Hear Our Voice

“When I was a professor at a right-leaning college, I was accused of being a self-hating leftist Jew.  Now that I am a professor at a left-leaning college, I am accused of being a Zionist conspirator.”  These words from our fantastic Scholar in Residence last weekend, Dr. Marc Dollinger, have rung in my ears ever since I heard them articulated. 

For so much of our modern history, Jews and Judaism have served as the proverbial racial/ethnic “Rorschach test” for the world.  Throughout the generations, whether in Europe, the Middle East or America (and in so many other spots on the globe, it’s hard to fathom), Jews have been looked at and portrayed in ways that are the most convenient for the majorities.  We have been reviled throughout our history because we are smart, determined, creative, and powerful AND because we are vermin, parasites, landless, and powerless.  For most of our story as a people, we are to so many others, ink blots, onto which are projected the internal self-revulsion of others.  Oh, no, you’re not going to hear me say that we Jews are perfect or above reproach or even necessarily “Chosen.”  We are not inherently morally better.  But we are ALSO not inherently morally worse. 

And here we go again and have been of late, for quite some time.  “The Right” declares that they will not be replaced by we Jews; and “The Left” often just wants us to go away.  These are extremes for sure, and I do not claim for the Jewish people an “elite” position of being hated.  But they’re also not so extreme that they do not arise the moment the world needs a scapegoat.  And while we may not be the only ones hated at this volume, there are only a few other groups who can claim to be a member of such a club. 

Politics today is a hot mess, and unfortunately, hot messes need fuel to continue to burn.  I ask you, my Jewish brothers and sisters, your families and those who love you…resist the temptation to point the finger at your Jewish brothers and sisters, their families and those who love them.  We have neither the time nor the patience to entertain any paths that would allow Jewish influence to coalesce in ways that would do to others, what is hateful to us.  AND we do not have the time or patience to entertain any paths that would be built on the ridiculous notion that Israel or Jews do not have the right to exist.  I know that most, if not all of you find the mere mention of these extremes rather odious and perhaps an exaggeration.  But they are not, and they do fuel the fires that are already raging and will only get hotter if we do not recall and act upon what is central to what it means to be a Jew in the first place: “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.” 

Neither the extreme right nor the extreme left truly care about the health and welfare of the Jewish people.  At the poles, there’s not much more real estate to stand on than what one can carve out for himself.