The Despoliation of Jewish Dignity

The dignity of the Jewish people is in a state of despoliation. Dignity, or Hadar (הדר) in Hebrew, is the most important aspect of a people. A people without dignity can be easily subjugated by their enemies. I use the word despoliation with specific intent and meaning. Despoliation means to have anything of value, both physical and spiritual, stripped until there is nothing left. In the time of the Holocaust, the Nazis despoiled the Jews to such an extent that even the hair of Jewish women was taken from their corpses to be used for clothes or stuff mattresses. The Nazis took great effort to destroy the Jews in both body and soul. In Auschwitz, those who were not gassed were made into beasts of burden. What little they were fed was not of any substance and designed to slowly starve them. Despite this, the Jews of Auschwitz made the brave choice to fast on Yom Kippur. No one, including Jewish law, would expect them in such a state to not to eat or drink. Yet, these Jews defiantly fasted and recited the prayers of Yom Kippur as best they could. When the Nazis learned of this they tortured and mocked the fasting Jews. Forcing them to work even harder and taunting them with food; the Jews maintained their fast.

Today, we can witness the great effort made to destroy Jewish dignity. In the year of 2025, there are again pogroms and Jew hunts in the streets. There are again businesses and venues that refuse to associate with Jews. Reborn, are the blood libels and conspiracies of Europe that fueled the persecution of the Jews. On both social media and college campuses, the lost “art” of the disputations of Jewish religion and history have returned. For many Diaspora Jews, young and old, this has come as a great shock having been raised in relative social comfort. In this current era, there is an ever-decreasing number of Jews who remember a time in which their dignity and rights were not an assumed birthright. Many Jews, still cry out “surely this great evil which has arisen will soon burn out.” In reality, this is not a flare up, but a fire slowly stoked and fed as to ravage the Jewish people.

It started with the word “Zionist” which is easily understood to merely be the political description of the Jewish Nation. First, the “anti-Zionist” attacked the Israeli Government, then the Israeli nation, then the Jewish nation and then the Jewish people. Jews, most at least, would consider themselves to be Zionist in the sense of holding within them the Jewish National Spirit. This entrapped American Jews into self-identifying, according to anti-Zionist doctrine, as legitimate targets of the oppressed. We’ve quickly been made to be embarrassed at the sight of other Jews, to cringe at the sound of Hebrew or fearful of the Israeli flag. Our Mezuzahs, which contain the Shema, the most basic declaration of the Jewish faith, are stripped from their rightful place by the frightened Jews who first hung them.

At the same time, everything that is remotely Jewish has been despoiled. Hebrew has been declared as a fake language ripping off Arabic. The Jewish names of our cities and places, which can be found in both the Tanakh and the archeological record, are labeled as foreign colonial names. On the topic of Jewish texts, a Christian author wrote an article in the Irish Times addressed to the Jews on how we are failing to meet the Jewish law of the Talmud and Mishneh Torah. It acted as a condemnation of Jewish society for our “failures” as a people. For time sake I will not go into detail, but I assure you the cited passages on farming regulations and laws on proper holiday celebration do not relate to the war in Gaza. That is of course the point, the author purports to have a “deep respect” of the Jewish tradition yet actively perverts our religion as a weapon to attack us with.

Our presence at our holy sites, such as the Temple Mount or Tomb of the Patriarchs to be sacrilege. The act of Jewish prayer at our holiest site is called a “violent storming.” Our Jewish history and religion were declared to be co-opted fairy tales of other people. Even our lineage and our history was declared to be false with the Jews named aliens in their native lands and our multi-millennia history and nation reduced to “G-d promised me this land.” All that we are and were has been stolen from us and anointed on to other peoples. All of this is done to extinguish the Jewish soul and spirit. Our self-preservation, the most basic instinct needed for life to thrive, instead replaced with shame and weakness. Done to create people so completely dominated that our very history and laws are taught to us by the very people who disdain it. Once we have been fully despoiled of our self -respect and dignity, we will be easily cast away as a forgotten and impotent people if not completely assimilated.

This is not a theoretical panic either, the attacks are at every level. Jews in universities, the streets and even synagogues are under constant attack and humiliation. Jews have been burned alive in the streets of Colorado, hunted down and shot in Washington DC, and communities attacked in Crown Heights. The Jewish Governor of Pennsylvania was not even safe; his home was attacked by an arsonist on Shabbat with his family inside. Jewish students and employees are accosted and Jewish businesses and synagogues vandalized. Yet, these acts in isolation are not fatal to Jewish dignity. Our so-called “response” to these attacks in contrast is.

