After more than three weeks of holidays and weekends, the time that Israelis refer to as “acharei hachagim” — after the holidays — kicked off in Israel yesterday and in the rest of the world today. This ushers in a period of productivity as Jewish professionals look to plow ahead and clear through the past month’s backlog — after one more Shabbat, anyway.

This year’s “after the holidays” period comes as the Jewish world looks ahead to an optimistic but uncertain future as the war in Gaza appears to wind down (though Israeli officials have threatened to renew active fighting if Hamas violates the ceasefire deal by refusing to hand over the remains of slain hostages). 

Now that all 20 known living hostages have come back and the bodies of slain ones are starting to return and be buried as well, the Jewish communal world, which has rallied around the plight of the captives for the past two years, must find a new way to stick together going forward. As the immediate crises in Israel and around the world begin to abate, the politics and policies and pop culture ephemera that so often divide the Jewish community will come roaring back.

Speaking last night at the funeral for his son, Capt. Daniel Peretz, who was killed in the Oct. 7 attacks and whose body was held captive in Gaza until it was returned to Israel on Monday, Rabbi Doron Peretz, chairman of the World Mizrahi movement, issued a “call for unity, like the one we saw on Oct. 7,” noting that Israelis of all political stripes fought together that day and in the days after, with reservists flying in from around the world to serve. 

In the wake of the attacks, “we learned that the Jewish People is maybe the smallest nation in the world, but it is the largest family in the world,” said Peretz, speaking beside his son’s grave on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. 

“Political, ideological rivals with the deepest and most poignant differences in worldview are never an enemy,” the South African-born rabbi said in Hebrew, adding in English. “There is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ … With all of our differences, we are one.” 

Even within the coming weeks, that oneness will be tested. Next week, Jewish leaders from the U.S. and around the world will start to gather in Israel for the World Zionist Congress, which kicks off on Oct. 28, and the following week will see a fraught Election Day in the United States, with several candidates on the ballot who have deeply divided the Jewish community, chief among them Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York City.