09/26/2024
I have been thinking a lot about Jewish history and the highly selective nature of collective memories. I feel like the October 7th catastrophe has narrowed the existential gulf of understanding between the "then" of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century and the "now" of the latter part of the twentieth century and the turn of the twenty first.
The horrors of the Holocaust, even for those like myself, born in the late sixties and growing up in the 70,s and 80,s who grew up knowing many many holocaust survivors, and seeing the markings on their arms when they rolled theirs sleeves to lay Teffilin before early morning prayers—was still largely unfathomable.
October 7th has changed that. That's been on my mind a lot lately and I plan to share some of those thoughts during the high holidays.
I feel like for the first time I can truly understand what it felt like to be in the kind of world where the Kishinev Pogrom for example, could happen.
Most startlingly perhaps is what shouldn't be so at all. Reading the diverse communal responses to the pogrom in 1904 is a good example of the selective memory I mentioned. For example: A whole generation of Jews who were raised on Marxist ideology claimed that there WAS no real antisemitism—it was capitalism, fostering "class conflict" not Jew hatred, that inflamed "ethnic animosities." To the Jewish Labor Bund of Russia and Poland, the solution to antisemitism was socialist revolution. The Union of Hebrew writers blamed it on the system of tsarist repression, claiming it was not "native" to the gentile population of Eastern Europe.
The intersectional linkage that is being spewed on college Campuses is more of the same.
The only difference now is all the difference in the world. The pendulum in the post October 7th Jewish world has swung decisively toward internalising the truth about Antisemitism. Namely, that's it's not about us. We have finally realized that Hatred with a capitol H, has ALWAYS been a HATER PROBLEM.
We are finally poised in a moment of history where we are ready to be honest and truthful. It can only work to our advantage to face this head on. That the winds of public sentiments are blowing in a different direction makes that all the more difficult, it is all the more critical that we do so. We can take heart from the ever more relevant words of the great Ruth Wisse, "Where mendacity maintains those in power truth is treason." Guilty as charged, but charge on we must.
The greatest irony of all was that the only one who got it right, though his reaction was extreme and shocking in its harsh judgement, was Chayim Nachman Bialik, today widely considered Israel's National poet, whose response to the Kishinev Pogrom focused on our passivity and general ( though there were quite a few pockets of Jewish resistance) inability, to defend ourselves. His "coverage" of that shocking event, coming as it did at the turn of what was hoped to be a more humane and enlightened century, was more valuable for its widely felt wake up call than for its factual veracity.
I think he is looking down from the skies over Vienna with deep sadness over the October 7th pogrom—but he is proud of our ability, and our inclination to fully defend ourselves in our own homeland and wherever we reside in the Diaspora as well.
As we should be.
Much Love,
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yossi
