We found Shai Melamud just before dusk,standing on his patio near Israel’s northernborder, opposite a slope scorched black byrecent rocket fire from Lebanon.

Mr. Melamud, 86, was born 13 years be-fore the state of Israel. He grew up in thesehills, the son of early Zionists who helpedbuild one of the area’s first Jewish collectivefarms, or kibbutzim.

Over dinner, he remembered the Arab vil-lage that once stood on the now-empty hill tothe north, whose residents fled during the1948 war that established Israel. He remem-bered crossing the ridge to Lebanon on hisfather’s horse, back when Israel was only anidea in his father’s head. And he wondered

what his father would make of the countrytoday.

“If he took a look,” Mr. Melamud said,“he’d say a single sentence: ‘This wasn’t thechild we prayed for.’ And then he’d return tohis grave.”

Mr. Melamud’s kibbutz, Kfar Giladi, wasthe first stop of a recent journey I made witha photojournalist, Laetitia Vancon, from Is-rael’s far north to its southern tip. Israel is asmall country, just 260 miles long. You can

drive it in six hours. But we took 10 days,seeking to understand the child that Mr.Melamud’s father hadn’t prayed for.

We found a country still wrestling withcontradictions left unresolved at its birth,and with the consequences of its occupationof the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. We founda people facing complex questions aboutwhat it means to be Israeli, or a Palestiniancitizen of Israel. And we found a battle ofnarratives — waged not only between Jewsand Arabs, but also among Jews them-selves.

Israel’s founders hoped to create a melt-ing pot, a society that blended diverse com-munities into a single Jewish state. But weencountered an Israel that at times felt more

Whose Promised Land? Journeying Across a Divided IsraelBy PATRICK KINGSLEY

Continued on Page A8

In Search of Ties in a Nation Founded in Contradictions

Jerusalem, like all of Israel, is a jostling mix of people with varied origins. If Arabs struggle to find their place, so do many Jews.LAETITIA VANCON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

C M Y K Nxxx,2021-10-26,A,001,Bs-4C,E1

U(D54G1D)y+&!&!?!?!#

Thanksgiving 2021 could be themost expensive meal in the his-tory of the holiday.

Caroline Hoffman is alreadystashing canned pumpkin in thekitchen of her Chicago apartmentwhen she finds some for under adollar. She recently spent almost$2 more for the vanilla she’ll needto bake pumpkin bread and otherdesserts for the various Friends-giving celebrations she’s been in-vited to.

Matthew McClure paid 20 per-cent more this month than he didlast year for the 25 pasture-raisedturkeys he plans to roast at theHive, the Bentonville, Ark.,restaurant where he is the execu-tive chef. And Norman Brown, di-rector of sweet-potato sales forWada Farms in Raleigh, N.C., ispaying truckers nearly twice asmuch as usual to haul the crop toother parts of the country.

“I never seen anything like it,and I’ve been running sweet pota-

toes for 38 or 39 years,” Mr. Brownsaid. “I don’t know what the an-swer is, but in the end it’s all goingto get passed on to the consumer.”

Nearly every component of thetraditional American Thanksgiv-ing dinner, from the disposablealuminum turkey roasting pan tothe coffee and pie, will cost morethis year, according to agricultural

This Year’s Thanksgiving MealIs Poised to Wallop the Wallet

By KIM SEVERSON

One farm is paying nearlydouble to haul sweet potatoes.

MADELINE GRAY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A15

Sudan’s top generals seizedpower on Monday, arresting theprime minister, imposing a stateof emergency and opening fire onprotesters, in tumultuous scenesthat threatened to derail the tran-sition to democracy in an Africannation just as it emerged from dec-ades of harsh autocratic rule andinternational isolation.

Sudan’s military and civilianleaders have been sharing powerfor over two years in a tense, un-easy arrangement negotiated af-ter a popular uprising ousted Su-dan’s longtime dictator, OmarHassan al-Bashir, in 2019. It wassupposed to lead to the country’sfirst free vote in decades.

But on Monday, the militaryshredded that deal, turned on thecivilian leadership and declaredthat it alone would rule.

