Hatred and Hope

Current Jewish events are both foreboding and absurd. One "side" of the
conflict preaches hatred and rejoices at every slaughtered child or parent;
the other responds by seeking to arrest individuals guilty of murder, and
regrets every unintended civilian casualty - the only kind there is. Then
an "objectivity"-addled world labels the calculus a "cycle of violence" - as
if it were a wheel without a beginning rather than Jew-hatred without end.
The tragic zaniness proceeds with the solemn offering of body counts that
obscenely mingle innocent victims and suicide bombers; and calls for
"restraint" in dealing with terrorists are soberly issued by a world waging
a war on terrorism.

If it all weren't so tragically reminiscent of Tisha B'Av, the traditional
day of Jewish national mourning, it would instead bring Purim to mind.
Yet even through our tears, we are afforded a recognition: yes, this is
indeed the exile from whose shadow Jews have prayed for millennia to emerge.
Our generation, we now know, has not escaped its tragedy; nor have freedom
or even a Jewish State abbreviated it.
The shining hopes held out by the "isms" - to use the droll term coined by a
great rabbi of the pre-Holocaust era, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman - have, as he
predicted, proven only the phony glitter of fools' gold. The faith that was
placed in internationalism, humanism, socialism and Zionism (created, no
less to ensure, at last, a safe haven for Jews) has proven a poor investment
indeed.

By stark and telling contrast, some Jews have always understood that there
is only one ultimate path to our redemption, that our true power lies more
in prayer than in politics; more in Torah than treaties; more in merits than
munitions.

There is, to be sure, great value in pursuing diplomatic and military
strategies. But such efforts, Jewish tradition cautions, must always be
undertaken with a clear understanding that the race will ultimately go not
to the swift or the clever or the strong, but rather to the good.
The global theater of the absurd has been graced (or, better, disgraced) too
by another well-known performer: outrageous anti-Semitism. And so we have
come to witness a resurgence of Jew-hatred, from old haunts like France to
new ones like Scotland, and telling occurrences like the Islamist home movie
of Daniel Pearl's confession of Jewishness, slaughter and decapitation. And
then there is millions of Muslims' belief that Jews were really behind the
September 11 attacks; an Arab press that has resurrected blood libels; and
the publication of new editions of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion,"
presented as nonfiction.

The madness has rained existential puzzlement on Jewish intellectuals.
Jonathan Rosen, writing in The New York Times Magazine, described his
discomfort during the Durban orgy of Israel-hatred, which receded
prematurely into ancient history when September 11 arrived mere weeks later.
"Jews were the problem," he wrote, "and the countries of the world were
figuring out the solution. The past had come calling."

In Commentary, Hillel Halkin wrote from a similar daze. He too received a
first punch from Durban, "the largest and best-publicized international
anti-Semitic rally in history," and remains confounded. "[T]he
demoralization caused by the persistence of anti-Semitism is profound," he
agonized, at least "for the Jew unshielded by religious belief." That
dismissive phrase says it all, revealing how tightly shut even a brilliant
mind can be. The persistence of Jew-hatred is explainable only in the
context of Jewish religious belief.

We Jews were promised security and happiness, our tradition informs us, when
we lived God-focused lives and heeded the Torah's laws; when we stuck to our
collective identity and refused to dissolve in the ocean of nations.

Should we abandon our Torah, though, we were warned, we would be dispersed
among those very nations. And, again as warned, should we try to escape
into the mirage of assimilation and pretend to be things other than Jews,
the world that had demanded our dissolution into itself will suddenly refuse
to hear of it and mark us as Jews with the indelible paint of hatred and
blood. Just as we have seen, and see.

More than an understanding , though, is discernable through out tears; so,
incredibly, is hope.

After the destruction of Jerusalem's Holy Temple, the Talmud relates, Rabbi
Akiva saw a fox emerge from where the Holy of Holies had stood. He
responded by laughing. Challenged, he explained that the prophets had
foretold both the Temple's destruction and the Jewish people's exile as well
as the eventual return of the Jews to their land through the messianic
redemption. Witnessing the extent of the former's fulfillment, he
explained, reassured him that the latter would no less fully come to pass.

Like Rabbi Akiva's colleagues, we Jews these days find it difficult to
smile, much less laugh. But we can still strive to internalize the faith
the sage expressed - and help bring about what he foresaw.

AM ECHAD RESOURCES

[Rabbi Avi Shafran serves as director of public affairs for Agudath Israel
of America]