History is intelligible only in retrospect

Looking backward, events appear almost inevitable. Causes line up neatly, consequences seem logically connected, and historians can draw arrows from one development to the next. The narrative becomes intelligible.

Yet, the path of history is not obvious while it unfolds. It constantly defies the expectations of those living inside it.

Human beings are storytelling creatures. We look for coherence. We want to believe that history follows identifiable trajectories. But history rarely behaves that way.

In 1988, few analysts believed the Soviet Union would disappear within three years. Yet by 1991 it had collapsed with astonishing speed.

In early 2011, a street vendor’s self-immolation in Tunisia triggered protests that cascaded across the Middle East, toppling governments that had ruled for decades.

For years Israeli intelligence monitored Hamas and understood its intentions. Yet the scale and coordination of the October 7 attack shocked the very institutions designed to anticipate such threats.

These moments reveal a recurring pattern. History often moves quietly—until it suddenly accelerates. The systems that appear most stable are sometimes the ones closest to breaking. This reveals a fundamental asymmetry: history is explainable, but it is rarely predictable.

This is because societies are systems composed of millions of interacting decisions. A small trigger can produce disproportionate consequences. History is shaped not only by structures but by individuals — leaders, inventors, dissidents, generals — whose decisions cannot be predicted with precision. Political systems often appear stable until they suddenly collapse. Empires that seemed permanent disappear within a few years. Revolutions erupt after decades of apparent equilibrium.

The most consequential moments in history are often the ones that seemed least dramatic at the time. A political speech, a technological invention, a protest in a provincial city, a border incident. At the time, participants rarely understand the significance of what they are witnessing.

Few historical experiences illustrate the unpredictability of history more starkly than the history of the Jewish people.

Jewish existence has repeatedly unfolded at the fault lines of history’s sudden reversals. Periods of stability have given way abruptly to catastrophe; moments of apparent weakness have unexpectedly produced renewal.

For centuries, Jewish communities lived in relative security in Central Europe, believing themselves integrated into modern society. Few could imagine that within a generation the most advanced civilization in Europe would organize the systematic destruction of the Jewish people.

Likewise, few observers in 1945 could have predicted that only three years later a Jewish state would emerge in the ancient homeland after two thousand years of political exile.

Jewish history has therefore been shaped not only by endurance, but by the constant necessity of responding to historical surprises.

The events of October 7 reminded Israelis and Jews around the world of this unsettling truth. A society that had developed one of the most sophisticated security systems in the world discovered, in a single morning, that history still retains the capacity to surprise.

In such moments the question facing a society is not whether uncertainty exists. Uncertainty is permanent. The real question is how a society responds to it. Waiting for absolute clarity is rarely possible. By the time threats become fully undeniable, the cost of inaction may already be irreversible.

The challenge is therefore not to eliminate uncertainty — something no nation can do — but to cultivate the moral and political capacity to act responsibly within it.