After standing on opposite sides of Israel’s deepest public debates, a Chareidi publicist and a member of a returned hostage’s family are showcasing an unlikely friendship and calling for unity.

On Erev Tisha B’Av, Yedioth Ahronoth chose to feature a message of unity on its front page, at a time when old divisions once again threaten to tear Israeli society apart. At the center of the front page were Chareidi journalist and publicist Yisrael Cohen and screenwriter Chen Avigdori, beneath the headline: “A Bridge Over the Abyss.”

The article describes the unlikely friendship between the two, which began following the October 7 massacre, when Avigdori’s wife and daughter were kidnapped to Gaza. Avigdori turned to Cohen and asked him to help connect the Chareidi public to the campaign for the hostages’ return and to the mitzvah of redeeming captives.

Cohen joined the effort, working to connect the Chareidi public with the pain of the hostages’ families. He accompanied them to meetings with Gedolei Yisrael, and l’havdil, political party leaders, and helped organize tefillah gatherings and spiritual initiatives for the return of those held in captivity.

In recent months, they once again found themselves ideological opponents over the issue of military conscription, yet they continue trying to preserve their friendship.

“For the past several years we’ve usually been on opposite sides,” Cohen said. “During the Kaplan protests, over the draft issue, and generally regarding Chareidi-secular relations and matters of religion and state. But we’ve come to know each other personally as human beings who both want to do good. Chen is a friend, and I remember how he called me after October 7 and asked that the Chareidi public mobilize for the mitzvah of redeeming captives. Together, along with many other good people, we organized a tefilla gathering attended by tens of thousands at the Kosel and many other meaningful efforts on behalf of the hostages.”

Avigdori described the relationship that developed between the two under painful circumstances and continues to this day.

“At the beginning, I realized that we, the hostages’ families, didn’t really know the Chareidi public or understand how they felt and thought,” he said. “Thanks to Yisrael, we met Rabbi Druk and embarked on a journey to visit Rabbanim in Bnei Brak. They spoke a great deal about tefillos, while we wanted to hear about practical action.”

According to Avigdori, one of the Rabbanim told him that he could not call on his community to join the marches because of concerns related to standards of tznius. “I respected that, of course,” Avigdori said. “But he promised me, ‘You’ll know that we’re with you.'”

“When we walked to Jerusalem during the massive march in November 2023, we reached the Kiryat Ye’arim interchange and saw thousands of people standing there with yellow balloons, singing pessukim about redeeming captives and davening with us and for us. At that moment I understood that despite all our differences, we are one people. We have different cultures, but we also share a common destiny and a genuine sense of mutual responsibility.”

“Today we’re once again in the midst of deep disagreements,” Avigdori said. “My feeling is that the higher you go in the leadership, the more divisive the discourse becomes. Yet in personal encounters I discover a completely different reality.”

“In the end, the root of the disagreement is a lack of trust. Each side fears that if the other side wins, it will lose its own identity. The only way to deal with that is to create more opportunities for people to meet each other. The problem is that there are very few places where people can actually meet Chareidim. When we don’t know one another, we talk about ‘you people.’ The moment we sit face-to-face, it’s no longer possible to say ‘you people.’ There’s a human being sitting across from you.”

Avigdori continued: “There are stereotypes about me as well, simply because of how I look or how I speak, and once people get to know me, those stereotypes disappear. The same is true of Chareidim, settlers, Likud supporters, and every other group. I deeply respect another person’s beliefs, but that person also has to respect me and look me in the eye. On social media, people don’t look each other in the eye, so it’s easy to generalize, insult, humiliate, and curse one another.”

“I believe that the more we increase personal encounters and respectful dialogue—where each person first sees the human being standing before them—we’ll be able to preserve what we learned during our hardest moments: not to speak in terms of ‘us and them,’ but to look one another in the eye and speak as ‘I’ and ‘you.’ From there will come the conversations and the actions that connect the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ into what, ultimately, we all aspire to be—’we.'”

The decision to feature the two men on the newspaper’s front page on Erev Tisha B’Av transformed their personal story into a broader public message—not an attempt to blur genuine disagreements, but a call to conduct them without returning to the toxic discourse that preceded the tragedy.

“Even when we disagree, we must know how to preserve red lines, remember that what unites us is greater than what divides us, and remember that the Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam,” Cohen concluded. “Precisely in these days, it is important to increase ahavas chinam, bring more light into the darkness, and act with a positive spirit of doing good for Am Yisrael.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)