PIC2024-R' Asher Resnick-Why Hate the Jews? A Torah Perspective

okay unfortunately this is a very uh anti- symptoms is always a relevant topic and sometimes it's a bit more more relevant than others and unfortunately we're living that through that time of of uh of a time period um but it's a very important to understand and there actually is a Torah perspective on anti-Semitism and it's something that will teach us a lot of important principles about anti-Semitism and also about how do we appreciate what it means to be Jewish so first of all the term itself anti-Semitism is a strange term because there's a generic terms you could use you could talk about bigotry you could talk about xenophobia racism these are generic terms that can apply to different groups but there's a term anti-Semitism which is hatred of the Jew specifically so the world understands because there's a term hatred of the Jew the world understands something different about this phenomena than other terrible hatreds in the world okay and that's what we try to understand now we talk about semitism we could say what why is it what's what's what's causing it when we ask that question we could talk about reasons or excuses and it's very simple to know the difference if it's truly a reason then you remove the reason and then the phenomena stops if it's an excuse then it looks like it's Associated but at the end of the day even when it's even when the phenomena is gone if it still continues you see that that was really an excuse it wasn't really the reason and of course the kind the kind of things that are usually talked about as reasons are usually excuses they're simply people trying to say what is it that's unusual distinctive about Jews because they're successful so it's jealousy or maybe they The Outsider and therefore they're bothered by that or even though of course there's always a lot of counter examples and that shows you that's not truly the reason so we're going to try to understand what the Torah perspective says is the true reason now there are many unusual aspects of anti-Semitism that make it a unique phenoma it's Universal almost every country the Jews were ever uh living in at one point or another threw them out were thrown up from England France Hungary Austria Spain Lithuania Portugal many many countries were actually tossed out of the whole country and uh in more uh more recent years when the state of Israel was established almost all the Jews and the Arab countries were also thrown out of those countries so that's it's a universal phenomena it's a very intense phenomena you see during the Holocaust that the that the Germans wanted to destroy every last Jew in the entire world incredible level of intensity it's also a long phenomena it's been going on for over 2,000 years and specifically the most powerful Empires or groups are the ones that were attacking us the Greeks the Romans the Catholic church and then in the previous Century uh Germany the Soviet Union the Arabs and what's remarkable is that the groups and Empires that attacked us were quite powerful so it's curious that they were threatened in some way by the Jewish people that's the longevity and that it's irrational CU it's there's something that's very strange about it whatever we're doing it seems to be the reason for the anti-semitism mentioned last night my talk of then I mentioned that um you know the Jew they I always feel the classic example of irrationality is the blood lies because we're the most careful people in the world to avoid blood even we eat regular meat and yet you have the Christians who have a ritual of drinking red wine which ritualistically they call blood and we are a blood avoiders and they're accusing us of this horrible uh type of a charge that we're killing non-jewish children to drink their blood see have that that s of speak the blood drinkers accused of the blood avoiders so it's very it's bizarre we the only people that was ever accused what's called deide killing God which itself is pretty bizarre type of a charge to make against someone uh Lloyd George the Prime Minister of England wrote about anti-Semitism he said of all the extreme finan ISM that plays havoc in man's nature there's none as irrational as anti-Semitism the Jews Cann vindicate themselves in the eyes of these Fanatics the Jews are rich the victims of theft and extortion if they are poor the victims of ridicule they take sides in a war must be the one to gain Advantage from spilling of non-jewish blood if they espouse peace must be they scared or traitors of the country the Jew dwells in a forign land he is persecuted and expelled he wants to return to his own country prevented from doing so whatever the Jew is doing that's given as a reason for the anti-Semitism now what I want to do now sounds a bit strange at first uh it's to take various quotes from the Nazis Yak sham and use that to try to understand anti-Semitism so it seems very strange but in in in a certain sense maybe it's not so strange that the greatest Jew haters so maybe do understand something about what the Jewish people are and why they're obsessed they were obsessed with us so first of all you have Joseph Gobles the minister of propaganda he writes 50 or 100 years from now national socialism that's a 9 the Nazi ideology that will become a philosophic system that's can be studied at the universities for four or five semesters just as today theology or classical eics are academic subjects he wanted to say say don't look at us as being a bunch of irrational uh Fanatics we have a system we have a logic and and a system to understand why we attack the Jews and we can study it it could be studied in universities so well what's remarkable is we'll see there really is something to the system so these are a bunch of Dr quotes now from from from Hitler himself y shimo he wrote it's the Jew who struggles for his dominion over the Nations he looked at this a as a truly interational Universal struggle he called the Jews the greatest danger of All Peoples to the Earth greatest of all dangers to the peoples he called jws in the plague of the world he said there's either two possibilities victory of the Aryan or annihilation of the Aaron and victory of the Jew and perhaps the