Just seven years ago, was the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 Jews. Just six years ago, in December of 2019, Rabbi Josef Neumann, of blessed memory, was stabbed to death at a Hanukkah party. Then a shooting at a Jersey City Kosher Market killed six and another Jewish man was stabbed outside his synagogue. At the time there was a great shock amidst the diaspora Jews. All of these events occurred within weeks and yet today; it seems like a distant memory. Our institutions, our leaders failed to mobilize us, to create marches to make change. In doing so, or in not doing so, they set the precedent that the Jews will tolerate and cower in the face of our destruction. Today, those Jews that dare even whisper, that quietly walk rather than loudly march for justice, are killed for it. Karen Diamond, may peace be upon her, who merely wished to walk in the name of redeeming Jewish hostages, was murdered for it. She and other Jewish people including a holocaust survivor were attacked by a firebomb. Her death was met with no national action, no protest or anything of significance. A week later, was the shooting at the Jewish Museum, again the calls for justice and action were spoken by the mute and heard by the deaf. In the Spanish city of Valencia, French Jewish campers and their Jewish camp counselor awaiting take off on a plane were threatened and accused of terrorism. The Jewish camp counselor was arrested and abused and then threatened should she speak of what had happened. What crime did these Jews commit? They were not “Israeli” ; their crime was a single child wanting to recite a Hebrew camp song. When all is said and done there will be no safety or comfort for the Jewish people.

I am left, with great frustration, as to wonder why it is we are so invalid. If it were lack of finance, we Jews could show off our plans and raise the money. If it was a lack of plans or models for action, this too is easy enough to fix. The Jewish people are a creative and intellectual people. Surely, there are Jews full of ideas, and our leaders could seek them out and bring such ideas to life. Perhaps then, it is something far more fatal, a case of terminal complacency. Perhaps, the Jews have become either fearful or worse demoralized in the fight for our preservation as a people. The Jewish National Spirit, a force once thought inextinguishable, is left to flicker and inevitably die. Jewish minds have been despoiled of the self-righteousness and moral certainty of the Jewish cause. Many work off the assumption it is our responsibility to justify our rights and dignity to others. Surely, the Jews will finally gain the respect of our gentile neighbors if we grovel and beg for the rights others assume they have. It is, as a result of our groveling, that we announce to all persecutors our “natural state” of indignity. Therefore, the correct answer is to walk upright and demand dignity without justification based on the undeniable moral clarity of the Jewish Cause.

Even then, those who understand the righteousness of the Jewish cause, must overcome the fear from Boulder to Valencia. There is still hope, for the Jews of the Diaspora, to escape destruction. We must embrace ourselves, as Jews, and restore unto us the basic dignities that are afforded to all peoples. We must embrace the Hebrew language as the Jewish language. We must teach and embrace Jewish history as the undeniable record of our people. We must pass on Jewish culture and tradition onto the next generation. One may only look to Israel to see a Jewish society with dignity. There, all that is Jewish (the people, land, and language) is celebrated, coveted and protected. Only a people who have self-esteem and respect for themselves can demand it from others. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a founding father of Israel, wrote of this very phenomenon in his essay “The Iron Wall.” He argued, and history has validated, that the Jewish state will only be accepted when it is viewed as immovable and absolute. The same can be said of the Jewish diaspora. We must show, not that we are “deserving” of respect and tolerance, but that we the diaspora cannot be shaken or assimilated. It all starts with rejecting the label of “Jew” and instead actually being and living as Jews.

Let us think of Daniel in Babylon, who refused to be defiled by unclean food. Let us think of the Spanish Jews, who left their homes for alien land rather than convert to Catholicism. Let us think to the Cantonist Jews, children who under Russian torture resisted conversion. To the Jews of Auschwitz, who fasted and sang as they starved and marched to certain death. Let us remember Agam Berger, who in the dungeons of Gaza, declared “I was kidnapped because I’m Jewish. I risked my life to hold onto that identity. You can’t take away my free will — and you can’t take away my Judaism.” The Jewish people, should they hold their spirit and dignity, will always find redemption. We must cast off the yoke of the assimilatory pressures that corrode the diaspora. We, as we did in Sinai, must make the active choice and commitment to be Jews. It is only then, that the Jewish people can escape our state of despoliation and restore dignity unto our people. Jabotinsky wrote: “Every group, every individual of which shows in his behavior and mannerism a long-standing culture, forces even the enemy to admit that, Yes, this is a nation.”