Israel’s marking of its 75th Independence Day was supposed to be a celebratory event, a day of national unity.

Instead, the milestone last week and the solemn, annual Memorial Day that immediately preceded it were marred by deep social divisions over urgent matters like the government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary as well as existential debates surrounding liberal democratic values and Jewish identity.

Bereaved families scuffled with each other among the graves of fallen loved ones at military cemeteries. Protests forced government officials to cancel their participation at memorial ceremonies. Opposition leader Yair Lapid boycotted the state Independence Day ceremony.

Tellingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly stressed “unity” in multiple speeches – even invoking the 40 years Jews spent wandering in the desert in the Book of Exodus as a lesson to be heeded on the need to resolve disputes – and the Israel Air Force’s country-wide flyover was held under the theme of “Together all the way.”

Yet if the disruptions to the ceremonies were not as widespread as had been feared, the pall of division was emphasized by the continuation of anti-government protests into a fifth month. A large rally was held in Tel Aviv on the festive eve of Independence Day, followed by the weekly nationwide demonstrations Saturday night.

Maya Alleruzzo/AP

A scuffle among mourners at an Israeli military cemetery during a Memorial Day ceremony in Beersheba, Israel, April 25, 2023. The tense exchange came ahead of a visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The families of people being remembered there had asked him not to attend.

Sandwiched in between was a government-organized mass demonstration in Jerusalem last Thursday that drew more than 200,000 people, a major show of force for right-wing Israelis who support plans to circumscribe the power of the judiciary.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who for months has sought to resolve the crisis over the government’s proposals, reiterated his dire warnings about national divisions.

“There is no greater existential threat to our people than the one that comes from within,” he told a Jewish American conference last week in Tel Aviv. “The fierce debate over Israel’s direction in recent months is a striking example of the ways that alienation between different groups, and polarization that festers for years, becomes corrosive.”

Cracked mirror

The dueling demonstrations were an indication of just how alienated and polarized the two sides of Jewish-Israeli society have become: one people residing in a single country but split by vastly different conceptions of democracy, Zionism, and Judaism.

In Jerusalem, right-wing demonstrators congregated under banners declaring that an unnamed “they” would “not steal my election” and calling for an end to the “Supreme Court dictatorship.” A coalition including ultranationalist and religious parties had, indeed, won a parliamentary majority last fall that returned Mr. Netanyahu to the premiership. Now those same voters – sporting yarmulkes and traditional dress, and many apparently from West Bank settlements – were demanding “judicial reform.”

“Look how much power we have,” declared Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from the far-right Religious Zionism party. “They have the media, they have the tycoons that fund their protests, but we have the people on our side.”

Omri, a secular Likud voter from central Israel, says he hadn’t attended a demonstration in at least two decades. “But things added up,” he explains in Jerusalem. “The Left has been breaking all the taboos, including [protests] on Memorial Day and not respecting democratic results, so I wanted to come out and give my support. It’s not just about judicial reform.”

Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

Right-wing demonstrators gather outside Israel's parliament to call on the government to complete its planned judicial overhaul, in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023.

The cracked-mirror image with the series of anti-government protests was evident throughout at the pro-government rally, from the sea of blue-and-white Israeli flags to rhythmic chants of “de-mo-cra-cy” to youngsters holding out tin cans for donations (in this case to build new settlements).

Then in Tel Aviv over the weekend, as in all previous weeks, the same flags and chants for democracy from the other side.

“We are the majority, and we’ve taken to the streets!” the less modestly dressed and mostly secular protesters yelled. Instead of pulsating religious music, the soundtrack was Israeli pop and rap.

Instead of rabbinic incantations, loudspeakers in Tel Aviv played Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, reading out the Declaration of Independence, including the key provision that the state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex.” A sizeable group held aloft Palestinian flags under signs declaring: “No democracy with occupation.”

Deepening demands

As with their rivals, the vast majority of Tel Aviv demonstrators also truly believed they were fighting against an incipient dictatorship – though not of the courts, but the Netanyahu government. 

