What Does Judaism Have to Say About Anti-Semitism?

By:  Mendel Kalmenson and Zalman Abraham

Anti-Semitism is the greatest conundrum at the heart of Jewish existence. Why have we been so hated by the family of nations? Much ink has been spilled trying to explain what anti-Semitism is, what causes it, and why, whenever it looks like things are getting better, it rears its ugly head again.

But what does Judaism itself have to say about it?

The Talmud1 says that Mount Sinai, the place where the Torah was given, was named so because it initiated the nations’ hatred, sinah, of Jews. At Sinai, the Jewish nation was tasked with the sacred duty to be a kingdom of priests2 and to serve as beacons of morality and justice to the world.

As a consequence of accepting this mandate to be a light unto the nations,3 the Jewish people became the subject of the oldest and most persistent hatred in history.

In the Book of Numbers,4 G‑d instructs Moses to confront the Midianites in order to avenge the vengeance of the Children of Israel.

The Midrash5 relates that Moses questioned G‑d: “In truth, the vengeance is Yours [not ours]. For if we had been uncircumcised or worshipped the stars or had denied the commandments, they would not have persecuted us. They have done so only because of the Torah and commandments that You have given.”

Historically, some enemies of the Jewish people have seen this dynamic of Jewish particularism as a nuisance, others, as an existential threat. In the Book of Esther,6 Haman tries to bribe King Ahasuerus with ten thousand talents of silver for permission to rid his kingdom of Jews, but Ahasuerus says: The money is given to you, as is the nation, to do with as you please.

To explain this interaction, the Talmud7 describes two types of antisemites. The first is Ahasuerus, the mild antisemite who sees the Jewish people as a mound—an annoying anomaly and eyesore that stands out and refuses to blend in. Sociologists refer to this type of xenophobia as “the dislike for the unlike.”

The second is Haman, the ardent antisemite who views the Jew as a ditch—a moral conscience that exposes an existential hole and emptiness in the heart of the antisemite. The owner of the mound tells the owner of the ditch “relieve me of my mound and be rid of your ditch; I ask for no payment in return.”

Hitler, one of the most notorious antisemites who ever lived, summed up this sentiment chillingly in a private conversation with his confidant, Hermann Rauschning: “The struggle for world domination is between me and the Jews. All else is meaningless. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles.”8

Elsewhere he elaborated further, “Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence that only a very few can bear.”9

Historically, there have been two contradictory reactions to the Jewish people, Judeophobia—frustration and hatred directed at the voice of conscience Jews represent—or, on the other extreme, Judeophilia—admiration and the desire to learn from and emulate the Jewish people. This has created an irrational aura of simultaneous fear/suspicion and awe/infatuation around the Jewish people in the eyes of the world.

Ultimately, Judaism is a distinction that Jews cannot hide from.

History has demonstrated that assimilation doesn’t help prevent antisemitism, as evidenced in the fate of twentieth-century German Jewry, who had achieved an extraordinary level of integration into the highest echelons of society. In fact, assimilation serves only to advance the cause of the antisemite in ridding the world of its moral torchbearers.

Antisemitism will rear its ugly head whether Jews choose to hide their Judaism or openly embrace it. If we choose the latter—thereby owning up to our role as a light unto the nations—we fulfill our destiny to transform the moral landscape of civilization.

Alluding to the transformative potential of the Jewish mandate, John Adams,10 second president of the United States, writes: “I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations…They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily, than any other nation, ancient or modern.”

Noted Christian historian Paul Johnson11 put it this way: “All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both Divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items that constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without Jews, it [the world] might have been a much emptier place.”

Commenting further on the unique role and presence of the Jews in the development of human society, R. Avraham Yitzchak Kook pointed out that all of the great civilizations throughout time, such as Egypt, Greece, Persia, and Rome, appeared on the stage of history, made their contribution, said their piece, and moved on. The Jewish people, however, emerged onto the stage of ancient history and are still standing here, stuttering—for we have yet to clearly articulate the message that we are here to say.

Instead of going underground to hide our Jewish identity, as some tend to do during times of persecution, let us stand up and proudly proclaim to the world the message that we were summoned at Sinai to deliver.

The Big Idea

Antisemitism is fueled not by the hatred of Jews, but by the message and morality of Judaism. Assimilation, then, is part of the problem, not the solution.

It Happened Once

On the evening of March 4, 1962, the Young Leadership Cabinet of the UJA (United Jewish Appeal) visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe to receive guidance before traveling to Poland.

What follows is an excerpt from their exchange that evening.

Young Jewish leadership: “We are going on a pilgrimage to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, going to Warsaw and Auschwitz. As we get deeper and deeper into the [assigned preparatory] readings, we’re all having many problems with the questions that the Holocaust and Auschwitz bring…. What did the whole thing mean?”

The Rebbe: “…If history teaches us something that we must not repeat or must emulate, the best lesson can be taken from the destruction of the Second Temple. We witnessed something so terrible, it must bring every Jew to become more identified with his Jewishness…every one of us has an obligation to fight Hitler, [which] can be done by letting that which Hitler had in mind to annihilate, not only continue but grow bigger and on a deeper scale. Hitler was not interested so much in annihilating the body of Jewishness as he was interested in annihilating the spirit. [He decreed that the spiritual and moral ideas that the Jewish people embody] must not infect the German people, the Russian people, or the Polish people…

“If you influence a Jew not to become assimilated but to profess his Jewishness, his pride and inspiration and joy, this is defeating Hitlerism. If someone does his best in his personal life to be Jewish [so that] everyone sees that in the street he is a Jew, that his home is a Jewish home, that he is proud, and that it is not a burden but his pride, his life defeats the idea of Hitlerism.

“When you go to Auschwitz, you must profess there that Auschwitz cannot happen again. You can assure it by becoming a living example of a living Jew.”12

(Chabad.org)

FOOTNOTES

1. Shabbat 89a.
2. Exodus 19:6.
3. Isaiah 49:6.
4. 31:2.
5. Midrash Tanchuma, Matot 3.
6. 3:8-11.
7. Megillah 13b-14a.
8. Hitler Speaks, p. 220.
9. Ibid., p. 222.
10. In a letter to François Adriaan Van der Kemp, 16 February 1809, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Adams Papers.
11. Epilogue, A History of The Jews.
12. The Rebbe continued: “It has nothing to do with chauvinism. You are not trying to convert anyone to be a Jew, but you are fighting, you are struggling for survival not only as a human being but as a Jew. In our time, it is a very acute problem, because every one of us must do something not only to perform his task but to replace all those Jews who were murdered and annihilated. Their [lives and] tasks are our direct duty.”