Tomorrow morning, Jonah is going to talk about the beginning of the second book of the Torah, sefer Shemot. His summary of the parasha will sound very familiar because it is the story we are used to telling as we sit around the seder table each Pesach.
In this week’s parasha, Pharoah makes a statement to his people. “Look, the Israelite people have become too many and too strong for us. Come let us deal shrewdly with them lest they increase and if war breaks out they will join our enemies, and fight against us and leave the country.” At this point, it is hard to tell what exactly Pharoah was planning to do about his “Jewish problem.” We do not know whether he wanted to enslave them, exploit them, or get rid of them (Nechama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot).
Egypt was a cultured society, contributing to the development of science and art, yet as we are aware, it also ended up being the society that enslaved the Jews for 210 years and advocated the extermination of male Jewish babies. The thought of a cultured society wanting to destroy the Jews is not unknown to us. From our recent understanding of the Holocaust, we are aware that culture does not eliminate hatred nor the actions that have been designed to destroy us.
So one might ask, why the Jews? Why have we been the object of hatred throughout the centuries? Why have there been individuals in every generation who have arisen to destroy us? According to Joseph Telushkin and Dennis Prager, the answer is easy. We Jews are a threat to any tyrant who demands our subservience. Our ultimate allegiance is only to G-d. We do not believe that we are better than others, nor that others are unable to live ethically. We do believe, however, that we have a unique role of serving as a “light unto the nations”…that we are the people that must serve as an example of what ethical monotheism can mean when it is practiced by all. We are hated because of our beliefs, because of who we are, not because of what we have done. Leaders of countries who do not want their citizens to be aware that the power of justice and righteousness is superior to the power of tyranny do not want Jews in their midst.
Currently, anti-Semitism is recreating itself. If one were to look at the new face of anti-Semitism, it is often stated as a hatred of Israel and Zionism rather than as a hatred of Jews. The tie to Israel and Jerusalem, however, is part and parcel of the belief system of Judaism. When Avraham Avinu entered into a covenant with G-d, he was told that his descendants would inherit the Land of Canaan. When G-d redeemed the Israelites from Egypt, Moses led them back to the “Promised Land.” As a people we have always been tied to the Land of Israel as part of our vision that it would be the place from which we would carry our message to all the other peoples. The message would be about the need to have a world where all people live in unity, recognizing that we are all children of One G-d. There is no such thing as Judaism without Israel (even for those who live outside of the Land of Israel). When the modern State of Israel did not exist for 2,000 years and only a small remnant of Jews lived within the Land, Jews in the Diaspora maintained their ties to the Land through their prayers and dreams. So now, when Israel’s existence is threatened or Israel is painted in the world media to be an evil country, one must not forget that the message is merely a new form of what is seemingly “politically correct” anti-Semitism. When a country threatens to destroy Israel, it means it wants to destroy the country that is home to a little more than 5 million of the world’s Jews.
Last week, as many of you know, I was in Israel. On my flight to Tel Aviv I sat between two very interesting Jewish women who had ties to Israel. One woman had been born in Iran and had to escape with only the clothes on her back in the middle of the night when the Iranian Revolution brought Khomeini into power. Her family ended up in Israel. The other woman had grandparents who had to leave Russia because of pogroms and then ended up in Shanghai. Her grandparents stayed there until Shanghai decreed that its Jews needed to leave. They also ended up in Israel. Why am I telling you this? Because their stories reminded me of the countless Jewish families for whom Israel has been and continues to be a place that has provides safe harbor when lives are endangered. We must never underestimate the necessity of our ties to Israel nor of the danger of modern day messages that say Israel must be eliminated. We have only to look at this week’s parasha to remember the dangers of tyrants who find it necessary to deal with their “Jewish problem.” We must make sure the world knows the true meaning of their messages and that we stand united for the continued existence of our Jewish homeland.
If I were to guess what many of you are now thinking, it would be, why are we hearing about this topic on the Friday evening of a Bar Mitzvah celebration? The answer is simple. When one becomes a Bar Mitzvah in a public setting, the message the young person is giving is that he is confirming his identity as part of the Jewish people, he is not choosing to assimilate and give up his Jewishness. Whether a young adult has been to Israel or not, has experienced the tyranny aimed at eliminating Jewish presence or not, is irrelevant. Part of Jewish identity is to understand Jewish history, the current situation for Jews living in present times, and to have an understanding of Jewish religious convictions. Another part of Jewish identity is to fight anti-Semitism wherever it rears its ugly head. Whether it occurs at school, on a Facebook posting, or in the political arena, silence is not an answer. Caring about the continued existence of Jews and Judaism can be promoted by living ethically and morally and by trying to influence others to do the same . When there are more individuals who care about living morally in this world and who understand the value of pluralism as we attempt to repair the world, the effect should be a lessening of anti-Semitism which wants to eliminate the message of ethical monotheism. In the words of Telushkin and Prager, “Jewish religious and moral values are both the ultimate cause of and solution to anti-Semitism.” I hope that each child who enters the age of Bar Mitzvah will remember that message.
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