Who Won the Israeli Election? A Powerful Lesson in Faith and Torah

“Mom, who won the election?” “How many seats did we get?” “So, did we win or lose?”

These were the questions echoing through homes on the morning after the elections. Children were eager for answers, while their parents were still trying to make sense of the results as they hurried to prepare for another busy day. After a brief lesson in civics, somewhere between packing sandwiches and finding sweaters, hundreds of thousands of children picked up their schoolbags and headed off to their Talmud Torahs and religious schools for another day of Torah study.

One of the fundamental principles of Jewish faith is the recognition that everything that happens in this world unfolds according to the will of the Creator. As the Rambam states in his commentary on the Mishnah (Sanhedrin, Chapter Chelek): “I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is the Creator and Guide of all created beings, and that He alone has made, makes, and will make all things.”

Rabbeinu Bachya expresses a similar idea in Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart, Gate of Trust, Chapter 3): “No created being has the power to benefit or harm himself or anyone else except with the permission of the Creator, blessed be He.”

If you placed the ballot you believed was right into the voting box, you fulfilled your responsibility. Your vote was not wasted. If you voted for a party representing the Torah community and followed the guidance of the leading Torah sages, then, in a meaningful sense, you have already achieved a victory.

Having made our effort at the ballot box, we must now look ahead, turning our eyes toward Heaven with complete trust in Hashem. As the verse declares, “For Hashem will not forsake His people, nor will He abandon His inheritance” (Psalms 94:14). No amount of water can extinguish the love between the Jewish people and their Father in Heaven.

The True Source of Jewish Strength

The Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, Genesis 27:22) relates that philosophers from among the nations of the world were once asked how the Jewish people could be defeated. Their answer revealed a profound truth: “Go and examine their synagogues and study halls. If you find children raising their voices in Torah study, you cannot overcome them. But if not, you can overcome them.”

The Midrash explains that this is the meaning of the verse, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (Genesis 27:22). As long as the voice of Jacob is heard in the synagogues and study halls, the hands of Esau cannot prevail.

And so, the child who had asked his mother that morning, “Did we win or lose?” was sitting in his Talmud Torah just an hour later. He opened his sefer and began chanting the sacred words that his ancestors had studied for generations.

If those philosophers could have heard his voice at that moment, it is doubtful they would have thought to ask how many seats his party had won.

Because the enduring strength of the Jewish people is not measured only in election results or parliamentary seats, but in the voices of children carrying the Torah forward from one generation to the next.