Today we
started the book of Shemot, Exodus, which relates the story of Egyptian hatred
toward the Israelites. That hatred led to
our oppression in the land of Egypt. When
a new Pharoah arose, who did not know Joseph and what he had done to preserve
the country from famine, he declared, “Look the Israelite people are much too
numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly
with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war, they
may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground."
This
statement by Pharoah led to the killing of newborn male Israelite children and
harsh labor imposed upon the Israelites.
Fleeing enslavement was not an option. It took G-d’s intervention, via Moshe, presenting a
harsh reality to Pharoah in order to convince him that he did not want to stand
in the way of “letting the Israelites go forth from the land so they could
worship G-d.”
Interestingly
enough, there is no evidence in the book of Shemot that the Israelites were
planning to try to bring down the Egyptian hierarchy. Pharoah’s paranoia was not
related to the reality of the number of Israelites living amongst the
Egyptians. The Israelites were merely
the “other” within Egyptian society. The
act of negating their being actually took on a life of its own for Pharoah and
those who carried out his orders.
Perhaps this
story of Pharoah is the earliest recorded story of anti-Semitism. It, however, is the prototype of a story that
has been reported time and time again across history. From the Inquisition, the pogroms suffered by
many of our grandparents in Eastern Europe to the Holocaust perpetrated by the
Nazis; from the expulsions we have gone through in England (1290) and Spain
(1492); to the theories of worldwide Jewish conspiracy, deicide, and blood libel,
we are all too familiar with the concept of Jew hatred. And although we generally understand the term
anti-Semite to be “someone who thinks Jews are worse than other people, and
then wants to cause them harm,”(Telushkin) we have also come to learn that the
term “strangely enough, applies to some Jews as well” (Telushkin) and we have
come to know those individuals as self- hating Jews.
Yesterday’s
news from Paris, brought to mind, that anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head
for our brethren in France. The terror of
radical Islamists finding its way into a kosher grocery store was no
accident. The recent news from Israel of
Jihadists entering a synagogue with a meat cleaver and guns to kill worshippers
and of cars being used as weapons of mass destruction against those waiting for
buses in Jerusalem is not just about a cycle of violence in the region. It is about a desire to eliminate Jewish
presence in any way possible. “Claims of
anti-Zionists that they do not hate all Jews”, that they just want the
destruction of the Jewish State, need to be seen for what they are…the new form
of anti-Semitism. Why? Because as Rabbi
Joseph Tellushkin and Dennis Prager wrote in their book, Why the Jews, “In
the words of an ancient Jewish text, ‘G-d, Torah, and Israel are one. The Jews’ self-definition as a nation (am
Yisrael) with a homeland in Israel is not some new political belief of
contemporary Jews but the essence of Judaism since biblical times.” If all the
Zionists were to be pushed into the sea, can you imagine (chas v’challilah) how
many Jews in Israel would be eliminated from the face of the Earth? Islamic terror organizations that teach
hatred of Jews in their summer camps, post videos about how to stab Jews, are
not composed of desperate individuals looking for political solutions to their
misery. Those organizations are composed
of individuals following a religious ideology of jihad that promotes the murder
of Jews as the enemy of Islam.
Watching the
news unfold around us, is very depressing.
Knowing that we have organizations like the Anti-defamation league
working to fight anti-Semitism is somewhat comforting, but I wonder about their
ability to take on a world-wide challenge as big as this one. I do not believe they can do it alone.
What can be
done? Is it a hopeless situation? I would like to think not. I would like to think that the world in which
my grandchildren are growing up is capable of standing up to this grave
threat. The world needs to remember that
“Jew haters may begin with Jews, but never end with them. They hate whatever
and whoever represents a higher value, a moral challenge.”
(Telushkin/Prager) Perhaps that is why
the values of democracy and western civilization seem to be under attack by
those representing ideologies that do not include the concepts of equal rights
nor freedom of religion. The world
certainly is made up of large numbers of moral, freedom-loving, non-Jews….the
question is how do we ensure that their desire to continue living in a world
that refuses to cave in to anything less, along with our desire to see that day
arrive, becomes a reality?
In the
Torah, it took G-d aided by mankind to bring about ge’ulah…redemption. We will continue to pray that G-d will hear
our prayers just as He heard the outcries of the Israelites in Egypt. But, we we must actively work to bring about
a time when goodness overcomes evil, when the values that Judaism has brought
to the world will no longer be seen as a threat, but a path to peace.
Shabbat
Shalom.
Shabbat
Shalom.
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