Sometimes I have the urge to take off my shoe and hurl it at my computer. When I get that angry and frustrated, I realize I better get up and take a break from reading the news!
This is what happened when reading about the sanctimonious savages who run the International Criminal Court and recently put out an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for, of all things, “war crimes.” Yes, they issued these arrest warrants because the prime minister and defense minister dared to defend themselves against ruthless, cruel savages who want nothing more than to perpetrate another Holocaust.
The anger and frustration that I felt when reading the absolute foolish drivel couched in rachmanus for “civilians” who the court claims to champion is just a continuation of the frustration, anger, and simple timahoan—horrified shock and astonishment—that we have all been feeling ever since the slaughter perpetrated by Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza over a year ago, on Simchas Torah, the massacre that has become known to the world as October 7th.
The “No Surprise” Versus the “Yes Surprise”
Let’s try to unpack this just a bit.
I don’t think anyone is surprised that Hamas, and all the Palestinian Arabs, hate us. They hate us to the extent that they would be happy to murder us and perpetrate on any Jew the worst torture that a depraved human mind could concoct. Even if we had difficulty acknowledging that outright, anyone who is in touch with reality knew this on some level. Yes, they hate us. They hate us so much that they want to torture and kill us.
What has been eye-opening and so terribly disappointing, however, is that no one is standing up for us. There is no empathy. There is no nation out there that has thus far actually come out to support us unequivocally. On the contrary. Not only did we get virtually no sympathy even while so many were murdered, tortured, and hacked to pieces in cold blood, but we got blame. Yes, we were told that it was our fault and that we had it coming to us.
That is what virtually everyone in the world was saying, and those sanctimonious purveyors of enlightened mercy were saying that we are the ones guilty of genocide for trying to protect ourselves from another Holocaust. One Jewish right-wing commentator put it succinctly when he said, “Let’s stop and think about what would happen if each side put down their arms. If the Palestinians would put down their arms and decide they want peace, no one would harm them, and they probably would be able to build a prosperous life for themselves. If the Israelis put down their arms, they would all be slaughtered in cold blood. That is the fact.”
The question is: Why? Why is it that not only are we not getting empathy, but instead we are being blamed, and it has become fashionable to harass Jews all over Europe and on campuses in America?
Is there a message for us?
Perhaps, instead of throwing a shoe at the computer, there is another message we should be absorbing.
The Clear Torah Message of Rav Elya Brudny
I was not at this year’s Torah Umesorah Convention, but I was told that Rav Elya Brudny addressed this question.
Why, he asked, do they hate us so much? Why couldn’t they muster sympathy and empathy for us even before the Israeli army began to try cleaning out the hornets nest that was Gaza? There were demonstrations against the Jews in Times Square already on October 8th.
The answer that we must convey to our children and instill in ourselves, Rav Brudny said, is that they are jealous of us. Yes, they see things that are enviable, even in those people whom Chazal refer to as reikanim, empty of mitzvos. They see how much charity we give and how much goodness we bring to the world in the field of medicine. They see our conscience. They see how the Jew, even the Jew who is sadly distant from Torah and mitzvos, has something built into his very DNA—rachmanim, bayshanim, gomlei chassodim—that they don’t have. Deep down, they see the innate beauty of the Yiddishe nation and, conversely, their own emptiness, and they cannot deal with that.
The question that we should perhaps ask ourselves is: Why don’t we see and recognize our own beauty? Why do so many of us seek to emulate the nations of the world around us, whether it is their hairstyles, their mode of dress, their entertainment, their music, or their warped values of progressivism?
The Message: We Are Different!
It is time to recognize that we are a different metziyus. Even they recognize that we are a different metziyus, and that is why they hate us.
That is why when an Orthodox Jew gets shot in Chicago while walking to shul because he is visibly Jewish, the mayor of Chicago cannot think of anything more to say than “My thoughts and prayers are with him.”
No action. “Let the Jews get shot again” is the message he is sending. They deserve it.
That is why the police in Amsterdam, who knew that a pogrom against Jews was planned, did not do anything before it happened to stop it and sufficed with saying, “Hate has no place in Amsterdam,” after it occurred.
If they recognize that we are different, then it is high time that we recognize how different we are and how wonderful, beautiful, and exalted the Jewish neshomah is.
If Hashem is letting this happen now, He must be sending us a message. Perhaps He is telling us that there is a reason why this is happening. Perhaps He is saying, “I need you to get the message. You are different. You are not k’goyei ha’aratzos and you should not try to act like them. When you try to mix, eventually they will spit you out ruthlessly.”
One day, Bernie Sanders will get that message too. If he would have been hanging out with his leftist friends on those leftist kibbutzim in the Gaza periphery on October 7th, the terrorists would have slaughtered and tortured him the same way they slaughtered and tortured other eighty-year-olds who, for years, had been their greatest friends and advocates.
The Wake-Up Call is For Us
If all the hatred that we have been witnessing since October 7th should do anything, it should be waking us up. I hear from people involved in college campus kiruv that assimilated Jewish kids in college are all waking up and trying to figure out what it means to be Jewish. After all, if they are being singled out, it must be for something.
My question is, what about us FFBs who grew up in yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs? Are we waking up? Do we realize who we really are? Do we understand the exalted nature of the Yiddishe neshomah? Are we trading our birthright for a pot of lentils? Are we trading our birthright for their fashion, their music, their entertainment, and the way they speak, all just to be “with it”?
The extent to which we are despised and barely tolerated in the enlightened, progressive world of 2024 should, if anything, serve as a massive wake-up call for us. Not for them. Not just for the irreligious, but for us.
Remember who we are. The goyim recognize it. Shouldn’t we?