Moish, a father of two from Tel Aviv, explains his anxiety over his country’s future.

“In the past I worried about what would happen here in 10 years, when I have to send my kids to the army,” he says in a nod to Israel’s ever-present security challenges. “Afterwards I worried about what would happen in a year with the high-tech sector that I work in. Now I’m fearful about what we’ll have here in a month. … This is how quickly the situation has deteriorated.”

The anti-government protest movement has ostensibly expanded and deepened its demands, from opposition to the judicial overhaul to growing calls for a more just and liberal state.

Corinna Kern/Reuters

Israeli protesters attend a mass "Independence party" to demonstrate against the Netanyahu government's judicial overhaul plans, in Tel Aviv, April 25, 2023.

On Thursday a “Day of National Equality” is planned to send a message that “the days where one side serves the state and funds [via taxes] the Jewish yeshivas – while at the same time they’re trying to institute a halachic [Jewish Law] dictatorship – are over,” say organizers.

Government officials and supporters, in rare moments of honesty, seem to agree.

“The [judicial] reform isn’t the story, reform is just a tool,” Deputy Justice Minister David Amsalem, from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, told the right-wing masses at the Jerusalem rally. “This is a battle over Jewish tradition and Jewish values.”

The happy pessimist

Yet, despite warnings from some quarters that Israeli society was unraveling, older analysts and officials recall periods in Israel’s tumultuous 75-year history with other instances of mass demonstrations and internal division: the fierce debate in the 1950s over accepting German reparations for the Holocaust, anger in the wake of wartime policies in the 1970s and 1980s, and through the decades widespread right-wing opposition to territorial withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian territories.

“You’ve had deep political crises here before, and none of them threatened the existence of the state or the Zionist project,” says Nahum Barnea, a columnist at the Yediot Aharonot daily who, at 78, is the dean of Israeli political commentators. Civil war, Mr. Barnea continues, is unlikely, even in the current moment, especially after Mr. Netanyahu in late March called a “time out” on the judicial overhaul agenda to allow for talks with the opposition.

The move was a positive signal for Israeli democracy, says Mr. Barnea, since Mr. Netanyahu still clearly cared about, and was responsive to, public opinion.

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Israelis protest against the proposed judicial overhaul at the weekly Saturday night demonstration in Tel Aviv, April 29, 2023.

Indeed, the image of a divided society split equally down the middle – heavily promoted by the Netanyahu government – is belied by opinion polls that consistently show a solid 60 percent of the public opposing judicial reform. The government in general, and Mr. Netanyahu in particular, recently have seen their support plummet.

Yet where the current moment is likely unique and historic, Mr. Barnea says, is in what it has come to encompass: a battle “over the identity of the state and Jewish-Israel society, its values and the concept of Israeli-ness.” The anti-government protesters “have come to think in very broad terms: What are we, and where are we going?”

This segment of Israeli society has come to be “reminded of all the good things that we have here, their pride in the liberal character of the country, and everything they’re liable to lose,” he says.

“I’m a happy pessimist,” Mr. Barnea says, neither venturing a prediction regarding how the current crisis may end nor dismissing future ones. “Israel is a miracle. ... I still believe that they built something here very positive for the Jewish people.”

Continued struggle

Yet right-wing Israelis, especially the ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalists, clearly saw in their election victory an opportunity to fundamentally shift Israel’s trajectory: to turn the country more religious, expand West Bank settlements, and neuter any pockets of resistance (like the Supreme Court) that stand in their way. Some right-wing analysts even describe it as inevitable given their growing demographic share of the population.

And if all that fails, according to one wizened rabbi who addressed the Jerusalem protest, then there was always a higher power. “I can portend to you that the judicial reform will pass. I’m not a prophet but it is God’s prophecy,” he said.

The struggle for Israel will therefore be fated to continue no matter the outcome of the judicial overhaul battle, observers say.

