates this timeless truth with stunning clarity. Shelly, a freelance interior designer from Herzliya who describes herself as a “typical secular woman,” had never had an ultra-Orthodox friend in her life. She lit Shabbat candles and gathered her family for Friday night dinner, but never kept Shabbat fully. Margalit lived in the opposite world, raising three young children in Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods with virtually no exposure to secular Israeli society.
These two women should have remained strangers forever, separated by geography, lifestyle, and mutual suspicion. The secular and religious communities in Israel often view each other with barely concealed contempt. This mutual mistrust has poisoned Israeli society for decades, creating exactly the kind of baseless hatred that our Sages warned would bring destruction.
But October 7th changed everything for them. When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and dragged Shelly’s 21-year-old son Omer into Gaza’s underground maze, the normal rules of Israeli tribalism suddenly seemed irrelevant. Margalit’s family “adopted” Omer as one of their own. Every Shabbat, they set a place for him at their table. Every prayer session included his name. Margalit’s young children began asking daily about “their” Omer, demanding updates about his wellbeing, planning for the celebration they would attend when he returned home.
When the two mothers finally met at a gathering in Jerusalem, the connection was immediate and electric. Margalit told Shelly about Omer’s place at their Shabbat table, about her children’s daily prayers for his safety. Shelly was overwhelmed ā here was a religious woman who had never met her son but was treating him like family, praying for him with the intensity usually reserved for blood relatives.
The relationship deepened rapidly. Margalit’s children formed deep bonds with Shelly, crying when she left after visits, begging their mother to invite her back. The two families began meeting regularly, celebrating holidays together, sharing the deepest fears and hopes that only those living through this nightmare could understand.
This relationship transcends personal friendship. It demonstrates the power of shared purpose to dissolve barriers that politics and prejudice had made seem permanent. Margalit discovered that secular Jews, even those she had dismissed as spiritually disconnected, possessed “a very strong Jewish spark.” Shelly learned that religious Jews were not trying to impose religious observance on everyone they met, but were capable of profound love and support without religious conditions.
The Sages teach that the Jewish people are like a single body ā when one limb is injured, the entire body feels pain. When Omer was torn from his family and disappeared into Gaza’s tunnels, religious Jews thousands of miles away felt genuine anguish. When Margalit opened her home and heart to a secular family in crisis, she was not performing an act of charity for strangers but caring for her own extended family.
Te Sages identified love as the antidote to baseless hatred. They understood that “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) represents more than ethical instruction. Rabbi Akiva declared this verse to be a great principle of the entire Torah. Not because love is nice, but because Jewish survival depends on it.
The Sages further tell us that when the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, they were described as being “like one person with one heart.” This unity recognizes that our fundamental connection transcends surface differences. We all stood at Sinai. We all carry the same divine spark. We all share responsibility for each other’s well-being.
The destruction we mourn during these Three Weeks occurred because our ancestors forgot this truth. They allowed political disputes, religious disagreements, and social tensions to metastasize into the kind of baseless hatred that made them vulnerable to Roman conquest. They forgot that Jewish survival depends not on ideological purity but on the unbreakable bonds between souls.
Today’s enemies understand what we often forget. Hamas did not distinguish between religious and secular Jews when they invaded Israeli communities on October 7th. They murdered anyone they could with equal brutality. They kidnapped the children of rabbis and the children of atheists. In their eyes, we are one people.
The friendship between Shelly and Margalit points toward the restoration that must come. When religious Jews pray for secular hostages as if they were their own children, when secular Jews begin keeping Shabbat after experiencing religious hospitality, when artificial barriers dissolve in the face of shared crisis and shared hope, we glimpse what the Third Temple will look like when it is rebuilt.
The Temple will be rebuilt when we repair the force that originally destroyed it. If baseless hatred brought destruction, then causeless love will bring redemption. Not the forced uniformity that totalitarian movements demand, but the voluntary unity that emerges when we recognize the divine image in everyone, regardless of their level of observance or political affiliation.
As we experience these weeks of mourning, and as we fast and recite lamentations for our destroyed Temples on the 9th of Av, we must remember that our tears are not just for ancient stones but for the unity that was lost when those stones fell. The Temple can be rebuilt in our generation, but only when we learn to see every soul as family, only when we replace the causeless hatred of our ancestors with the causeless love that Shelly and Margalit have discovered.
The camera that captured Shelly’s desperate plea for unity also captured a prophecy. In the midst of unspeakable grief, surrounded by political chaos and mutual recrimination, she understood the secret of Jewish survival: “How good and how pleasant it is that brothers dwell together.” When brothers and sisters dwell together in unity, no force on earth can destroy them. When they turn against each other in baseless hatred, even the Temple itself cannot protect them.
The choice, as always, remains ours.