“This is a new Sudan,” Lt. Gen.Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the mili-tary chief, said in a news confer-ence. “We call on everybody tocome together to develop andbuild the country.”

As news of the putsch spread,young protesters flooded onto thestreets of the capital, Khartoum,and soldiers opened fire, killingseven people and wounding atleast 140 others, a Sudanesehealth ministry official toldReuters.

The protesters were hoping toprotect the fruits of the revolutionthat had toppled Mr. al-Bashir andinspired heady hopes for a differ-ent future. But by evening theyhad retreated to neighborhoods

Sudan MilitaryCrushes HopesFor Democracy

This article is by Declan Walsh,Abdi Latif Dahir and Simon Marks.

Continued on Page A6

Late Edition

VOL. CLXXI . . . . No. 59,223 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2021

BEAUMONT, Texas — Thepriest needed a hand while tug-ging on layer after layer of vest-ments. He carried a magnifyingglass to help him read a handwrit-ten list of prayer intentions. But ashe jingled a bell to let the congre-gation know that Mass was begin-ning, he abandoned his walkerand cane, singing along with thechoir as he ambled up the centeraisle toward the altar.

“He knows the difficulty of ourlife — it’s not easy,” the Rev. LuisUrriza said in Spanish, describing

Jesus’ familiarity with the strug-gles of his followers.

“He has been tested in all man-ners,” Father Luis said. “Exactlylike us.”

In fact, Father Luis faced a testof his own, perhaps his mostdaunting. At the age of 100, nearly70 years after he had established

the humble Cristo Rey Parish tonurture a small but burgeoningLatino community in southeast-ern Texas, he was now beingforced to leave it behind.

Not long after his birthday inAugust, the Catholic bishop ofBeaumont told him that the timehad come. Another, younger pas-tor was taking over at Cristo Rey.His order was sending FatherLuis off to a new assignment inSpain, his home country, to joinother priests serving in a churchnear Madrid.

He did not want to leave. His pa-

At 100, Priest Bids Farewell to Church He BuiltBy RICK ROJAS

The Rev. Luis Urriza before his final Mass this month at Cristo Rey, a parish in southeastern Texas.CALLAGHAN O’HARE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Spirit of a Texas ParishTakes a New Mission

Over Retirement

Continued on Page A16

SAN FRANCISCO — In 2019,Facebook researchers began anew study of one of the social net-work’s foundational features: theLike button.

They examined what peoplewould do if Facebook removed thedistinct thumbs-up icon and otheremoji reactions from posts on itsphoto-sharing app Instagram, ac-cording to company documents.The buttons had sometimescaused Instagram’s youngest us-ers “stress and anxiety,” the re-searchers found, especially ifposts didn’t get enough Likesfrom friends.

But the researchers discoveredthat when the Like button was hid-den, users interacted less withposts and ads. At the same time, itdid not alleviate teenagers’ socialanxiety and young users did notshare more photos, as the com-pany thought they might, leadingto a mixed bag of results.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’schief executive, and other manag-ers discussed hiding the Like but-ton for more Instagram users, ac-cording to the documents. In theend, a larger test was rolled out injust a limited capacity to “build apositive press narrative” aroundInstagram.

The research on the Like buttonwas an example of how Facebookhas questioned the bedrock fea-tures of social networking. As thecompany has confronted crisis af-ter crisis on misinformation, pri-vacy and hate speech, a central is-sue has been whether the basicway that the platform works hasbeen at fault — essentially, the fea-tures that have made Facebook beFacebook.

Apart from the Like button,Facebook has scrutinized itsshare button, which lets users in-stantly spread content posted byother people; its groups feature,which is used to form digital com-munities; and other tools that de-fine how more than 3.5 billion peo-ple behave and interact online.The research, laid out in thou-sands of pages of internal docu-ments, underlines how the com-pany has repeatedly grappledwith what it has created.

