Are We Guilty? Are We Traitors? Collective Guilt and the Roots of Israeli Solidarity

Shared responsibility, which is engraved in Jewish tradition, is one of the secrets of the State of Israel's success.

Israel's national clock is about to strike on the 'Days of Awe,' a time of reckoning. This is most clearly expressed in the classic confession - "We accused, betrayed, and plundered" - the main theme of the Yom Kippur service. The confession, a calculated self-criticism, assumes two thought-provoking assumptions:

First, this self-criticism will not end well and not result in our receiving high marks for our behavior over the year. Indeed, the text assumes that we are guilty, having betrayed, robbed, you name it. We are thus commanded to exercise self-criticism in all areas of human relations: between a man and himself, his friends, society and God. This confession period ends with a collective, difficult, existential assertion: We acted wrongly and wronged others. The guilt and betrayal - like breathing, eating, and sleeping - are necessary aspects of the human condition, inherent within each of us. There is no righteous man in the land who will not eventually sin.

Second, confession by its very definition is a revelatory act and hence an intensely private experience. Since a person does not normally publicize his misdeeds, confession is said during the privacy of prayer, with a broken heart. How surprising then that the confessional prayers are phrased in the plural form: "We are guilty." This reflects the group consciousness of the confessor. The sin of one is also imputed to the duty of the other - a mutual guarantee or responsibility of the members of the group for the actions of the individual.

These two characteristics - obligatory guilt, untethered from facts, and mutual responsibility - arouse resistance in the liberal minded person. After all, as we all know, a person is innocent unless his guilt is proved. How then can one determine a priori that each and every one of us has in fact stolen, lied, acted wickedly and maliciously? When each one of us looks in the mirror, do we see a clown, rebel and adulterer - as the confessions indicate? The same is true of the second assumption: In a liberal world, every person is responsible for his actions and his actions alone. Collective guilt is obscene.

As such, is confession just empty speech at best, hypocrisy at worst?

Yom Kippur`s confession is meaningful and can be recited in a sincere way if the prayer holds a liberal, communal worldview - one that fuses nicely with Jewish tradition. According to this tradition, the individual who confesses is not a single person facing God, but rather part of the identity group to which he or she belongs. As life experience proves, we relate to others and they to us via the context in which we exist together. I am not only an individual, but also an "Israeli", "Jew", "jurist" and so on. Group attachments classify me - sometimes to my delight and sometimes in ways that do me harm - in ways that are independent of my actions and desires.

However, group affiliations do not erase the individual or his individuality – what makes him unique - but rather brightens him with a diversity of shades, depending on the context.

The use of the plural form in confession reflects this perception of the human condition. The "I" criticizes not only himself as an individual, but the totality of his being, within which he is a part, a vital organ, of the group to which he belongs.

This explains the wide range of actions that are subject to criticism. Confession deals with the totality of human behavior because the broad context of an individual's sense of belonging - in this case, belonging to the "People of Israel" - requires it. And as a matter of fact the group contains wicked, malicious and adulterous people - hence the confession.

Shared responsibility, which is engraved in Jewish tradition, is one of the secrets of the State of Israel's success. In contrast to our prickly sabra exterior, what's on the inside is sweet. According to the Israel Democracy Institute's 2016 Israeli Democracy Index, about three-quarters of Israelis trust their fellow citizens to come to their aid in times of trouble. This is a rare expression of solidarity that does not exist elsewhere.

Indeed, whoever shares the burden of his brother's responsibility is also there to help that brother in in his hour of darkness.

The writer is vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a professor of law at Bar-Ilan University.