clearest statement of how obsessed he was was just before he killed himself in his bunker in Berlin he issued a statement to the nation he demanded of all Germans all national socialists men women in the amendment of the Armed Forces they be faithful and obedient to death to the new government and its president and then he concluded above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and a merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all people's International jewry now in a speech he gave in nberg in 1923 he said a strange thing he said unless we expel the Jewish people soon they will have judaized our people within a very short time and that's strange because it sounds like he's saying we're going to keep our values and then the Germans will get our our values from us when in fact just the opposite was happening we were abandoning our values and taking on their values so understand this there's another idea that he talked about two other groups they was also very bothered by very obsessed by Christianity and bolshevism now aside from the fact that all three Christianity uh bolism and Judaism all have a basic Jewish connection but there's also something about their ideology which is similar all three of them focus on the weak members of society the Christians talk about the weak inheriting the Earth the Christians talk about I mean the um the bullist the Communists talk about the proletariat the lowly worker they focus on him we talk about the idea of Sedaka helping the Widow and the orphan so there's an idea that all three systems are focusing on the weak members of society now there an IDE an idea called social Darwinism which is the idea that just like Darwinism is survival of the fittest social Darwinism is survival of the strongest society and he wanted the German to be the strongest society and he felt that the weakness that the Jews and these other systems were were promoting would be the undoing of his vision so he he writes the following this is probably the the most extreme quote it's a collection of about two or three different quotes about his ideology he said it is true we are barbarians that is an honored title to us I free Humanity from the shackles of the soul from the degrading suffering caused by the false Vision called conscience and ethics the Jews have inflicted two wounds on mankind circumcision on its body and conscience on its Soul they are Jewish inventions the war for Domination of the world is waged only between the two of us the Germans and the Jews everything else is but deception so to appreciate this quote we have to go back to the Jewish concept of a human being a human being is as a spiritual component and a and a physical component a body and a soul and of course our goal is that every human being should identify with and and express the spiritual part whereas the Germans were focused on the physical part we could say perhaps that while our Messianic utopian vision is a world where everybody identifies as a spiritual being as a soul as the primary aspect of who we are the Germans Messianic Vision with the opposite it was to focus and to identify as physical beings and therefore they saw us as being the polar opposite of themselves and what's interesting is that even though the Jews in Germany were quite assimilated that was in terms of basic Jewish observance but in terms of the idea that we value um sadaka helping the Wily orphan helping the underdog those were things that the Jews had and they were influenced German Society with so in that sense we were as he put it judaizing the German people because we were giving this ideology of help the weak members of society now I'm I'll read the the bigger part of that quote what i' read before and you'll see the bigger context of it he wrote the the internal experation of the Jewish spirit is not possible in any platonic way for the Jewish spirit is the product of the Jewish person unless we expel the Jewish people soon they will have judaized our people within a very short time and it's interesting to contrast this quote I just read with a different quote he had about Christianity so he wrote there the world will come to an end then we must consider the last great task of this era is to solve the problem of the churches only then will the germination be secure so it's very fascinating to appreciate the difference in his perspective on Judaism and Christianity when it came to Christianity the goal was to eliminate the church the institution itself not the Christian people when it came to the Jews you understood the goal is to get rid of the Jew himself it's not the synagogue so you understood something which we ourselves talk about every Jew is fundamentally connected to Jewish values a person may be secular but that that that internal Jewish spark the the pentad is always there and always has those Jewish values and then he understood even if someone's very very secular they have that Jewish connection in themselves not just in the institution itself of the synagogue okay now I'm going other quotes from others about anti-Semitism and we'll see a simil a certain similarity John Paul sart well known French writer and philosopher he in a book called anti-semite and Jew he wrote he the anti-semite is a man who's afraid he's afraid of his Consciousness his Liberty and his instincts and responsibilities of change in the world and to semitism in short is fear of The Human Condition or we could say perhaps fear of being human as opposed to being an animal having fear of that spiritual quality which we all have as human beings Sigman Freud addressed the puzzle of how can it be that the Christians who share our values who borrowed our values I should say that they were the greatest anti-semites throughout history I mean till recent times they were always the ones leading the charge against us against the Jewish people so he wrote very interestingly we must not forget that all the peoples who now excel in the practice of anti-Semitism became Christians only in relatively recent times sometimes forced to it by Bloody ex bloody compulsion one might say that they're all badly christened under the thin V near of Christianity they remained where their ancestors were barbarically polytheistic