BKS Bar-Kamtza Syndrome

The Gemara (Talmud), in the tractate of Gitin, recalls an Agada (fable) of Kamtza and Bar-Kamtza and says that it was due to the mistaken identification between the two of them, that the Second Temple was destroyed. I will summarize the story:

It happened about 1900 to 2000 years ago, in the first 60 years of the first century of the common era, the Romans were building their forces in Judea, but life continued on its regular way in Jerusalem. One of the wealthy residents of Jerusalem decided to throw a party. He sent a messenger out to invite the guests, the messenger made a clerical error between two people in the community, Kamtza, who should have been invited, was a close mate of the wealthy bloke, but the messenger erred and invited Bar-Kamtza who was on very bad terms with him. Bar-Kamtza was surprised at the invite but RSVP’d immediately that he would come.

A week or 2 later at the party the host saw Bar-Kamtza sitting enjoying his food and went ballistic. With rage in his eyes, he approached Bar-Kamtza and ordered him to leave. Bar-Kamtza begged him not to make a fuss and said he would pay for his dinner, when that did not placate the host, Bar-Kamtza suggested he would pay for half the cost of the dinner, and then for all the cost of the dinner not to be the cause of embarrassment for either himself or the host. The end of this chapter of the story was that Bar-Kamtza was unsavorily expelled from the party.

Bar-Kamtza now with pent up rage at being so badly embarrassed then went and told the Roman leadership that the Jews were planning a rebellion. The rest of the story is history, the Romans started to pressure the Jews, in about year 66 a rebellion began against the Roman occupation, and in year 70 the Romans won the war and burnt the Second Temple to the ground exiling much of the Jewish residents of Judea and enslaving them.

The Gemara through this agada explains to us that it was the rage built from embarrassment that led Bar-Kamtza to prod the Romans towards destroying Jerusalem and enslaving the Jews. Not just his rage against the party’s host, but his rage against all the Jews. Why, how did a large group of people see what the host was saying and doing Bar-Kamtza and they sat back and did nothing. Had just one of them put his arm around the host and told him he was acting boorishly, and /or have gone up to Bar-Kamtza as he was heading back to his home and tried to calm him saying that he was treated terribly tonight, but you have people on your side. Alas neither occurred.

We can understand his anger, even the hatred he then felt for his neighbors and those he had previously called friends. But he took that anger so far as to harm every Jew, even himself.

All that was of course preamble. I grew up in Sydney Australia, within a warm and nurturing Jewish community. Both my parents like the vast majority of my friends’ parents were Holocaust survivors. Supporting Israel was second nature. As a university student in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was very active on campus in Jewish and Zionist issues. And while the vast majority of the Jews I mixed with were pro-Israel, I began to hear of many “intellectuals” professors and some of the ultra rich Jews of America and even some Holocaust survivors that are vehemently anti. And of course, we cannot forget the Ultra-Religious groups such as Nuturei Karta and even post modernists in Israel itself.

Is there a BKS (Bar-Kamtza Syndrome) that has made them so filled with self-hate? What happened in the formative years of people like, George Soros, Norman Finkelstein, Rabbi Amram Blau, Ilan Pappe, Gabor Mate, Gideon Levy, and the list unfortunately does not end there, that has made all these people so filled with such a hate of Israel that they would rather see the Ayatollahs of Iran succeed in building their nuclear arms to use their armed forces to destroy Israel, than see Israel use its armed forces to assist in the rescue mission after an earthquake in a foreign country. They feel it better to liable Israel than allow Israel the freedom to defend itself. Unfortunately, I do not have the answer to the cause, if I did, I could promote a cure for BKS. Perhaps it was something that happened in their youth, or perhaps it is feeling popular and loved. How great Gideon Levy must feel to be greeted with accolades at an Oxford Union debate, even though he lost, or for Professor Norman Finkelstein to have his face plastered all over the internet because he is the Jew, child of Holocaust Survivors that has built his name on being anti-Israel.

Jewish history has been filled with such people. The Passover Haggadah refers to the multitude of Israelites who preferred to remain slaves in Egypt than leave with Moses, history remembers Moses as our greatest prophet, no one remembers even the leaders of those that stayed behind. In every generation, the Haggadah tells us, they (the antisemites) have risen against us, but the Almighty GD has saved us. The one thing those antisemites had in their favor was the token Jew with BKS. The one thing those with the syndrome forget is that history shows all their predecessors quickly fading away, with no recognition and no one to remember their names. Cyrus the great of Persia allowed the Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. We well remember Ezra and Nechemia who led our ascendants back to our homeland, but history does not remember the names of those that opposed the return of the exiles.

So, George, Ilan, Gabor, and all the others keep fighting the windmill. You may be treated as heroes in some circles during your life, but your legacy will be erased quickly by time, you are just talking heads, useful idiots till they no longer need you.