For many, it’s simply a dress rehearsal for a larger existential struggle over the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – and with it, once more, the meaning of democracy, Zionism, and Judaism.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, alluding in particular to the lack of any peace process and separation from the Palestinians, calls the Netanyahu government “an anti-Israeli government.”

“What it does is against the best interests of Israel and the people of Israel,” he says. Opposing it “is the only option we have to maintain the integrity, the decency, the values that are the basis for our country.”

Justice Department/AP

Jack Teixeira's room at his father's home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. Prosecutors said the Massachusetts Air National guardsman accused of leaking classified military documents kept weapons and said on social media that he would like to kill a "ton of people."

In March 2018, a high school junior in North Dighton, Massachusetts, was suspended after a classmate allegedly heard him discussing guns, Molotov cocktails, and racist threats. 

To those who knew him online, this wouldn’t have been a surprise. The student – Jack Teixeira – was a gun-loving, edgy teenage gamer. The servers he frequented in the years to come included members who were obsessed with the military and posted Nazi memes.

But that didn’t prevent Mr. Teixeira, the next year, from getting an IT job with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. Neither, in 2021, did it stop him from getting a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance – the highest level the government awards.

Now Mr. Teixeira stands accused of abusing his position, and then some. Last month, he was arrested and charged with being the perpetrator of the largest leak of U.S. intelligence in a decade. Since last October, he has allegedly posted hundreds of highly classified national security documents on Discord, a popular gaming site.

The Discord leaks have presented a list of questions for the American intelligence community – about how someone in such a niche outfit could have access to some of the nation’s most furtive secrets and why the leak took so long to spot. But as more details of Mr. Teixeira’s past come out, former intelligence officials are also starting to wonder how he got a clearance at all – and how he even made it into the military. 

“It seems like they didn’t do a very good job vetting him at the very outset, to say nothing of when they were considering his security clearance,” says Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. “It’s a total failure.”

Jon Elswick/AP

Image of Justice Department's motion for continued pretrial detention of Jack Teixeira.

It’s a failure, former officials argue, that may say less about Mr. Teixeira than the system he worked for. The American intelligence community is a sprawling bureaucratic neighborhood of agencies and levels of classification. In 2017, the number of people with active Top Secret security clearances was just under 1.2 million – including government employees and contractors, and officials at all levels of seniority. Even as the Pentagon investigates this leak and tries to contain its damage, there are simply too many people with top clearances across too many levels of government to audit them all. 

Gaming culture

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last February, Mr. Teixeira reportedly began posting classified information about the war to an online Discord chat room of 600 people. He would continue doing so for months, but in October began concentrating on another online group, a community of 50 mostly young gamers on a Discord server called Thug Shaker Central.

There, reportedly as the group’s leader, Mr. Teixeira posted transcripts and then photos of highly classified documents detailing U.S. intelligence secrets from the war in Ukraine to arms supply in South Korea. 

Besides boasting classified documents in its chat, Thug Shaker Central was a portrait of online gaming’s often lewd, offensive culture. According to a Department of Justice filing last week, Mr. Teixeira “had regular discussions about violence and murder on the social media platform.” Last November, according to a Department of Justice filing, he stated that “if he had his way, he would ‘kill a [expletive] ton of people’ because it would be ‘culling the weak minded.’”

When the FBI raided Mr. Teixeira’s family home in Massachusetts on April 13, according to the same filing, they found a gun safe containing bolt-action rifles, an AK-style weapon, and a gas mask 2 feet from his bed.

This is not the profile of someone the United States wants with a top-secret clearance.

“It’s exposing something that’s quite systemic,” says Amy Jeffress, a former Department of Justice prosecutor and national security lawyer. “We keep seeing these cases where individuals who really should not have access to our most highly classified information do have access to it.”

Part of the problem, Ms. Jeffress argues, is that the government classifies too much information – it’s just seen as a safer option. But a high volume of classified documents demands a large number of government employees with security clearances: around 2.8 million in total as of 2017.

