Today I watched images of protests, demonstrations, and roads blocked across Israel. What surprised me was my emotion. It was sadness. A deeper sadness than I expected to feel.

I grew up in two separate religious Jewish communities in London, first as a teenager and later again as an adult. Both spanned what today would be called Haredi and Dati Leumi in Israel and abroad Yeshivish and Modern Orthodox. Some were stricter in their interpretations and practices, others less so.

Yet I never felt that we belonged to different tribes. We were simply religious Jews.

There were differences in custom, practice, and rabbinic authority for things like Kashrut, but I genuinely saw them as variations within a shared commitment to Torah and mitzvot. When people asked me why I shaved while others did not, or why some had long peyot and others did not, I would explain that these were differences in tradition, interpretation, and the degree to which fences were built around Torah. The........

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