Being Kind to All; Or, Why You Shouldn’t Be Enticed into Hating Jews
Amongst my various phone diversions, I swipe over to Google to read stories from Bright Side. They’re short, touching stories of quiet acts of kindness. They’re always about the simple, unexpected ways people are considerate and thoughtful for no reason other than to help and as an expression of their innate goodness. These are not people seeking the limelight or to be acknowledged for the good they do. I hope that they’re true stories, but even if only a percentage are, they’re still inspiring and affirming.
I generally go over there as a break from reading emails and watching Instagram videos about the latest outburst of Jew hatred or condemnation of Israel or Israelis or Jews who, you know, continue to exist. It is so “bothersome” to far too many that we are here. I Am Here. Hineni. We Are Here. Hinenu. We may be commanded to be a light unto the nations, but at this point I’d just like to be left alone to be a light unto ourselves for a while.
Am Yisrael. The people of Israel, with our religion and homeland and culture and branches of the family that survived in all corners of the world. Survived as a minority where ever we were. Oppressed by the majority: “permitted” to live, albeit with restrictions about where we can live, the work we can do, what we can study, and even the animals we can ride and the height of our buildings; and onerous taxes or payments for not being part of the majority; and forced, distinctive clothing (the nazi yellow star was not a new idea). Now that we have a sovereign country and those of us in the diaspora felt confident in our identity, we are being shoved aside, maligned, and threatened. The title of Dara Horn’s previous book, People Love Dead Jews (her new one has an equally provocative title: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living), is so very true because us living Jews are getting a lot of hate. I fear that soon people won’t even love dead Jews. (Anne, they’re still coming for you.)
Once upon a time eking out a living in a shtetl in Ukraine or a village in Morocco or the ancient city of Jerusalem, or even continuing to thrive in Iraq where Jews lived since the time of the 1st Temple (until they were expelled in the ‘30s and ‘40s), and now being lawyers in New York and high-tech techies in Tel Aviv are all too threatening.
What does it take to always see one tiny group as distinctly bad, or evil, or wrong, while also claiming that they threaten your being and existence? For those not in the cult, can you see the absurdity of a blanket accusation across lands and over millennia? Doesn’t it feel wrong to blame all the ills of the world on one teeny tiny group of people, a group that has always been a minority, a group that doesn’t proselytize, a group that focuses on family, study, and caring for the other?
People need to stop stepping aside and platforming the islamists, the jihadists, and the hard left- and right-wingers who can’t stop themselves from denouncing our very existence, whether in Israel or Queens or Queensland, with their outbursts of hate and scapegoating, and their blatant calls for murder, and acts of violence and harassment. Just because someone (or many multitudes of someone’s) says something or does something, does not mean that it’s right or the moral thing to do.
I think about those social justice signs in front of homes attesting to what great humanitarians live there. Every time I walk by one of those signs, I read the list of things and groups they stand by (e.g., science, black lives, LGBT rights, women’s right) and I wonder if the sign exposes their hypocrisy. Do they also stand by Jewish and Israeli lives? Do their hearts exclude those people they have condemned as being the oppressor? Such absurdity since Jewish history points to our power of survival as our super power, and certainly not our power over another. (And the reason we now need to have a degree of power over is for survival.) Do they stand by people who connect to that itsy bitsy dot of land—Israel—amidst the vastness of the Muslim and Arab lands, which have been conquered and occupied? Just look at a map, people!
Circling back to Bright Side and those people who act from that which is good, and right, and respectful, and considerate. How about, instead of listening to peddlers of evil and being swayed by the force of their words and convictions, which are based on lies and distortions, find that part in yourselves that looks at the other and sees a heart and a soul worthy of life and hope and love, and treat them that way. Which means to see Jews and Israelis as people, not cartoon villains. Which means to see Israel as a nation amongst the nations.
Those who espouse evil and advocate for violence, those who blame every ill on Jews, those who condemn Israel for fighting for its survival surrounded by people and entities and countries focused on its destruction, they may be deserving of compassion and pity, but that is not the same as agreeing with them just because they are loud and strident and belligerent.
The Jewish month of Elul, which we’re in the middle of, is the grand preparatory month before the holy days of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur when we contemplate our mortality, and how we have acted in the past year, and how we want to change for the better going forward. It is our time to focus on heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. We are taught that it is never too late to change; to open our ears and hearts to more thoughtfully and considerately move through our lives. This could be an ideal time for each of us to consider the voices we listen to and why; to consider if we have let hate seep in; if we have fallen short of our own expectations of how we want to engage with others; and, to what do we want to align our souls.
