January | 2026 | First One Through

The story at the end of the Book of Genesis has an interesting lesson for Jews today.

If Jacob’s sons had remained in Canaan, the biblical pattern likely would have continued unchanged. Land and cattle anchored wealth, security, and continuity, and survival depended on concentration. In such an environment, inheritance narrowed toward a single heir capable of holding territory together through famine and conflict. Until this point, Genesis follows that logic closely, moving from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, and nearly from Jacob to Joseph.

Canaan seemingly reinforced singular succession.

Egypt reshaped it.

The famine drained land of its defining value and redirected survival toward provision. In Egypt, Goshen mattered because it was allocated rather than owned. Jacob’s family entered as dependents, albeit under the protection of a senior official. With land no longer functioning as the primary store of value relative to neighbors, inheritance lost its organizing role. What carried forward instead was character and capacity.

Jacob recognized the shift and adapted to it. His final blessings did not distribute assets or authority but identity. Leadership, resilience, intensity, cohesion, adaptability—each son was seen for what he could contribute rather than what he would receive. Blessing became formative rather than transactional, oriented toward coexistence rather than accumulation.

This evolution reflected Jacob’s own hard-earned understanding. Early in life, he secured a singular blessing that concentrated destiny in one person and fractured a family in the process. Now, with seventy descendants – coming from different mothers – preparing to live together under pressure, he understood that continuity required a new orientation. Blessings and inheritance had to evolve if brothers were going to coexist in exile. Differentiation replaced rivalry, and identity replaced estate.

That shift allowed a family to become a people. Survival came to depend on shared memory, distinct roles, and collective endurance. The covenant moved through people rather than property, and the biblical story never narrowed again to a single bearer.

*Jacob blessing his sons by Adam van Noort (1561–1641)*

For nearly two thousand years, Jewish history unfolded within that framework. Without land, Jews carried blessing as portable identity—education, law, ethics, aspiration. Children were blessed for what they might become, not for what they would inherit. That model sustained continuity across dispersion, persecution, and renewal.

History has turned again.

Since 2008, a plurality of world Jewry lives once more in the land of Israel. Concentration has returned. Land, sovereignty, and inheritance are tangible again, not symbolic. The Jewish people find themselves in the inverse position of Parshat Vayechi: no longer learning how to survive without land, but learning how to live with it again after centuries of absence.

Jacob understood that blessings and inheritance had to change in order for brothers to live together in the diaspora. This moment demands a parallel act of wisdom. The task of this generation is to pass on collective and individual inheritances which will hold both realities at once: rootedness in the land of Israel alongside the moral, intellectual, and spiritual capital forged in exile. The next generation must receive blessings that affirm individual potential and an inheritance that binds those differences into a shared future.

That synthesis—blessing and land together—is the challenge of our time.

The United Nations rarely changes. But sometimes the composition changes just enough that the temperature drops—even if the structure stays broken.

That is what January 1, 2026 quietly delivered at the United Nations Security Council.

Five countries rotated off. Five rotated on. No grand reform. No moral awakening. Just personnel. And yet, for Israel, the difference matters.

The Council Israel Had to Endure

For much of 2024–2025, the Security Council was not merely critical of Israel. It was performative. Ideological. Repetitive. Certain members treated the Council less as a forum for conflict resolution and more as a theater for delegitimization.
None more so than Algeria.

Algeria did not argue policy. Israel, it insisted—again and again—was an illegitimate colonial outpost of Europe, no different from French rule in North Africa. History, geography, and Jewish continuity were irrelevant. This framing was injected into draft resolutions, press statements, and emergency sessions with missionary zeal. The goal was not peace. It was erasure.

Then there was Guyana, a country which bonded with the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1970s, which spoke with confidence and without knowledge—accusing Israel, rather than Arab states, of rejecting partition since 1948. One did not need to agree with Israel to recognize the historical absurdity. But the UN often rewards certainty over accuracy.

And Slovenia—a country with no meaningful role in the conflict—seemed to relish its moment on the moral stage. During Israel’s defensive war, it never called out Hamas. Slovenia repeatedly accused Israel of genocide. The charge was not legal analysis; it was rhetoric. And rhetoric, once introduced, metastasizes.

These countries rotated off quietly. No ceremony. No reckoning. Just gone.

The Council Israel Is Getting Instead

Their replacements are not “pro-Israel.” That bar is too high. But they are something rarer: less ideological.

Bahrain now occupies Algeria’s Arab Muslim chair. Bahrain is a signatory to the Abraham Accords and has diplomatic relations with Israel. It understands that shouting “colonialism” does not feed people, build ports, or stabilize regions. Bahrain may not defend Israel loudly—but it will not poison the well reflexively.

Colombia replaces Guyana in South America. Colombia is a serious country with a serious economy. It trades. It fights insurgencies. It understands security dilemmas. Domestic politics fluctuate, but Colombia does not need Israel as a symbolic enemy to feel virtuous on the world stage.

Latvia replaces Slovenia. Latvia knows what occupation actually looks like. It is cautious with language. It aligns more naturally with Western security frameworks and is unlikely to indulge in genocide rhetoric as a form of diplomatic performance art.

Liberia and Democratic Republic of the Congo round out the new entrants. Neither is a champion of Israel. But neither is an ideological crusader. Silence, at the UN, is often an upgrade.

This is not a transformed Security Council. The structural bias remains intact. Russia and China still exploit Israel as a pressure point. France still oscillates. The General Assembly still manufactures moral majorities untethered from reality.

But something important does change: the agenda-setters.

Algeria’s absence means fewer resolutions laced with colonial mythology. Slovenia’s departure means fewer genocide accusations casually flung like slogans. Guyana’s exit means fewer history-free lectures delivered with confidence.

In their place are countries – hopefully – that calculate before they accuse. That lowers the volume. It slows the cycle and gives diplomacy—especially American diplomacy—more room to maneuver.

Conclusion

Israel does not need the UN to love it. It needs the UN to stop lying about it.
The 2026 Security Council will not be fair. But it may be less dishonest. Less theatrical. Less obsessed with turning a regional war into a morality play with a prewritten villain.