‘I Really Want to Wear a Kippah’: Prof. Yuval Albashan’s Shaking Revelation

Prof. Yuval Albashan was a guest on the program “Sicha” with Oded Harush and shared the conclusions he reached after October 7: “I still don’t know how to process the Judaism that has fallen on me, I really want to wear a kippah.” According to him, the events led him to a realization he had avoided for years: “I am like the Diaspora Jew I was raised to look down on.” The full interview will air on Saturday night at 10:30 p.m.

The October 7 massacre marked a turning point in Prof. Yuval Albashan’s life. In an interview he gave to Oded Harush for the program “Sicha,” which will air in full on Saturday night, he shared his reflections: “I still don’t know how to process the Judaism that has fallen on me and I cannot understand what it means, I know what I really want, to wear a kippah.”

During the interview, archival footage of the poet Naomi Shemer was broadcast, in which she responded sharply to criticism directed at her: “There is an argument that the middle verse of ‘Jerusalem of Gold’ is not humane because it does not take into account the Arabs on the other side of the line. A world empty of Jews is, for me, a dead planet, I am terribly sorry.” Albashan said that after years of failing to understand Shemer, the words now take on a completely different meaning: “I really love this segment. After October 7 it took me time to process.”

He went on to describe a fundamental change in his identity: “I understood what I did not want to understand, that I am a Jew, and not only that, I am like the Diaspora Jew, whom I was educated as a Zionist to look down on.”

According to him, as part of the process he is going through, it has dawned on him that he is part of a Jewish chain of generations. “All at once, against my will, I stopped being 54,” he explained, adding that he feels he carries a history thousands of years old: “I became 3,338 years old, I can no longer die young.”