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5 Av 5765 - August 10, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Shema Yisrael Torah Network

Opinion & Comment
Our Response to Hatred? Mourn

by Mordecai Plaut

The destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh was one of the worst expressions of the hatred that nations of the world have for the Jews. Its presence allowed the Jews to live a life focused on the service of Hashem in the ways that Hashem Himself arranged. It was the conduit for Heavenly beneficence that radiated to the whole world. It was a source of guidance and wisdom that had the potential to help all humanity.

The Beis Hamikdosh was wantonly destroyed — twice — on Tisha B'Av. The land upon which it was built was plowed under with salt, to utterly destroy the area and to try to ensure that it could never be rebuilt.

After the tremendous and stunning outpouring of hatred towards us from the Nazis, there was a significant dampening of those feelings of hatred for many years. If someone expressed antisemitic sentiments, one needed only to remind him of where those feelings had led the Nazis in order to silence him.

This is no longer the case. Antisemites are no longer intimidated by the mention of the Holocaust. One suspects that some are even encouraged by the thought of how "successful" Hitler actually was. Moreover, much of the moral power that the memory of the Holocaust had was expended on the long legal wrangling over the past several years that led to various payments and property restitution. For the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the participants in the Nazi crimes, who are now in the seats of power, the message of the Holocaust is tinged with the cash of reparations.

And the hatred has revived.

After the bombings that left over 50 innocents dead in his city, the Mayor of London chose his words very carefully when talking about Islam. Presumably he was careful with what he said about Israel, too. However he did not condemn the Islamic ideology that motivated the bombers; he condemned Israel. "I think the Israeli hard-liners around Likud and Hamas [members] are two sides of the same coin," he said. He expressed sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers, if not for London bombers: "Palestinians don't have jet fighters, they only have their bodies to use as weapons. In that unfair balance, that's what people use."

This view is by no means unique in today's society. There are even many Jews who talk the same way. They write articles explaining why Israel has no right to exist, and how they understand the suicide bombers.

A very famous Israeli poet and novelist by the name of A. B. Yehoshua once asked, "I ask myself a question that we must all ask: What is it in the interaction between Israel and other peoples that creates such an irrational hatred? What brought the Germans, and what brought the Palestinians, to such a hatred of us? I look with fear at the suicidal hatred with which the Palestinians relate to us. The Germans related to us with the same sort of hatred. This is something that needs to be clarified; what happens between us and the other peoples among whom we live?"

Truly a perceptive questions that any reasonable person should ask. Why has the Jewish people — throughout the generations from the Destruction of the Temples until the suicide bomber in Netanya — generated such hatred directed at itself?

The answer of most of the world — including secular Jews — is that if the common factor is the Jews, then the Jews can do something to stop the hatred. True it does not seem to help, and even when we are poised to wrench out thousands of Jews from their homes the bombers continue their efforts — mostly unsuccessful but a few tragically successful. The hatred is just as active. "But if only" Israel would withdraw more, maybe from all the territories over the Green Line, the Palestinians would begin to love us. Rational people continue to make these rational suppositions, even though the phenomena are clearly not rational at all.

The hatred of the Jewish people is not rational. It revolves around the hatred that descended at the Revelation on Har Sinai. At the giving of the Torah, we became the object of hatred from those who rejected it. There is no other explanation for this hatred.

What is our response?

We mourn.

We do not hate back and we certainly do not try to exact revenge.

We mourn our losses and strengthen our link to our precious Torah. We turn to ourselves and examine our own deeds and how we can improve them. This is not what we expect of saints but of every Jew. If we mourn Jerusalem properly, we know that we will merit seeing its happiness. That is the way — and that is the only way.


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