Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a fast day for traditional Jews around the world. Leading up to the event, the leaders of the two main parties in Israel’s government offered apologies of sorts for the way that they have handled the Covid-19 crisis in recent months.

We are taught to accept apologies. Or as one friend quipped, maybe the best test of sincerity is to have these people act as trials for the new vaccines. If they survive, all well and good. If not,…..

I do not hide my displeasure of the performance of the Prime Minister, Netanyahu. He has ensured that the two ministries most concerned with the crisis – Health and Finance – have been retained by his Likud Party. Both have underperformed. to be unnecessarily polite.

It occurred too me during the fast, as one’s mind wonders on an empty stomach, there is a big difference between the Likud ministers and their partners (enemies?) in government from the Kahol Lavan party. Generally, the former are lawyers or politicos who have grown up with being in power for most of the past two decades. The latter are ‘doers’, who have proven credentials of getting things done in society – via the army, social causes, local government, etc.

And when you mention the phrase Yom Kippur in Israel, many automatically recall the war that broke out on that day in 1973. Eventually, Israel was to win on the battlefields but to lose the game of diplomacy. Internally, the country’s political system was turned inside out, forever.

When the war commenced, Dr. Ephraim Hamiel left his prayers in Jerusalem, rushed to his unit and spent the next month attending to the requiremnts of the dead. He still remembers accompanying dozens of bodies back from the war, as they bounced in the command cars, dusty boots bobbing about.

He described in a recent interview how he felt 12 months later, back in Synagogue, praying again during the fast. One of the emotional liturgies asks ‘who will live and who will not; who will have water and who will be met with fire’. It made him think. It forced me to wake up, as I searched for extra purpose in my prayers.

I discussed this later with my wife. These are troubled times, to say the least. Covid-19, a PM in Israel that stays in power despite three indictments, wobbling global stock markets, a trade war between China and America (whose outcome may be dependent on a bitter Presidential election). Did I forget something?

Where and how we can still have a meaningful impact is in our own lives. For many of us, we can still keep ourselves busy (and healthy). In my work, as a business coach and mentor, I have encouraged all my clients to think differently and to move quickly. Crazy politicians can’t touch you for that. They probably can’t even understand this approach.

Which is why you have to wonder. Will Covid-19 will play the same role for the Likud and its status of ‘no change’ as the Yom Kippur war did for its predecessors?