We Have a Lot of Explaining to Do

Once upon a time, there was a merchant who spotted a babe tucked near a cactus in the brutal desert of the East. The baby was crying and the merchant, a kindly old man, took the baby home. He and his wife fed, clothed and raised the baby until he was a man and ready to join his adopted father in his travels.

Instead, the foundling joined evil men who robbed, pillaged and killed those who made their way through the desert. The old merchant was shaken to his bones. He had raised a monster.

Is this how you repay the Lord, you disgraceful, unwise people?! Is He not your Father, your Master? He has made you and established you. [Deuteronomy 32:6]

In this week’s Torah portion, Haazinu, or Listen, Moses recites a poem of an ungrateful people saved and nurtured by G-d, only to abandon Him for their enemies.

Shlomo Yitzhaki cites the Sifrei as explaining the phrase “established you.” G-d gave you everything to ensure your independence. With the divine gifts, there was no need to ever depend on the kindness or promises of strangers. You would have become truly free.

After [making you a special nation, G-d established you] upon every kind of firm base and foundation: Your priests are from among you; your prophets are from among yourselves, and your kings are from among yourselves. [Indeed, you are like] a city from which all [resources] are [drawn]. [Rashi quoting the Sifrei 32:6]

History cannot exaggerate what lies in store for Jews who trust the nations and reject G-d. Betrayal would always be in the air, although sometimes it took a while for the Jews to realize they were headed for doom. The pitch by the gentiles was always the same: Be like us and you will be accepted.

Few are alive to remember Helmut Hirsch, a young Jew who lived in Germany in the 1920s and early 30s. He embraced German life and yet was denied citizenship. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Hirsch, a dreamy teenager who loved poetry and outdoor life, was kept out of everything else, including university and employment.

In 1935, Hirsch, like many Jews, moved to Prague. He was urged by his mentor, Eberhard Koebel, to join a group of exiled Nazis called the Black Front, who fell out with Hitler in 1930. Why the 19-year-old would have wanted to join any Nazi organization has never been explained. Still, Koebel, founder of the outlawed youth movement Jungenschaft, urged his disciple to meet Black Front leader Otto Strasser, not long ago a senior commander in Hitler’s party. Strasser, whose younger brother Gregor, was killed in the Night of the Long Knives a year earlier, was itching for revenge.

Hirsch became Strasser’s patsy. The Nazi and his deputy Heinrich Grunov, both raging anti-Semites, worked on the young recruit, appealing to his idealism, patriotism and need to show Germany that not all Jews were cowards. Finally, Hirsch, sworn to secrecy, agreed to return to Germany where he would bomb Nazi installations in Nuremberg. He was not trained in anything except to obey orders.

By the time he arrived in Stuttgart in December 1936, Hirsch was having second thoughts and did not collect the bombs, which he did not know had been designed to explode on contact. It was too late. He had already been betrayed — scholars blame Strasser and Grunov — and within hours Hirsch was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit high treason. That was believed to have been the plan of the Black Front leaders: Use a naive young Jew for publicity in the campaign against Hitler. Less than six months later, Hirsch was executed by guillotine.

Strasser walked away scot-free and spent World War II in Canada. He arrived in West Germany in 1955 and reentered politics without success. Grunov was captured by the Gestapo in France in 1940 and died in the Sachsenhausen camp in March 1945, less than two months before Hitler’s suicide.

For they are a nation devoid of counsel, and they have no understanding. [Deuteronomy 32:28]

What could the nations have offered Israel that G-d had not already granted. By 1950, Israel was deemed by the U.S. Defense Department the most powerful country in the Middle East after Turkey. Hundreds of companies in Europe and the United States sought to invest in a tiny state that contained the most capable workforce outside the West. Millions of Jews were streaming back to the land of their forefathers, forming an overwhelming majority in a territory in which the Arabs just two years earlier comprised nearly 70 percent. The result should have been textbook independence.

Instead, Israeli leaders preferred to peddle influence for anybody willing to pay — whether Britain, France, Germany, Soviet Union and finally America. G-d in the Torah was forgotten for the slogan on the U.S. dollar. Competition was quashed for monopoly by the elites. Democracy was shelved for East European protektzia.

Little wonder that Haazinu comes on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Jews commemorate the new year not with drunkenness and excess, rather reflection and repentance. Without reflection, there is no repentance. And without repentance, we remain further away from G-d than ever. And, frankly, we can no longer afford this. In short, we have a lot of explaining to do.

When the Lord will judge His people, and will reconsider His servants, when He sees that the power is increasing, and none is controlled or strengthened. Then He will say, “Where is their deity, the rock in which they trusted, [Deuteronomy 32:36-37]