they have not yet overcome their grudge against the new religion which was forced on them and they projected it onto the source from which Christianity came to them the hatred for Judaism is at bottom hatred for Christianity and Professor Franklin lell a Methodist who was a a scholar in both anti-Semitism and the Holocaust wrote anti-Semitism is rebellion against the Jewish God Christian anti-Semitism is rebellion against the Jewish god it's hatred of the law Christians can't hate Jesus but they can hate the Jewish god and they can't hate the law their hatred of the Jew is hatred of the people that reminds them of their failing Dennis Prager a very well-known author in popular radio personality wrote a and he wrote a book about anti-Semitism called why the Jews he wrote The Following in an article about anti-Semitism he said to the anti-semite the Jews are the embodiment of fundamental moral values of the western world it's those values and ultimately all those who hold those values that the anti-semites seek to destroy the Jews are only their first Target anti-Semitism is a Jewish problem but non-jews make a very self-destructive error when they dismissed it as only the Jews problem treatment of the Jews has served as one of Humanity's moral barometers watch how Nation individuals or ideologies react to the Jewish people or the Jewish State you will have an early and deadly accurate picture of their values and their intentions the Jews are the world's miners Canary miners take canaries into the mine because canaries are particularly vulnerable to the fumes there and they die before the miners are aware of the fumes and then people know they have to get out of there so it is with the Jews moral non-jews who fail to act against anti-semites and anti-zionists will in due course suffer from them Jew haters begin with Jews but never end with Jews Jews and that's why anti-Semitism anti-zionism should be so important to non-jews identifying the Jews enemies gives to civilized society an unparalleled opportunity to identify the forces that all also wish to destroy them and finally rashi's fundamental commentary on the Torah spells out the classical Jewish understanding of anti-Semitism rash's address ing a puzzle in the Pim this is near the end of the book of bemidbar the background to this is that God told Moshe to fight against the nation of Midian who had attacked the Jewish people for no good reason as a Vengeance for the Jewish people when mosa tells the Jews to fight against Midian he changes the statement he says we're going to fight against against Midian as a as an aom Hashem avengeance for God so how can mosha do that Hashem tells Moshe fight against him as a a avengeance for the Jewish people and Moses says no we're fighting for our Vengeance for God and Rashi explains in very very succinct terms he said because whoever stands against Israel is as if they're standing against God it's the same thing in a similar way the gomorah tells us that the mountain upon which the Torah was given was called Mount Si it makes a play on Sinai and Cena the word for hatred it tells us that once God gave the Torah the system of absolute morality to the world then hatred Cena came down to the non-jewish world now I heard a beautiful insight about anti-Semitism from Matas Weinberg my my Misha's nephew it's based on a very cryptic section in sa B called the bis brisb Basim and there God promises ofam he will inherit AR Israel forever and abam asks the uh the very problematic question how will I know Raj explains two understandings of the question what was abam asking Hashem tells mosha I'm sorry he tells Aram you will inherit AR Israel forever and AR asks replies how do I know so Rashia explains what was he asking he was either asking for a tangible sign or he was asking by what Merit will the Jews inherit the land forever now it could be that the first interpretation of Rashi shows the question was mistake that R was asking it's some perhaps some subtle way a lack of trust in God but the second explanation that Rashi gives by what Merit will they inherit it doesn't sound like a mistake at all it sounds actually very logical so if you think about the whole concept of chosen people which is expressed by ER Israel being given to the Jews forever so it's a bit of a problem here I mean of rum of course is very loyal to God it's very logical that a that God picks in a relationship with ar but once he picks a relationship with ar and his descendants now you've got a problem because who says his descendants will always be loyal so there seems like there's two possibilities either God can force the Jews to always be loyal but then there's no relationship because it's such compulsion or they have free will to be loyal or not be loyal but then of course some Jews are going to not be loyal but then they're the chosen people and that's problematic how can that be so that's that's s to speak that's like the Divine dilemma so to speak as what what do I do now how do I make it that the Jews will make choice so a a relationship here and yet be sure they that they'll always stay loyal at least a portion of us always stay loyal how will that work so we see two statements in the past of that gives us an insight into this first we say blessed is the one who keeps his promises to Israel Blessed Be he and this is based on the brisban of basarin the Covenant that God made with AUM so that it goes on to say that God calculated the end of our captivity to fulfill what he had said to aam at this Covenant he said the following knowth certainty your Offspring will be strangers in a land not theirs which is Egypt and and they will serve them and they will oppress your Offspring for 400 years then I will judge the nation whom they will serve and after that they will go out with great wealth and then right after that in the in the ha we have the very well-known passage of it is this that has stood for our fathers and for us for not only has not only one has risen against us to destroy us but in all generations they rise up us against us to destroy us and God Saves us from their hands so it's very puzzling these are two very puzzling pieces because we're saying that the first one being God keeps his promises now