The Beauty and Battleground of Jewish Heritage
Reflections on Suffering, Faith, and Resilience
The anguish of witnessing the suffering inflicted upon my people weighs heavy on my heart. The fresh blood spilled, the cries of my brothers and sisters, and the wounds of their defeat – these pains are mine as well. In their agony, I find my own torment, in their captivity, I feel imprisoned, and in their violation, my soul too is violated. I share in the heartache of missing loved ones and the shattering pain of lives and worlds forever broken.
The persecution of our people, once distant history, has now become our lived experience. We now comprehend the essence of those history books – the grim reality of being targeted for who we are.
We are in mourning, and mourners can only mourn. We cannot process; we can only grieve. In addition to being in a state of mourning, we are also under ongoing attack. We fear what the days, weeks and months ahead will bring to our nation, and we agonize about the missing, the unburied and the broken.
At times like these, I hesitate to offer thoughts on the theology of Jewish persecution. Perhaps it's premature to provide a framework for this chaos; perhaps I understand nothing. Maybe I should heed the teaching that exonerates and indeed forbids mourners from delving into the Torah. Yet, someone might find solace in hearing the thoughts that weigh on my saddened heart. In this spirit, I share my reflections, not as Torah, but as personal sentiments that may help you, my brothers and sisters, navigate these tense and trying times.
As the dire reports trickled in over Yom Tov (in the USA), we struggled to fulfill our dual obligations: to rejoice and to bear the pain of our brethren. On a surreal Simchas Torah, we danced and sang, celebrating our Jewish identity and heritage while simultaneously feeling the agony of being hunted for that very identity.
Amid ecstatic dances and songs of "We are so fortunate! How good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful our heritage," a thought pierced my mind. Agony and suffering are intrinsic components of our lot. If our heritage is beautiful, it is of a kind of beauty that encompasses the stark realities of execution, slavery, and torture. It must be beautiful like the Holocaust is beautiful, like the Intifada is beautiful. What kind of beauty is that, I wondered, as images flashed before me while I continued dancing in ecstasy, images of gas chambers and of fires burning beneath my twirling feet, and I felt that maybe I too couldn’t breathe, for we are one people and all the dead are me. I scratched my nails on the pulpit upon which the Torah scrolls lay as I remembered the nails scratching the walls of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and that was somehow our beauty, I knew, because I sang it and I meant it, but what kind of beauty is that?
The unbidden question lingered: How can a beautiful heritage include such agonies? How can we rejoice as Jews who suffer for being Jews?
Being Jewish is a choice, made first by our ancestor Avraham and upheld by us, his faithful descendants. It is a perilous choice, for Judaism's faith – this cleaving to an idea called “Hashem” more than to anything – transcends the private realm and intertwines with social and political concerns. It is perceived as a threat by those who misunderstand or deny it – a threat that periodically sparks violence, bloodshed, and murder. We may wish for our faith to remain private, an individual's personal bond with God. However, it invariably influences interpersonal and international relations. Our faith cannot be private; it must assert itself on the world stage or perish.
Avraham himself confronted this dilemma, accepting the earthly dangers of his faith along with its promises. The Midrash recounts:
Hashem said to Avraham: “Through which do you wish your descendants to be punished: through Gehenna or through [subjugation to] the Kingdoms?” Rabbi Chanina bar Pappa said: “Avraham chose [subjugation to] the Kingdoms.” Rabbi Yudan, Rabbi Idi, and Rabbi Chama bar Chanina said: “Avraham chose Gehenna, but the Holy, blessed be He, chose [subjugation to] the Kingdoms on his behalf.”1
The founder of our faith had to make a decision about the nature of his project: Will it be personal or social? Every great project comes with the risks that attend its inevitable setbacks. The struggle for greatness is risky, for commonness is safer than unrealized greatness or half-greatness. If Judaism would be a private spiritual quest, its failures would lead to private personal suffering in Gehenna; and if Judaism would be a political affair active on the international stage, its weaknesses would lead to subjugation and persecution at the hands of those kingdoms that don’t take kindly to it. Some say Avraham himself would have preferred his faith to remain private, while others contend that he willingly chose a political Judaism. Both perspectives are reflected among Avraham's descendants: Some embrace a private faith, wishing to be Jews at home and Americans or Israelis in the street, while others embrace a faith that shapes public policy.
However, there is no true choice to be made, for ultimately, our faith cannot remain private. The Holy, blessed be He, chooses even against our will and makes our faith a matter of political significance. Judaism must eventually engage with world events, and the world responds. This is the root of Jewish persecution – until Judaism is fully understood by its practitioners and the world, it is seen as a threat.
Our suffering, in a sense, is self-inflicted. Those who wish to opt out of Avraham's project can do so by assimilating. Eventually, if not in one generation, then in a few, they will no longer have to contend with the challenges of being Jewish in a world hostile to Judaism’s as yet unrealized ideals. But we choose wisely to hold fast to the torch of our burning faith even though we are burnt whenever we lose our grip.
Those of us who choose to stay must accept this battle – a battle of astounding beauty. To die in this struggle is honorable, and if we die, we do so with a song about our great fortune on our lips, saying, “We are so fortunate! How good is our portion, how pleasant our lot, and how beautiful our heritage,” knowing that our heritage and our mission among the nations is so beautiful, albeit so perilous.
Those of us who survive fight on to win. We will win, and all of humanity will win, when we understand and assert the truths of Judaism on the world stage. To that end, the soldiers in this battle of Hashem must strengthen our commitment to Torah study and Torah dissemination, to spreading the light of our faith to all four corners of the earth, until such time as the great prophecy is realized, as we know it will be, hopefully speedily and in our days:
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
(Isaiah 11:9)
Genesis Rabbah, 44:21.
This gentile mourns with you.
how very poignantly and deeply you express what must be in all our hearts and minds now
thank you for articulating our pain and agony