A few days into the Jewish New Year, Israel's new president, Reuven Rivlin, did something that surprised and moved many Israelis: He teamed up with an 11-year-old Arab youngster to make a video calling for intercommunal tolerance.  The boy, one George Amireh, a Christian from Jaffa, had made a viral video expressing frustration at bullying peers, and Rivlin approached him to collaborate. In his original video, Amireh drops a series of placards Bob Dylan-style, bearing names the other kids call him at school. His video with the president broadens the message, with placards reading: "Let us promise ourselves that this year we will act for tolerance, empathy, unity, equality - values that we must have in our state."

The video resonated - no mean feat in the post-Gaza war climate. Relations between the Jewish majority and the 20 percent minority of Palestinian citizens of Israel, delicate at the best of times, were under enormous pressure this summer. The country was reeling from the murders of three Israeli teens in the West Bank and the murder of a Palestinian teen in East Jerusalem, and the ensuing 50-day Israel-Hamas hostilities put Arab-Jewish relations to the test.  Most Jews supported the Gaza operation, but most Arabs did not.

Netanyahu has issued few unifying messages to calm divisions, but Rivlin has made his pro-tolerance message a top priority since taking office. While Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for a boycott of Arab businesses taking part in a protest strike against the summer war, Rivlin's first Knesset speech in office urged lawmakers not to ignore "the extremism and violence that have raised their ugly heads among us." In the process, he has become the only major political voice in Israel advocating tolerance. 

When extremists protested the wedding in August of a Muslim man and a Jewish woman who converted to Islam, Netanyahu stayed mum. Rivlin, meanwhile, said there was no place in Israeli society for the "infuriating and distressing" displays "of incitement" against the couple. Just this week, he told a conference that violence in Israel has reached new heights, wondered whether Israeli Jews have "forgotten how to be decent human beings," and said, "It's time to admit honestly that Israeli society is sick - and this sickness must be treated." On Sunday, he became the first president to attend the memorial ceremony for the 1956 Kafr Qasem massacre, when Border Police officers shot and killed 47 residents of the Arab village. He said this was a "serious crime" that needed to be repaired.