Some transgressions we recognize immediately. Others fill us with shame. And then there are sins we don't even feel the need to seek forgiveness for.
One such transgression unfolds almost daily, right before our eyes—and sometimes beneath our own fingertips on the keyboard: the way we talk about public servants.
As Rosh Hashanah approaches, we customarily reflect on our actions, our words, and those we've hurt. Yet precisely here, where words can wound a person, a family, and a reputation, we seem to have lost all sense of wrongdoing.
There's an inexplicable ease with which we speak against elected officials, public emissaries, Knesset members (Israeli parliament), mayors, and city council members. We slander, dismiss, insult, and pass judgment. And nobody feels they're doing anything wrong. After all, they were elected. They sought the position. They're supposed to serve us. So apparently, anything goes. Give them the benefit of the doubt? Heaven forbid. With elected officials, the default assumption is almost always guilt.
I encounter this repeatedly, especially during election seasons. Recently, a political party decided to end the careers of public servants who had served the community for nearly thirty years. For years, we all found it convenient to turn to them: for help, advice, assistance navigating bureaucracy, when a family or institution faced hardship. For over a decade, I personally have received at least one call per week from these public emissaries: help this person, advise that one, see what can be done. They didn't always ask whom someone voted for or which camp they belonged to. They simply tried to help. But the moment it was decided their time was up, how easy it suddenly became to erase thirty years of work. Few stand up to say thank you. Few remember the thousands of hours, calls, meetings, pressures, and behind-the-scenes assistance given without a photo op or Facebook post.
The same pattern plays out in local government.
When the municipality of Bnei Brak (a predominantly ultra-Orthodox city near Tel Aviv) faced a temporary budget crisis—stemming from a gap between the planned 2025 budget and the reality of wartime, unexpected expenses, and unforeseen changes—everyone instantly became an economist. Everyone knew how much money comes in from industrial zones, how much should have been saved, and how everything was done wrong. But far fewer people remember how many services the municipality provides daily to residents: hundreds of synagogues operating 24 hours with direct or indirect funding, rich cultural and recreational activities, educational institutions not yet in permanent buildings. Bnei Brak is among the country's leaders in renting buildings for educational purposes, which carries a heavy cost. There are also struggling families and those seeking help. How many people in distress came to the municipality, cried before the right person, and left with a smile?
When we need something from the mayor or elected officials, we know exactly how to find the phone number. When they're in difficulty, suddenly the finger is very light on the keyboard: to slander, insult, hurt, declare they've failed. And sometimes even to enjoy the fall.
So before we reach this year's confessional prayer "for the sin we have committed before You in speech," perhaps we should remember something simple: an elected official also has a heart. A soul. Children. A spouse who reads what's written about them. Sleepless nights. And they also have a right, just like any other person, to sometimes be judged favorably.
Criticism of elected officials isn't just legitimate, it's essential in a democracy. But criticism isn't a license for humiliation. And the bigger problem is the price we as a society pay for this culture. The more we slander public figures, the more we turn everyone who enters public life into a punching bag, the more good and worthy people simply won't want to be there.
A talented person who could run a company, a large firm, or an organization in the private sector, earning more, working in relative peace, and protecting their family, will rightly ask themselves: why? Why dedicate my life to public service if in return every mistake becomes a kangaroo court and every difficulty becomes a smear campaign? And then we'll complain that there are no good people in politics.
But perhaps before we ask why the good ones don't come, we should ask ourselves what we're doing to those who already have.
Rosh Hashanah is a good time for soul-searching. Not just theirs. Ours too. For the sin we have committed before You in speech. For the sin we have committed before You in contempt for public emissaries. For the sin we have committed before You in forgetting that even those elected to serve us are first and foremost human beings.
Because ultimately, on the day when we stand and ask to be judged with mercy, that explanations be given even for our mistakes and that the good we've done be seen alongside where we've failed, we should ask ourselves whether we knew how to give others that same right.
It's easy to demand soul-searching from public officials. It's harder to look in the mirror and ask what our share is in an atmosphere where every mistake is an unforgivable sin, every weakness is a headline, and every person is a target.
And perhaps this is the confession we almost never say aloud: for the sin we have committed before You when we demanded others be perfect, and forgot to demand that we are human.
