An open letter to antisemitism
I always told my kids this. As long as it’s politically incorrect to be antisemitic, you’ll be safe. The minute the social fashion changes, you’d better run for the hills.
But now that it’s happened, I changed my mind.
I kind of knew it would. The best way to predict our future is to look into our past. And according to our past, when we are so deep into our golden age that we forget who we are, guess what comes out of the woodwork? It happened in Spain during the Inquisition. It happened in enlightened Germany. Of course it was going to happen now.
And you can look further back into our history. The Jews do well in the times of the prophets and the judges. At some point they switch out the “doing well” as defined by their own principles to the “doing well” defined by their host nations’. Then boom. Out comes the hate. Hence we have a threat of annihilation that precedes both the Purim and Chanuka stories. It takes a hateful stranger to want us dead, to wake us up to who we are. Eventually, we, the reconnected Jews, emerge the glorious victor and the hateful enemy, unlike the hated Jew, is gone forever.
I am, I’ll admit, a little taken aback at how quickly the ugly snake reared it’s head and the speed at which it gathered momentum. It’s one thing reading about it in history books. It’s quite another when it happens in your lifetime, lead by the previously decent neighbours who hid their true colours so well that I doubt they even knew the boundlessness of their anti Jewish sentiment.
But to be entirely surprised is to be ignorant. Because when we become so blessed that we no longer acknowledge the source of our blessings, historically speaking, the time of hatred is nearing.
So whilst we are crying and mourning, and for many of us, numb to the core after all the months of crying, our antisemitic contemporaries are viewing this October 7th anniversary as a time to further spew hate and demonstrate rage.
What’s so awful about it is that, just like in the days of the Greeks, they have recruited some of our own to fill their mob quota targets. And here’s the chutzpah of it. They recruit them in the name of humanitarianism. They have commandeered one of our most deeply Jewish principles and held it as a banner to attract Jews to hate Jews. Never mind that we are defending ourselves against the most inhumane event of our modern history…
What the anti-Semites don’t know is this. You may turn the world against us. You may even call into your ranks some of our own who you deem as useful idiots. But you’re accomplishing something that antisemitism has always accomplished. You’re strengthening our Jewish pride.
When we forget who we are as Jews, we try very hard to be accepted by assimilating into our host nations. We try to assimilate so hard we no longer recognise ourselves. The goal of the assimilating Jew is to be unrecognisable. We are first and foremost unrecognisable to ourselves. Well, that happened a while back. But just as our disguise is almost complete, it takes an outsider to point an accusing finger and to say, hey! You! Jew!
Jew? What is that? This is the question we ask, because we have almost forgotten entirely what it means. When first we ask, we are not looking for an answer. We are simply defending ourselves. Jew? What is that? I’m not a Jew. I’m just like you!
But as the accusation continues, spiralling to the point of insanity, we move away from the accuser and we turn the question back on ourselves.
What is it to be a Jew? Why do they hate me for it? Why am I hated for something I don’t identify with? Something I don’t understand. What do they see in me that I have long denied in myself?
And then something extremely odd and confusing happens. Before we have had a chance to contemplate the answers to these questions with our rational mind, something visceral and unexpected happens from deep within our bellies, or perhaps more accurately, from deep within our souls. We feel a primal stirring. A long forgotten pang of connection. Decades long hidden in a treasure chest, buried under the desire to be accepted by the other and the shame of being different, emerges, gasping for air, our Jewish pride.
We don’t even know what to call it. But it makes us want to do irrational things like wearing a star of David at an anti Israel protest. It makes us want to donate to causes on the other side of the world. It makes us, suddenly and for the first time, belong to a nation we know nothing about and have long turned our backs on.
It took someone who hates us to remind us who we are.
Hitler was honest about it. He knew who we are. He knew that we were the nation that inflicted morality and conscience as a blithe on civilisation.
Today’s antisemites are not as educated. But they hate us passionately nevertheless. They have used a very guilty media industry to spew lies against us. No matter. Antisemitism will run it’s course. And it will ultimately reconnect the almost lost Jew to his source. That’s what it’s there for. It’s a tool of the universe to rekindle the Jewish spirit. And rekindling the Jewish spirit it is! Social media is over flowing with the proud comments of Jews, awakened by the tragedy of this year’s events and the sense of belonging that only true hate can inspire.
And if you, like many others, are one of those Jews who are feeling something you don’t understand, I have just this to say. It’s not race you’re feeling. Nor is it ethnicity. It’s the power of mission. We were commissioned many years ago to be a light to the nations. Well sometimes, you only see the light when the world goes dark. If you are sensing a need to openly display your Jewishness, to do good and to be good, your mission to bring light where there is darkness, has been remembered. It’s the darkness that jogged the memory. All you have to do is shine. Wherever you go, whatever you do, be a light, be a blessing. It’s the most visceral part of your Jewishness and the first step in fulfilling your desire.
So yes antisemitism, I want to thank you. Because whilst I don’t like you one little bit, I recognise what you are doing for my nation. But I will remind you, that whilst someone had to do it, the future does not bode well for those who volunteer themselves for the task. It didn’t go well for the Babylonians and the Spanish Inquisitors and it’s not going to go well for today’s Jew haters. Our nation is still shedding bitter tears over the merciless cruelty that was inflicted, the unthinkable evil that we endured. Our tears will not be forgotten. You may have your moments of victory like you did last Oct 7th, but ultimately, antisemitism is a mechanism between God and His beloved nation, designed to reconnect us to our destiny. Once that has been accomplished, there is no use for our enemy and whilst we, the eternal nation and all our wonderful advocates and supporters in the greater world will carry on with our mission to improve the world, the willing antisemites will be forever obliterated from the history of the world.
If you want to know your future, antisemitism, just look into our past.
So yes, I may have been right about antisemitism being unleashed, but I changed my mind about running for the hills. Instead, today, I tell us to run to the rooftops. Shine that light loud and clear. Am Yisrael Chai.