On Hating the Jews

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor 
February 13, 2004

I really thought that several years ago I had written my last sermon on anti-Semitism. Not that I believed that it would entirely disappear. Rather, I truly believed that its incidence had become so reduced in scope, frequency and potency, that we would be able to account for it by recognizing that there will always be a few meshugenas in the world. Until the Messiah comes and the world becomes Gan Eden, there will always be some form of hatred in the hearts of man. That feeling was further inscribed in my heart because I hoped and prayed that after what had already been another "Seventy Years War" between cousins, between two religious groups who shared a symbiotic relationship, peace was near at hand. There is an Israeli movie of some vintage called "The Siege." I hoped that the siege was over, forever. Having lived in Israel for two years and experienced the Zionist vision of a normative state for the Jews, I wished that viral anti-Semitism would be over. These have been unanswered prayers. If the problem for them was that we were there, wherever there is, then let us live alone in our own place. As Nathan Sharansky in the November 2003 issue of Commentary explained, before, anti-Semitism occurred because we didn't have a state and they wanted us to disappear. Now there is anti-Semitism because we have a state and they want it to disappear. From the phone call I received on the afternoon of September 11th, - "Rabbi, if we give them back Israel , will they stop bombing us?" - it is clear that there is no distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. There is no real separation of Jew from Israeli, of Jew from Jew. We may draw lines of distinction. They don't matter. For those who hate, hatred of us is hatred of all of us.

I need to formulate for us some internal posture to account for our current condition and secondly, develop a stance, attitude and response, with sachel and without panic. In the brevity of these remarks let me first address the question, put simply: Why have they hated us?

1. Leaving economics and sociology aside, I think that it begins with tomorrow's Torah portion, with the Ten Commandments. That we believe in one undivided, unborn and undying God flew in the face of the entire Greco-Roman world and is still a challenge to world religions. That in this sanctuary and its majestic windows there is no physical manifestation of the divine was and forever will be a rebellion. But it is more than that.

2. These commandments are a unity between ritual/theological and morality/humanity. We have always and forever enunciated unison between an eternal God and an eternal morality, the rule of law. Laws might change and evolve; the rule of law, the morality of law, the humanity of law is eternal. We have been the carriers of these Tablets not only in the forty years of the wilderness. They were the center of our worship not only when the Temples stood. We have enshrined them in our shuls, focused on them in our synagogues, and brought this vision of humanity wherever we have gone. We are the embodiment of that belief and thus a challenge to every dictator, a threat to every tyrant. Throughout world history every despot knew and knows that to dominate the world you have to go through us. Judaism through Torah is the gateway, which elevates and enunciates the rights of man. Egypt , Babylonia , Greece and Rome , Ferdinand and Isabella, Czars, Hitler and Stalin saw us as the enemy because we have been the standard bearers for law that protects all, that elevates all, that enshrines the holiness of humanity, which they must destroy in order to rule the world. There is a correlation that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East , and the object of destruction.

3. Tomorrow, Evan will chant a beracha to the Torah which says "asher bachar banu.v'natan lanu et Torahto" - "who has chosen us and given us His Torah." While Moses argued with God not to accept the mantle of leadership, the Children of Israel stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and willfully accepted the glory of Torah, for them and for us ever after. If Torah bettered us in any way, it was because we practiced laws of kindness and decency, of righteousness and justice. And we wished to maintain our corporate identity in order to be the perpetual bearers of that message. By chanting those blessings for over two thousand years we swear to never relinquish Torah, to never abdicate our honored position of being its representatives. We seek to perpetuate the Jewish people and our Judaism. That stands in contradistinction to both the melting pot and those who would convert us from our faith.

While there are certainly other components, in this framework I limit myself to these three core points: it has been our theology, our morality and our desire for self-perpetuation, as equal citizens or in a national homeland that fans the flames of anti-Semitism.

As for our response: 
1. We must have a strong dose of intestinal fortitude. All the nations I mentioned above, from the ancient world to the modern, exist no more. Fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, Catholic Spain, the Holy Roman Empire , is no more. Neither them nor their ideas. Anu Po . We are. No other people have such a long unbroken history in the face of the long exile from our homeland. Even the Dalai Lama sought to find out how we have survived and flourished. This shul, this Bar Mitzvah is testimony to our courage, which must never waver.

2. It has been a tough march through history and though tattered and torn, we have believed in the purpose of our existence, believed in the God whose voice we heard at Sinai, and believed in the message we bore. Events and fears of anti-Semitism are to be met with passionate self-confidence, reaffirmation of purpose, coupled with the faith that our vision of peace for all humanity will some day come true.

3. Our response is to join hands with people of all faiths in good faith to combat evil and hatred of all and any kind. We cannot be fighters for selected self-interest. There are people of other faiths and of no faith who understand that the evil of anti-Semitism is not confined to us. It is a cancer in society. These people join us in study, in common prayer to One Creator, in working for just laws, to extend religious understanding and mutual respect. We are not under siege. We have many true and dear friends. After 9/11 this Sanctuary was filled with people of faith that united in love and respect for each other.

4. We must break our sense of isolation from other Jews. We must reestablish the lines of communication and kinship to the Jews of Europe enduring the worst anti-Semitism since World War II, in South America and South Africa . The great success of Partnership 2000 of our Federation and Richmond with Emek Hefer is that this Sanctuary was filled with hundreds of us meeting a dozen Israeli girls and for a least a moment creating a family bond between us. The strength of the Jewish people to remain firm in adversity is to be the Jewish people, proud, uplifted and self-confident, committed to each other, mutually dependent and mutually supportive. When one part aches, all hurt. When one part is strengthened, we all are.

I close by referring to the Rabbinic Midrash on the name of Sinai. Linguistically the Hebrew hbhx Sinai lends itself to two usages. It comes from the world vbx sneh which means bush, before which Moses came for God's initial revelation to him. It is also connected to vbhx which means hatred. Perhaps there is anti-Semitism because we bow only before God and no man, accept our history, our faith, proclaim it proudly and struggle for our destiny. Yet I take faith, yea great faith, that though it was lowly, the bush that burned before Moses, from which God spoke, was never consumed and never extinguished. And neither shall we. Amen.