Alex Brandon/AP

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, center, departs after a closed-door briefing about the leak of highly classified military documents, on Capitol Hill, April 19, 2023, in Washington.

Another issue is that top secret information is shared widely among different parts of the intelligence community, a choice that dates back 20 years, when a lack of intelligence sharing was faulted, in part, for the government’s failure to anticipate the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

The upside is that sharing intelligence helps avoid catastrophe. The downside is that more widely shared intelligence is harder to keep secret. 

“Every intelligence crisis has an aphorism or a saying that comes out of it. After 9/11, it was ‘information sharing, connect the dots,’” says Michael Allen, who worked in President George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “But now we’ve clearly overshared the information.” 

Secret PowerPoints

The documents Mr. Teixeira posted on Discord were J2 briefing slides, the highest-level intelligence product America’s intelligence community creates every day, says former Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Council official Javed Ali. 

Those slides – essentially a daily PowerPoint presentation for the nation’s top policymakers – are posted to an online bulletin board of sorts known as the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, or JWICS (pronounced “jay-wiks”). For Mr. Teixeira, it was as simple as accessing JWICS, printing out the slides, and taking them home. 

Members of the intelligence community work on keyboards that track their every keystroke and printers that log their every print. But those tools better suit an audit than a real-time alarm, says Mr. Ali. Thousands of people access JWICS each day, he says. 

Mr. Teixeira was an IT employee, which made his clearance kind of like the head electrician at the White House, says Dr. Farkas, now director of the McCain Institute, a Washington-based think tank. He needed a clearance in case he saw something secret at work. But he had no “need to know’’ such sensitive information. 

The intelligence community needs a better way to enforce that need-to-know standard, she says. The Department of Defense is working on a yearslong project to make its computer networks “zero trust,” which would mean users need to continuously authenticate their credentials before accessing information at different levels. But that structure likely wouldn’t have prevented all of Mr. Teixeira’s leaks, and is still years away. 

“How do you begin to regulate a system that’s compartmented like crazy with all these different levels of classification?” says Mr. Allen. 

Mr. Ali recommends added scrutiny of social media accounts and airport-level security at secure sites, maybe even random bag checks. But even those protocols, he concedes, aren’t perfect. Even members of the intelligence community have constitutional rights to privacy. 

“These are things that are hard to do,” says Mr. Allen. “But ... any system that doesn’t detect some of these red flags is, by definition, flawed.”

Thomas Peter/Reuters/File

A surveillance camera is silhouetted behind a Chinese national flag in Beijing, Nov. 3, 2022. China is prioritizing national security over economic growth as it faces a mounting geopolitical rivalry with the United States, say experts.

China’s recent raids on American firms and the expansion of a counterespionage law are sending a chill through the foreign business community and ratcheting up the risks of operating in the country.

By targeting two U.S. companies involved in due diligence work – such as background checks and market consulting – in separate raids in March and April, while also greatly widening the scope of data that could be deemed by Chinese authorities to be related to national security, Beijing has thrown into question whether businesses and other entities can safely gather information vital to their work. 

“Frankly, we’re very concerned about it,” said Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to China, at an online event on Tuesday hosted by the Stimson Center in Washington. The amendments approved last week to China’s counterespionage law “could potentially make illegal in China the kind of mundane activities that a business would have to do.”

The moves place a bigger black box around critical, trust-building data at a moment when Beijing is declaring the country open for business after three years of strict “zero-COVID” policy. U.S. business representatives in China say the mixed signals coming from the government have contributed to a cautiousness among American firms here.

“On the one hand, there have been events to communicate with foreign firms and encourage investment. On the other, these company raids with no clarity have spooked the foreign business community in China,” writes Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham), in emailed responses to questions.

Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters/File

Nicholas Burns gives his opening statement during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on his nomination to be the U.S. Ambassador to China, in Washington, Oct. 20, 2021. Mr. Burns says he is "very concerned" about recent efforts to restrict information flows in China.

