A Time to Hope
It is enough to say October 7th, Bondi Beach, Golders Green or Central Synagogue for Jews around the world to be reminded that they are not safe.
Eighty-one years after the Holocaust we are threatened once again. A prominent leader of the Jewish community in Munich and a Holocaust survivor, Charlotte Knobloch, has received death threats following calling for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party to be banned.
There are pessimists, who see parallels between what is happening today and the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s. Is their anxiety warranted?
And there are optimists, who discount the writing on the wall and believe that it will all turn out alright.
There are pessimists, and there are optimists and there is hope.
When we see what is happening in the Middle East and when antisemitism once again rears its ugly head, we need to remind ourselves why they hate us.
The essayist and literature scholar, Dr. Dara Horn, author of “People love Dead Jews”, has just published a further book entitled “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. She argues that they hate us because we are the first to stand up to tyranny.
It was true in Pharoah’s Egypt, during the Inquisition, in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union.
Although we Jews have seen it all, we remain a people of hope. Our national anthem Hatikvah means “The Hope”. We believe in a better tomorrow, or as we in Israel put it: “We have survived Pharoah and we shall also survive this.”
My late rabbi, teacher and friend, Hugo Gryn z”l, was a teenager when he was transported with his father to Auschwitz. In the middle of Winter, his father started saving the meagre rations of margarine they received. Hugo asks his father what he was doing. He replied: “It will soon be the festival of Chanukah and I want to light candles.” Hugo responded: “We are starving and you want to burn the margarine!” His father remarked: “My son, I can survive a week without margarine, but I cannot live for a moment without hope.”
We believe in the place of God in Jewish history. Otherwise, we would not be here.
Soon after the terrorist attack in 2001 at the Dolphinarium Discoteque on Tel Aviv’s shoreline in which 21 young people were murdered and over 100 injured, a makeshift memorial was erected on the spot depicting a young couple with the slogan over their heads: “We shall not stop dancing!
Go to the Tel Aviv seafront as the sun sets. See the people playing netball, jogging on the sidewalk, taking part in a physical exercise class, drinking beer and eating ice cream – that is the Jewish response through which we express hope and our belief in the future even in these challenging times.