that's wonderful it's wonderful that God keeps his promises but it's a bit of a funny example to use to say yeah he promised me to go to slavery in Egypt and guess what he kept his promise it's a bit of a curious example of when they were so happy God kept his promise on okay and then theisha amda is telling us what is it that stood for us for our father is in for us two things first is the'll rise up against us to destroy us in every generation secondly he'll save us from their hands so it seems to be that both are what's going to keep us going both of them meaning to say not only he'll save us but they will attack us and that's anti-Semitism it seems to be that anti-Semitism plus God saving us at some point in the process is what stood for us for all generations so how is that now I believe the answer to these questions is found in a mush imagine there's a steep Mountain Road the roads on the edge of the mountain and of course there's guard rails on the edge of the of that road to make sure that cars stay on the road and imagine that you're driving your car up the Mountain Road road but it was you were driving up after the the project Inspire convention you're a bit tired cuz you were up you didn't get any sleep because you staying up to all the amazing classes you're a bit tired you're dozing off a little bit as you're driving up the Mountain Road and you're getting more and more sleepy and pretty soon you kind of doze off and the car starts sliding off the road till he gets to the guard rails at the edge of the road and all a sudden he hits the guard rails and there's a big scraping banging noise quickly you wake up grab the wheel turn it back on the road and you're there you stop the car to survey the damage you get out and your car is a mess it's all dented it's all scraped up it's in a terrible State could you imagine at that point saying to yourself who is the idiot that put these guard rails here look what it did to my car probably not you probably wouldn't say that because of course as much as you're not happy with the damage to your car it's a lot better than an alternative that I believe is anti-Semitism it's the guard rails mean to say you're on the road when you stay on the road do you have a problem for the guard rails no they're there to make sure you don't go off the road when you're on the road you're okay but you start sliding off the road you hit the guard r drills and it bumps you it pushes you back onto the road and we see this many places in Jewish history for example we in the in sa we find that many places it talks about the Jews doing bad things then they're attacked and persecuted then they do Chua they spiritually improve then God sends a prophet or a deliverer to save them and they have peace and quiet until they do some more bad in a different area and then again they're attacked then again they do chuva and then again there's a savior and they have peace and quiet and this goes on a number of times at any point in that process had there not been the attack to Spur us to do chuva what would have happened we would have gone off the road that pushed us back on the road now there's no way to really understand anti-Semitism unless we appreciate the crucial importance of us being a chosen people once God picked AUM who became Abraham and his descendants it was essential for the sake of the world and for us we fill our role we have to do our job for ourselves and for the world and and when we do our job properly things go well for us relatively speaking but when we don't things are bad for us and we get knocked back on the road in sometimes a very very painful difficult way r one of the Primary students of the Von expresses very sharply he said unless the Jews make kidish the non-jews will make havdalah meaning to say if we live as a kesem sanctify God's name of the world we're good but if not the non-js will make abdulla they'll separate us from them and they'll Force us back on our track back on our our mission a striking example of this is found in a particular quote written from in a letter written to a German government minister in 1925 the person wrote in the following in the letter he said when I first came to Germany 15 years ago I discovered for the first time that I was a Jew and I owe this discovery more to Gentiles than to Jews if we did not have to live amongst intolerant narrow-minded and violent people he said I be the first one to throw off all national social ISM I'm sorry all all nationalism in favor of universal Humanity who wrote that letter Albert Einstein and one last one last quote who knows it might even be a religion from which the world and all peoples learn good and for what and for that reason that reason alone do we now suffer we can never become just netherlanders or just English or representatives of any other country for that matter we will always remain Jews that was written in the very famous Diary of Anne Frank it's critically important that you understand anti-Semitism because we understand antisemitism we can understand why Jews are so hated we'll also understand who we are our role in the world and that may be the deepest Insight of all into anti-Semitism I'm going to close with a story it's a very powerful story in and this goes back to the early days of Asa Torah and this is 100% true story I know all the people involved in the story so I can tell you I I I can testify this is an absolutely true story so many years ago in the early days of Asa Torah there was a student came to AA Torah whose father was a holocaust Survivor and his father had been raised religious but in the whole experience of the trauma he had gone through in the in the camps he had abandoned religion and then to his great surprise and his great concern his son was in Israel and started to study at this Yeshiva called asator and it was very disturbing to him so then the sister came to sort of see was with her brother and she started to learn about Judaism so he's got now two of his kids are now learning Orthodox Judaism in different educational institutions and he gets on a plane to come to Israel he comes to ASA Torah he's standing outside the Bas medish and he's screaming and blaspheming against God my parents are so religious I saw all the