An April survey of AmCham members showed that while the majority of respondents were optimistic about China’s economic recovery, less than a quarter planned to increase investment. Nearly a quarter were considering relocating supply chains outside of China, mainly to better manage risk. 

Company leaders visiting China for the first time in years “certainly have raised questions about recent raids, detentions, and arrests,” Mr. Hart says. “If these companies have done something illegal, we encourage the authorities to be clear about what that is. Otherwise all foreign companies may feel they are a target of a politically motivated action.”

Heightened scrutiny

American business leaders and senior U.S. officials say they are raising concerns with Beijing about the raids on the Mintz Group and Bain & Company as well as the sweeping counterespionage rules, which together are exacerbating an already challenging environment for foreign firms.

In the context of the law, which “casts a wide net” over data considered relevant to national security, the “heightened official scrutiny” of U.S. due diligence firms “dramatically increases the uncertainties and risks of doing business in the People’s Republic,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. “This is a matter of serious concern for the investor community.”

Under the expanded law, Chinese authorities conducting counterespionage investigations can impose “exit bans” on Chinese and foreign suspects, blocking them from leaving the country. China’s use of such exit bans is growing, according to a report released on Tuesday by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights group based in Madrid. It cited an academic paper that found that at least 41 foreign businesspeople had been subject to exit bans by China over the past two decades. China’s use of exit bans is listed in the U.S. State Department’s March 2023 travel advisory as one reason Americans should “reconsider” travel to China.

Ambassador Burns stressed that U.S. officials are raising questions about the law with China’s government in hopes of ensuring “an environment here where American businesspeople and journalists and academics can feel safe, that if they’re operating here in China, they can do the jobs that they came here to do, and they are not subject to this kind of intimidation.”

Security roles for all

China’s prioritization of national security over economic growth, as the country faces a mounting geopolitical rivalry with the United States, is the driving force behind Beijing’s actions to assert greater control over flows of information and people, experts say.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (left) and Li Qiang (right) attend a National People's Congress session in Beijing, March 10, 2023. Recent raids on U.S. firms in China contrast sharply with leaders' business-friendly messaging.

China’s leader Xi Jinping stressed the need to strengthen national security – calling it the “bedrock” of the country’s development and the “ultimate goal” – at the Communist Party’s 20th National Congress last October, when he won a rare third term as head of the ruling party.

Mr. Xi called for shoring up the security of China’s food, energy, resources, and key industrial supply chains, and for bolstering the protection of the country’s infrastructure, financial system, and data, as well as cybersecurity.

“After the Party Congress, the leadership seems intent on reorienting the government priorities toward this geopolitical competition with the U.S., and the overriding economic priority is to build up the economy so it can survive and prosper and prevail in that competition,” says Andrew Batson, China research director for Gavekal Dragonomics, which covers macroeconomic and market trends in China.

“It’s a general effort to harden the economy against external shocks … based on a recognition that China is operating in what they view as a more uncertain and hostile world,” Mr. Batson says.

Indeed, China’s focus on national security has led to a steady expansion of laws – including the 2014 Counter Espionage Law, the 2015 National Security Law, the 2016 Cybersecurity Law, and the 2017 National Intelligence Law – which obligate firms and individuals to support government security efforts.

“There has been a slew of new legislation that effectively securitizes firms,” says Kellee Tsai, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). “These laws explicitly ascribe national security roles to Chinese firms.”

As China’s companies play a bigger role in security, scrutiny of multinationals and foreign firms operating in China has increased as well. They are also under growing pressure to toe the political line in China, Dr. Tsai says.

“In the past five years, firms have been under increasing pressure to demonstrate political fealty, and this expectation of political correctness extends to multinationals operating in China,” says Dr. Tsai, who is also Chair Professor of Social Science at HKUST.

This contrasts sharply with China’s recent business-friendly messaging – including by Li Qiang, the new prime minister – that China seeks to attract foreign investment and will expand market access. 

