One Tribe

"Every single Jew — even ones who are my political and even moral foes — are part of my family."

By Sarah Tuttle-Singer

Judaism has never promised us simplicity. From the very first pages of Torah, we are given contradictions and told to live inside them: protect your tent with vigilance, and open it wide to the stranger; be ready to fight those who rise against you, and also shine as a light unto the nations. These aren’t competing instructions but parallel truths, both binding, both essential. And learning to carry them together — especially now, in this moment of war and weariness — feels like the deepest definition of what it means to be a Jew.

We are told to protect our tent, to fortify our homes, and to be ready — even to kill — anyone who wants to kill us. And we are also told to open our tent, to welcome the stranger, and to give refuge to those who come with empty hands and aching hearts.

This tension — between fierce self-preservation and radical hospitality — is not a contradiction to be erased, but a paradox to be lived. The Torah gives us laws to protect the camp; it also repeats, over and over, the command to love the stranger, for we ourselves were strangers. Both commandments are true. Both are binding.

And if we’re honest, this is exactly the paradox of Jewish life today. We know what it is to be the oppressed and hunted, to fight for our very survival. And since the establishment of the modern State of Israel — itself a miracle — we now know what it is to hold power, with all its burdens and temptations.

This isn’t paranoia. The jackals really do circle us, whether in the form of physical enemies who would smite us given the chance, or in the useful idiots — the celebrities parroting devastating talking points that disguise their nefarious implications as word salad. We do have enemies. And yet we are also commanded to be a light unto the nations. And we cannot be a light unto the nations if we are cut off from them.

How to live both truths at once? I don’t fully know. But I do know this: I am a Jew before I am anything else.

When I speak about Jewish history, I use the word we. We were slaves in Egypt. We were exiled from Spain. We endured the Holocaust. Recently, while giving a talk about Jerusalem, someone asked me: does that “we” have limits? Does it include Netanyahu? Does it include Hannah Einbinder?

Yes, it does. Because our tribe is tiny. At the end of the day, we are all we have. In Hebrew there is a phrase: Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh — all of Israel is responsible for one another. That means we must have each other’s backs. It means we celebrate each other’s triumphs. And it also means we take responsibility for our failures.

Every single Jew — even ones who are my political and even moral foes — are part of my family.

We are facing a multi-front war — Hamas, Iran, Yemen, and a surge of antisemitism around the world, that oldest of hatreds, a virus that may go dormant but never truly dies. My fellow travelers in the diaspora are fighting this battle in suffocating ways, under a cloud of gaslighting and cruelty. And here in Israel, we just have to walk past a bus stop to see the faces of our hostages and our fallen soldiers and know what we are up against.

It is unbearable at times.

And yet: even here, even now, we cannot let ourselves grow too particular. We cannot let our walls become so high that no light passes through. Because when we cut ourselves off, it isn’t only bad for us — it’s bad for humanity.

Torah — our people’s instruction manual — commands us to balance the particular and the universal. Protect the tent. Open the tent. Guard the flame. Share the flame. It’s not easy, and it was never meant to be. But it is the path that has kept us alive for millennia.

I don’t pretend to know how to do this perfectly. Some days I lean too far inward; some days I stretch too far outward. But I will keep trying. I will protect my family and community with vigilance. I will welcome the stranger when I can. I will mourn loudly, love stubbornly, and tell our story as we.

Because holding multiple truths is not weakness. It is our strength. It is the clarity the Torah asks of us. And as long as breath fills our lungs, we will keep the tent standing — guarded, yes, but always open enough to let the light shine through.

SARAH TUTTLE-SINGER lives in Jerusalem and is the New Media Editor at The Times of Israel. She is author of the book Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered.

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