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When civilizations clash, Jews die. So it has been for much of the history of the West. Why is it that, in one form or another, antisemitism is "the longest hatred"? What, if anything, does it tell us about the clash of civilizations as a whole?
If we think of antisemitism as a belief, it will remain forever a mystery. It is not a belief: it is a series of contradictions. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, Jews were hated because they were rich and because they were poor; because they were capitalists and because they were communists; because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because they believed in an ancient faith and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing. It is not a belief. What then is it?
Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written about the causes of antisemitism. However the simplest explanation - one that includes all others - was given in the Book of Esther by Haman, one of the first to attempt genocide against the Jewish people: "There is," he said, "a certain people dispersed and scattered among the peoples . . . whose laws are different from those of all other people." [105] 177 Antisemitism is the paradigm case of dislike of the unlike. Jews were hated because they were different.
To be sure, every nation is different. Jews, however, were unusual in the extent to which they were prepared to fight and if necessary die for the right (and duty) to be different. Almost alone among peoples, Jews resisted assimilation to the dominant culture or conversion to the dominant faith. Already in the fourth century, Augustine could not suppress a note of wonder at this phenomenon:
It is a most notable fact that all the nations subjugated by Rome adopted the heathenish ceremonies of the Roman worship; while the Jewish nation, whether under pagan or Christian monarchs, has never lost the sign of their law, by which they are distinguished from all other nations and peoples.178
In a later age, Rousseau wrote more eloquently still:
[A]n astonishing and truly unique spectacle is to see an expatriated people, who have had neither place nor land for nearly two thousand years . . . a scattered people, dispersed over the world, enslaved, persecuted, scorned by all nations, nonetheless preserving its characteristics, its laws, its customs, its patriotic love of the early social union, when all ties with it seem broken. The Jews provide us with an astonishing spectacle: the laws of Numa, Lycurgus, Solon are dead; the very much older laws of Moses are still alive. Athens, Sparta, Rome have perished and no longer have children left on earth; Zion, destroyed, has not lost its children.
They mingle with all the nations and never merge with them; they no longer have leaders, and are still a nation; they no longer have a homeland, and are always citizens of it. What must be the strength of legislation capable of working such wonders, capable of braving conquests, dispersions, revolutions, exiles, capable of surviving the customs, laws, empires of all the nations, and which finally promises them, by these trials, that it is going to sustain them all, to conquer the vicissitudes of things human, and to last as long as the world? . . .
[A]ny man whosoever he is, must acknowledge this as a unique marvel, the causes of which, divine or human, certainly deserve the study and admiration of the sages, in preference to all that Greece and Rome offer of what is admirable in the way of political institutions and human settlements.179
Jews were summoned by G-d to many things: to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, to be G-d's witnesses and the medium through which His light is refracted to the world. Not least of these challenges, however, was to be different and at the same time a blessing to humanity as a whole: to be a voice for peace when "ignorant armies clash at night", for the sanctity of life in ages of mass bloodshed, for universal literacy when knowledge became the preserve of an elite, for fidelity at times of promiscuity, for justice when might usurps right, and for compassion when justice becomes inhumane. Not the least of its charges, though, has been to represent in its very being the dignity of difference in ages dominated by empires with universal aspirations. This led to five confrontations - with the Alexandrian and Roman empires, medieval Christianity and Islam, and the European Enlightenment.180 The first culminated in the brutal reign of Antiochus IV, the second in the destruction of the Second Temple, the third and fourth in the religious persecutions of the Middle Ages. The fifth reached its denouement in the Holocaust.
My argument is simple. Since antisemitism is the paradigm case of hatred of difference, and since difference (uniqueness, irreplaceability) is essential to our concept of the person (and thus of the sanctity of human life 181), an assault on Jews - as on any religious or ethnic group - is an assault on our humanity. Its cure will only come when human beings learn not to fear or be threatened by those who are not like us; i.e. when we learn to respect and recognize the dignity of difference. That is an argument that applies to Jew and non-Jew alike. Jews cannot consistently claim the right to be different without respecting the same right in others.182
There are those, understandably, who believe that antisemitism is inevitable and incurable and that any attempt to address it (other than self-defence) is destined to failure. That is not my view. If it were true, it would render all our prayers for peace - and there is virtually no Jewish prayer that does not end with a prayer for peace - futile and in vain. Instead I believe with Rav Kook that:
The brotherly love of Esau (=Christianity) and Jacob, of Isaac and Ishmael (=Islam) will assert itself above all the confusion that the evil brought on by our bodily nature has engendered . . . The basic reason for the lack of harmony in the world and in Judaism is that a multiplicity of forces are exerting their influence simultaneously. The old way of choosing one path and following it patiently can no longer prevail. We have to develop far beyond this: to embrace all paths and integrate them into a full and secure harmony. [106] 183
I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I see in the sustained onslaught against Israel and the rising global antisemitism - communicated by modern technology but driven by a hate half as old as time - a clear and present danger to us all. The assault may begin with Jews but it never ends with Jews. Because, throughout the ages, Jews have been hated because they were different, and because difference is the basic condition of our humanity, antisemitism is ultimately an assault on our humanity.
The greatest cure for the hatred of difference is the principle that "the pious of the nations of the world have a share in the world to come," meaning that the salvation of others (and hence their equal rights and dignity) does not depend on their sharing my faith. That is the single most cogent alternative to "supersessionist" or "replacement" theology: the idea that one religion can replace, displace or supersede another. That idea has stained the pages of history with blood shed in the name of G-d. Allied to weapons of mass destruction, it threatens the future of human life on earth.
In making a covenant with the Jewish people ("the people that dwells alone") G-d set two challenges to mankind, one to Jews, the other to the nations in whose midst they live. G-d asked Jews to have the courage to be different. He asked non-Jews to have the generosity of spirit to make space for difference. The challenge to both is how, in this not-yet-messianic age, we can live peaceably together despite our differences.
I leave the last word to Maimonides. One of the greatest clashes of civilizations in Jewish history was that of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Greeks, commemorated each year in the festival of Hanukkah. It was, we say in our prayers, a triumph of the few against the many, the weak over the strong. It allowed Jews to rededicate the Temple and recover their religious freedom and political sovereignty. So precious is the command to light lights on Hanukkah that "even if one has no food to eat except what he receives from charity, one should beg - or sell his garments to buy - oil and lamps, and light them.184" The question arises, however, when someone finds him- or herself with only enough oil for one light on Friday afternoon. Should one light it as a Hanukkah candle or as a Shabbat light? Maimonides rules as follows:
If such a poor man needs oil for both a Shabbat lamp and a Hanukkah lamp . . . the Shabbat lamp takes priority, for the sake of peace in the home, seeing that even a Divine name may be erased to make peace between husband and wife. Great is peace, for the whole purpose of the Torah is to bring peace to the world, as it is said (Prov. 3:17): "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." [107] 185
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