“That is true in a short-term, tactical sense,” says Mr. Batson. “But not in a long-term, strategic sense.”

One by one, the drums unite from every direction. Slung over shoulders, cradled by old-timers, and clasped on either side by children, they meet on a corner in the Montevideo neighborhood of Barrio Sur.

The pulse begins sporadically, an unorchestrated call to gather. Those perched on curbs and leaning against cars perk up and wander over. By the time the Uruguayan flag takes to the air, waving from one side of the street to the other in the hands of a proud bearer, the drums are thumping in perfect unison. Dancers give life to the beat as they lead the parade down the block.

This is candombe, a distinctly Uruguayan rhythm brought into being by the descendants of enslaved Africans who arrived at the port of Montevideo in the 18th century. Today that lineage is celebrated loudly and triumphantly, with this event marking the end of the Carnaval season. Wherever candombe goes, it makes visible a culture long left out of mainstream Uruguayan society.

In the past few years, interest in candombe has boomed both within Uruguay and abroad. While some worry popularity could water down the tradition’s richness, those in the community say this beat belongs to everyone, and all are invited to make it their own.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Samuel Rodríguez takes part in the procession using a drum gifted to him on his second birthday a month before in Barrio Sur, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

“For us, it doesn’t matter your ethnicity, your skin tone, your age, your gender, if you have three university degrees, or if you never finished high school,” says Wellington Silva, who has led this troop, one of the city’s most revered, alongside his brother since their father passed away. “The drums bring joy, they open channels of communication, they turn us into brothers and sisters.”

As the sun dips out of sight, the division between procession and observers fades. Dancers, shy at the start, now twist their hips and kick out their feet as children weave in and out of the crowd making its way down the iconic Isla de Flores street. Neighbors sway from balconies and rooftops where Saturday laundry is hanging to dry. Leaders in the community say that’s the beauty of candombe.

“Anyone who happens to pass by is bound to hear and to want to know more,” says Álvaro Salas, the director of culture at the nonprofit Mundo Afro, which focuses on the visibility and rights of the Afro-Uruguayan population. “That’s the most natural part of being human. We have to love joy.”

There are three main styles of candombe in Montevideo: Cuareim, Ansina, and Cordón. The candombe troop marching today, Cuareim 1080, was born on this very block, named after the historic address of the building where the parade convenes. Now an apartment complex, the seemingly nondescript building used to be a tenement where the city’s poor lived, including Mr. Silva’s father. 

The practice of candombe had faded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but found a new home in these communal living spaces. In the late 1970s, this and other conventillos, as the tenements were known, were cleared by the military dictatorship in an effort to make the center of Montevideo more attractive.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Candombe dancers move to the rhythm of the drums on the streets of Barrio Sur, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

The Uruguayan flag leads the candombe procession down the streets of Barrio Sur, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

“They pick you up and throw you out, and what happens? You expand,” says Dr. Salas. “Today, there is candombe in every neighborhood in Uruguay.” Through Mundo Afro, he teaches candombe to kids, leads workshops in prisons, and is working on a candombe partnership between Montevideo and Minneapolis as appreciation for the culture spreads. 

Afro-Uruguayans make up around 10% of the Uruguayan population and are three times as likely to live in poverty as white Uruguayans. But members of the candombe community say their music is a celebration rather than a protest.

Fernanda Rossana was a kid when her family’s home in the Ansina conventillo was razed. She spent the rest of her childhood on the outskirts of town. These days she is a proud participant of the Ansina candombe troop and is here dancing in support of her husband, a member of Cuareim 1080.

“That’s candombe – not losing our essence or our roots,” she says, dressed in bright orange. “It’s demonstrating that we are free.”

“When I dance, I go into something like a trance, I come out of myself, and I enter into the moment. It’s marvelous,” she says.