What researchers found was of-ten far from positive. Time andagain, they determined that peo-ple misused key features or thatthose features amplified toxic con-tent, among other effects. In anAugust 2019 internal memo, sev-eral researchers said it was Face-

Power of LikesPuts FacebookIn a Quandary

Debate Over Key Toolsof Social Networking

By MIKE ISAAC

Continued on Page A15

WASHINGTON — PresidentBiden and Democratic congres-sional leaders raced on Monday tostrike a compromise on a domes-tic policy and climate package,pushing for a vote within dayseven as critical disagreements re-mained over health benefits, paidleave, environmental provisionsand how to pay for the sprawlingplan.

Negotiators were closing in onan agreement that could spendaround $1.75 trillion over 10 years,half the size of the blueprint Dem-ocrats approved earlier this year,as they haggled with centristholdouts in their party who arepressing to curtail the size of thebill.

They have coalesced around aplan that would extend monthlypayments to families with chil-dren, establish generous tax in-centives for clean energy use andprovide federal support for childcare, elder care and universalprekindergarten. An array of taxincreases, including a new wealthtax for the country’s billionaires,would pay for the initiatives.

But a final deal remained elu-sive amid disputes over the de-tails of potential Medicare andMedicaid expansions, a new paidfamily and medical leave pro-gram, programs to combat cli-mate change and a proposal tolower the cost of prescriptiondrugs. Top Democrats were alsotoiling to nudge the price tag up to$2 trillion, still far below the $3.5trillion level they laid out in theirbudget plan.

Introducing a fresh wrinkle intothe talks, Senator Joe Manchin IIIof West Virginia, a centrist whohas led the effort to scale back thebill, was pushing to remove ormodify a provision that would im-pose a fee on emissions of meth-ane, a powerful planet-warmingpollutant that leaks from oil andgas wells, according to two peoplefamiliar with the negotiations.

Mr. Manchin has already effec-

DEMOCRATS PUSHFOR BUDGET DEALAS RIFTS PERSIST

SEEKING VOTE THIS WEEK

Negotiations With BidenOver Health Benefits

and Paid Leave

By EMILY COCHRANE

Continued on Page A17

TAXES Democrats are targetingthe unrealized capital gains of thewealthiest Americans. PAGE A17

Thomas Kenniff, the G.O.P. candidatefor Manhattan district attorney, saysbail reform has spurred crime. PAGE A19

NATIONAL A14-19

Seeing a City on the PrecipiceScientists have been mapping fly neu-rons and synapses to create a wiringdiagram of the fruit fly brain. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

They’re Thinking Small

About 45 years later, another victim ofthe Chicago-area killer John WayneGacy has been identified. PAGE A19

Another Gacy Victim Is NamedPeople with various types of disabilitiestested their skills and technologies on azero-gravity research flight. PAGE D1

Making Space for More

An activist was found guilty of incitingsecession after, he said, he chantedslogans to show free speech still existedunder a broad security law. PAGE A4

INTERNATIONAL A4-13

Curbing Speech in Hong KongBeginning a tour in Britain, the formerFacebook manager Frances Haugenwas questioned by policymakers draft-ing tougher tech regulations. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Whistle-Blower in EuropeThe conductor Antonio Pappano isreturning to lead Wagner’s “DieMeistersinger von Nürnberg.” PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Back at the Met Opera

A tiny Russian town on the ArcticOcean shows that rising temperaturescan lead to prosperity. PAGE A13

Warming Seas, Booming Port The sequels took the wrong lessonsfrom the 1978 film, Jason Bailey says.But they are impossible to kill. PAGE C1

Carving Up ‘Halloween’

The U.S. is one of six countries with noplan. Democrats want four weeks, whichwould still make it an outlier. PAGE B1

Still Lagging on Paid Leave

James Michael Tyler was a mainstay asGunther, who had a crush on JenniferAniston’s character. He was 59. PAGE B12

OBITUARIES B11-12

Smitten Barista on ‘Friends’Two star-studded infields could be thekey when the Astros face the Braves,our columnist writes. PAGES B8-9

SPORTS B7-10

Sizing Up the World SeriesMargaret Renkl PAGE A20

OPINION A20-21

Today, strong winds, heavy rain,flooding likely, high 60. Tonight,very windy, periodic rain, low 52. To-morrow, early rain, windy, high 62.Weather map appears on Page A22.

$3.00