Zechariah’s message to Israel: Build a society worthy of its renewal - opinion

Detailed summary

When the next insult comes from someone whose politics we share, will we challenge it? When a rival raises a legitimate concern, will we say so publicly?

This Shabbat is the fourth of Kislev. Most of us know that the 15th of Nisan is Passover and the first of Tishri is Rosh Hashanah, but the fourth of Kislev usually passes without being noticed.Yet on that date, in the fourth year of the reign of King Darius in 518 BCE, the prophet Zechariah received a question that sounds remarkably contemporary, despite the passage of over 2,500 years.When a people has begun to rebuild after a catastrophe, what does it still owe to the memory of what happened? And what would it take to say that the lessons of the catastrophe had been learned?The Second Temple was being rebuilt.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Jerusalem Post. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.