For Mr. Silva, the leader of Cuareim 1080, candombe is a way of life open to anyone, whether they are of Afro-Uruguayan descendance or not. Everyone is welcome, he says, “as long as you understand that your freedom ends where another’s freedom begins, you always extend a hand, and you always greet your neighbor. When you have something someone needs, you offer it, and when you need something, come, because someone will provide it.” 

When kids are taught to play candombe, they learn to respect the space of the drums around them, says Mr. Silva. When they walk down the street in a procession, they learn to make room for others.

Samuel Rodríguez, a toddler known affectionately as Samu, stands on the curb. The drum he received on his second birthday one month prior is draped across his chest. Donning a dinosaur T-shirt and sneakers, he waits for the right moment before stepping boldly into the parade. Despite his small stature, a space opens up, and he is enveloped by the crowd.

Samu’s legs move twice as fast to keep up with the other drummers. He is concentrating on the beat, so it takes a few minutes for him to look up and realize he is falling behind. 

A dancer glances back at the same time and pauses her twirls. Instinctively, Samu raises his hand to meet her palm. Together, they march forward in step.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Dancers fill the street as the candombe parade completes its route in Barrio Sur, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Candombe drums are warmed by a flame on the street to tune the instruments before the performance, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

Erika Page/The Christian Science Monitor

Milka Dorys waits for the candombe celebration to begin outside the Cuareim 1080 Cultural Association in Barrio Sur, Montevideo, March 18, 2023.

Portrait by Patti Singleton Eastern

In his probing spiritual memoir, “Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming,” Peter Enns describes a dark period. He realized his religious assumptions since his teenage years – that every word of the Bible was fact – needed a second look. The “curveball” refers to Enns’ baseball career, which was cut short in its early stages, sending him down a path shaped more by a theological quest than by fly balls and strike-outs.

“When what made sense before makes little sense now, we are in that sacred space of having to decide whether or not we will adjust to the curveball,” says the Bible scholar. “And what we decide will make all the difference.” 

That path began while he was in graduate school at Harvard University, studying the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament. After pedaling his bike home from class one day, he found himself having “a conversation with the refrigerator.” He stood there in the kitchen wondering if Abraham in the Bible was a real person, and then shrank back with guilt at even having such a thought. But for Enns, what he calls his Maytag moment prompted years of examination beyond his evangelical Christian training and his reading of the Bible “literally or else.” 

In the book, he considers a God who is here and now – active and always present. Enns intuited years ago that outside of his conservative circles, questioning the literal truths in the Bible meant moving beyond fixed interpretations – moving forward, not backward. And he recognized that the God he has come to know “honors simple honesty more than going along with scripted roles.”

The chapter “Blink of an Eye” expands the universe to be God-size – infinite – not compressed into a denominational or historical mold. God, he argues, is a Deity who invites curiosity, not lock-step conformity. 

Enns opens up a challenge to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others to see God’s existence as different from what is meant by existence “for any other thing.” Otherwise, he says, we are talking about “‘a being’ who ‘exists’ in the way everything else does.” He also has a hard time accepting a God caught up in border issues, warfare, and other actions in the Bible that divide humanity into groups, rather than uniting them.

For Enns, the label “God” is merely a placeholder for the breadth of the Almighty. He speaks of a God who doesn’t sit high above creation, but who permeates it – not one who “is in a perpetual state of anger, who causes floods and dooms the stubborn to disease.” Whatever God’s justice might be, the author sees it as one of restoration, not punishment.

Later, in an excerpt called “A Quick Glance at My Miserable Parenting Skills,” Enns regrets he wasn’t more aware of the curveballs when he was a 30-something parent. He confesses to pushing back at the message his teenage kids delivered loud and clear: that what they were hearing in church didn’t match the reality they were experiencing. He credits their authenticity and refusal to accept the status quo with allowing him to recognize his own spiritual complacency. And now that they’re adults, Enns worries less about the need to “save” them in “a conventional evangelical sense.” Instead, he endeavors to be a healing force that a more expansive God models for him.

