It never fails. Just about every time you think you've got to an understanding of an issue, of a situation, out of left field or right, comes an event or a statement which informs you of how much you don't know. In other words, you are gobsmacked, sometimes for the better, and sometimes simply impossible to understand in any reasonable manner. It cannot be and yet, it is. And so, as usual, we must take it as it comes and squeeze all that we can from it. All that benefits us, that helps us, even perhaps revealing before us some new paths, some new hopes upon which we can build.
It is no surprise to anyone right now that to be Jewish, to think in positive manner about your obligations as a Jewish friend, neighbor, is perhaps at the nadir in living as a Jew at this point in history. Traditional enemies of long-time standing have joined with once upon a time friends, once even allies. In other words, the climate for Jew and Jewish, for Zionist beliefs, is not necessarily the best of times, even as it is also at the peak of good relations.
Such a contradictory state of being. How can we be at the worst of times and yet also, at the best of times? It is always a good thing to know exactly where you are, where you stand with others. Where you stand with your people and where you stand with your G-d. It is good to know who truly your friends are or are they instead only fair-weather ones and in foul weather manage to turn away, deny any good connections and even intensify the negative possibilities.
Recently I have read some interesting thoughts which have led me to think that perhaps all is not as bad as we think it is, as it could be. In fact, as it was in the past, though I am not denying the horrors of the past three years since October 7. I am not denying the rampant and ugly growth of Anti Semitism and the virulent JewHatrred that appears to be inundating the minds and souls and thoughts of too many people on this earth.
What I am saying is that we do have friends where we thought not. We do have people who will claim positive relationships, boast of the Jewish nation and what it has given to the world. We have people, who have come to Israel to march on our streets and support Zionism, the right of the Jewish people to live in Israel, to support Israel, and that idea that Israel is ours by right, by tradition, and straight from the words of the Lord. These are the people who now sign on to sites with a belief in Zionism, though they are not Jewish.
It is in the more unreal expectation of Jews as abnormal people, of perfection. But they have no more or less faults and virtues than other inhabitants on this earth. Their burden is to be a role model as a nation and as a people, whole and individually. It has led to many troubling moments in history. Held to a different standard, a double standard with no break given for any error in judgment, no step taken without being examined, undergoing powerful scrutiny. So many times, overwhelmingly critical and unaccepting of what took place. And why.
So many times bringing down hell on earth upon the Jews, snide comments, accusations. Jews have gone through many such times of terror, of expulsion, temporary and/or meant to be everlasting, softened only by needs of a nation for the advice and contributions the Jewish nation brought forth for them. It mattered not the country, nor the century or should I say, centuries. For no reasoning other than this. It all came down to one fact: that Jews are not welcome.
All the canards down through the ages, constantly bombarded with accusations of dual loyalty, of attempts to bring down the nation in which they reside. It all boils down to that accusation. All else is merely secondary, attached to the interaction, to false and deadly accusation. When acted upon, of course, along with it come the "fringe" benefits - the acquisition of the combined wealth from the Jewish people within their nation and any other nation in which they reside. In the literature of history, fiction and nonfiction alike, many are the pages of description of how the enemies of the Jewish people ransacked their homes and businesses. Ripped jewelry from their necks and fingers and did anything and everything in order to appropriate or more likely misappropriate that which they desired.
We all know of the expulsion from Spain in 1492. We all know the history of the Holocaust wherein Jews were robbed of anything and everything they owned, including their own selves. (even as the haters deny it). However, many of us do not know all the other expulsions throughout history in many nations and are all within underlying "religious justification" - as if! the legend of the "Wandering Jew" condemned to wander the Earth until the 2nd coming, as punishment for harassing Jesus on his way to crucifixion. That accusation and guilt have been passed on and hung around the necks of Jews around the world and down through the years. It has never been fully retracted and hence, unfortunately, remains alive and well.
England originated that horrific blood libel of 1144. The same blood libel that afflicted Mendel Ballis centuries later.
England burning alive Jews in the Tower of York.
England, expelling all of its Jews in 1290 in obedience to the commands of Edward II.
France - 1182, 1306, 1394. The miserable event of the Dreyfus affair wherein the accusation of dual loyalty rang loud and clear. French cops enthusiastically rounded up Jews in France to send them off to death. Vichy France which did not exactly provide haven for French Jews and other refugees on the run.
Various expulsions from German states and principalities, forced to find refuge in another state, which eventually expelled them too.
There are many more such atrocities, but there is no room to tag them all.Once we might have thought that all the above was ancient history. Yes, to be learned from and not to repeat and yet here we are, all over again, even to the point of enmity and hatred rising again with exponential force and speed. Jews living in Canada, in France, in Denmark, in Norway, in Iceland, in America are now asking themselves the eternal Jewish question. Where do we go now? Why is this happening all over again? Why is Jew hatred in global manner supported and encouraged by supposed members and leaders of NGOS who seem to find their only justification for life, for existence, is to prosecute and persecute Jews as their most favorite target.
These are eternal questions for the Jewish people. I wish the answer would be equally as eternal, in welcome, in recognition and acceptance as a nation of people only wishing to live in peace. Not desiring the lands of others, not desiring the wealth of others, but merely to live life in justice, in harmony and unity with all the peoples of the world. We have all been gifted with this world and we have most assuredly not been thankful enough for it. We have distressed it. We have abused it. We have even ignored its needs in the name of our own, leading to disaster for all.
When will the peoples of the world understand that none of us, nothing in this world, lives in a vacuum? What happens in one side of the world will eventually have an effect upon the other side. As long as we deny that, as long as we refuse to accept that and understand its inevitability, we will be living with the wrong goals, the wrong ambitions and the wrong behaviors. Our roads traveled will take us in the wrong direction and leave us at destinations which we should never approach. Certainly not if we were all of one sane mind and understanding of the Truth of our existence.
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
It appears that we never learn. Not from the past, not from the present, and not for the future too, as foretold by our times.
It is all on us. Every single one of us. To see through the fog to the basic truths of life and not pick and choose as befits our desires, for upon that road remains only disaster.
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