What is particularly encouraging is that Enns doesn’t lay out a specific formula for the reader. That said, his accessible voice doesn’t hide an urgency he feels these times demand. He cautions that the Bible isn’t an owner’s manual with a prescribed way of interpreting a spiritual life. 

Wrestling with God and with scripture goes back to ancient times, and is “God-activated,” he writes, building a sturdier faith for both ardent seekers as well as those hanging back due to doubt or guilt.

Enns’ previous books include “How the Bible Actually Works” and “The Sin of Certainty.” In honor of his Maytag moment, “Curveball” sees past religious facts set in stone, to a fluidity of thought that was for him fertile ground for growth. 

He spurs readers on to their own refrigerator moment, leading them on a journey that creates a sacred space for a “bigger” God.

Reuters

An ethnic Serb uses his scooter in North Mitrovica, Kosovo, April 23.

Back in March, the European Union brokered an agreement between the Balkan states of Serbia and Kosovo to normalize ties. The deal left observers clinging to an uncertain hope. Twenty-five years after the two states broke apart in the violent fragmenting of what was then Yugoslavia, they remain tense neighbors. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić backed the accord but withheld his signature (Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence).

But yesterday the two sides took their first step beyond mere good faith. Meeting in Brussels, Mr. Vučić and his counterpart, Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti, pledged to work together to locate people who disappeared during the 1998-99 war. This victims-first focus shows how empathy and truth are forerunners to justice and peace. It acknowledges dignity over ethnic identity.

“Resolving the issue of Missing Persons is not only a humanitarian obligation,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief mediator, said in a statement after a meeting of the Balkan leaders in Brussels. “It is also a crucial enabler for reconciliation and trust between people.”

Smaller than Connecticut with a population that is more than 90% ethnic Albanian, Kosovo split from Serbia in a war that lasted 17 months and claimed more than 13,000 lives. The EU cataloged 6,065 cases of people who went missing. Of those, 1,621 remain unresolved. They are presumed to be dead and their remains scattered across the region in unmarked graves.

The declaration signed yesterday opens by emphasizing “the importance of resolving the fate of the remaining Missing Persons to bring closure to the suffering of their loved ones.” That point rests on lessons learned in countries like South Africa, Colombia, and Cyprus, which grounded transitional justice in empathy for the families and communities of victims of conflict. Those experiences showed the broader healing effect of comforting individuals by removing the uncertainty of what happened to their missing loved ones.

Finding out what happened to missing persons “is a precondition for sustainable peace,” wrote Grażyna Baranowska, a Polish law professor, in a study on Kosovo and Cyprus. She notes that families of missing persons are more apt to embrace each other across enemy lines. Their desire for truth over revenge “can result in a broader interaction” toward peace between post-conflict communities.

That was a key insight for Juan Manuel Santos, the former president of Colombia who brokered peace in his country’s longest-running guerrilla war in 2016. “The victims have taught me that the capacity to forgive can overcome hatred and rancor,” he said.

Yesterday’s agreement has been long coming. Serbia backed a “draft agreement” in October 2020 to set up a joint commission on missing persons in Kosovo. Belgrade took a similar step two years earlier in Croatia, where more than 1,800 cases remained unresolved. But years later, Croatia was still accusing Serbia of failing to share vital information held by its security services.

Now, with its membership in the EU pending, Belgrade has an opportunity to demonstrate where its values lie. The agreement requires both sides to cooperate on missing persons cases through a joint commission chaired by the EU.

“Victims must be placed at the very center of this process,” U.N. Special Rapporteur Fabián Salvioli said of the Serbia-Kosovo peace process in December. “The exaltation of nationalistic and ethnic-related sentiments for political motivation ... can lead to a recurrence of violence.”

The world’s lessons in post-conflict empathy continue to mount. If they take root in Kosovo, they may blossom in other societies – like Ethiopia – now seeking their way out of ethnic or religious strife.