Will antisemitism ever go away?
2nd day RH sermon 2024
As we say goodbye to 5784 and look forward to 5785, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the single greatest accomplishment of this past year. The Florida Panthers won the Stanley Cup. Shehecheyanu vekamanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh.
I have a message to share with you today but first I want to make the parameters perfectly clear. I will not tell you what you must do. You are all adults and can and will make your own decisions; take your own course of action or no action. My job, as I see it, is to give you knowledge and insight so that you can make your best decision.
I chose to talk to you about today’s subject in part, because of what we read in our Torah reading today.
My subject is antisemitism, and on this subject there is no shortage of data, opinions, history and anecdotes.
What is in short supply is a consensus of why it is the oldest form of hate and prejudice against a people who consist of all races and many nationalities.
I believe the rainbow is a better stand in for the many colors of Jews, than any other graphic and why Bibi’s speech to Congress in July had a stroke of genius when he chose to introduce wounded soldiers of the IDF, and the first was a black Jew from Ethiopia.
That should have been enough to silence the Gaza protesters who accuse Zionists of being white colonial oppressors, but of course it didn’t register a blip on their ignorant radar because there is no rational argument when it comes to antisemitism.
We Jews have suffered so much at the hands of those who would deny us the freedom to be ourselves, that a Jewish proverb asserts that an anti-Semite is one who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary.
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel remarked: The world is divided into two groups of nations -those that want to expel the Jews and those that do not want to receive them.
There is an apocryphal tale about a few months after the end of World War One. The premier of Poland had a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. He said, “if you don’t meet our nation’s demands at the peace conference, I foresee great troubles ahead. The Polish people will be very angry, and they’ll go out and massacre the Jews.”
“And if your demands are met?” asked Wilson
“In that case,” responded the premier, “my people will be delighted. They’ll go out in the streets and get drunk-and then they’ll massacre the Jews:’
So where does antisemitism come from and why is it so persistent?
Let’s start with today’s Torah reading, the Akeda the binding of Isaac.
You know the outline of the story. God wants to test Abraham and so He asks him to sacrifice his one official son to God. Abraham agrees and goes to the top of Mount Moriah where Isaac is bound, and as Abraham is about to bring the knife down an angel stops him and a ram is sacrificed in his place.
This tale is ostensibly told to show the full love and devotion that Abraham has for God and lays the foundation for Abraham and his descendants to be God’s chosen.
In other words, we earned being God’s chosen people over all other people in the world, because we were willing to sacrifice everything for God.
That works until it doesn’t.
In the first century of the Common Era, a new religion is born that wants the pagan world to convert to it, but it needs to find a way to explain how the Jews are no longer God’s chosen and the new upstart is now the chosen.
The new religion will be followers of Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah; and now the Christians retell the Akeda story. This time it is not God’s favorite who is willing to sacrifice his one and only son to earn God’s choseness; it is God Himself who is sacrificing His one and only son as a sign of His love for human beings.
All the pieces of the Akeda are present in this retelling, but the Jews are no longer the chosen. They go from being the saved, to being the Christ killers. The old covenant is torn up and the new covenant is given to all those who accept God’s sacrifice. Since Jews did not accept it, they are now not God’s chosen but God’s cursed.
If you are a Christian, you now have your first reason to hate Jews. They are Christ killers, they rejected God’s gift, they don’t deserve to exist.
Welcome to Reason One, for why many Christians became Anti-Semitic.
Five hundred years later another line of our cousins appears on the world stage. These are people who are descendants of Abraham as well, but their line was started by the less than full son of Abraham. There is no akeda, no binding story of that son, just the expulsion of that boy and his mother by Abraham at the behest of his wife Sarah to protect the real heir, Isaac.
Nevertheless, God promises a future for that boy Ishmael and his descendants, who will also become a mighty nation.
Out of Arabia comes that people led by Mohamed and the teachings of the Koran; which promises them that they will have Dominion over all the others in the world.
As the Moslem world expands and captures many lands, they have a different view of Jews than the Christians do.
Jews are not to be hated because we did something to Ishmael or his later descendants, and Jews are treated much better than the Christians treated us for most of the last 1400 years but there was a price. The price was to be subservient to the Moslems.
If Dara Horn is correct that “People like Dead Jews”, and those “people” are Christians; then her next book can be, “Moslems Like Subservient Jews”.
That is why religious extremist Muslims can’t tolerate a Jewish Israel. Only a Satanic force could have allowed a strong independent Israel in defiance of Allah’s promise.
We now have a reason for Muslim antisemitism.
But as the huckster on the info commercials say, “ But wait there is more”.
Indeed, there is a lot more in the development of antisemitism.
The medieval church teaches that the Jews killed Jesus. They preach it regularly and especially before Easter when in every sermon Jews rejected Jesus and then gave him over to the Romans to be killed.
Easter is Pesach time and that is why Passover was a dangerous time to be a Jew. But that is seasonal antisemitism, how about the daily experiences between Christians and Jews?
In the Middle Ages, Jews are heavily restricted in where they could live and what work they could do.
How does the peasant encounter the Jew beyond that he is different from them, and they have rejected his God?
The Jew is the money lender because Christians can’t loan money with interest and who will loan money without it? No one, but the Jews did loan money to gentiles with interest.
The Jew for a fee, receives the toll bridge concession from the nobleman, because it is one of the few things he can do when he can’t own land or work in the craft guilds.
The Jew owns the tavern and sells booze to the population and has to collect the bar tabs.
Many noblemen can’t use up all the wheat that their serfs raise for them, so the Jew distills the extra grain, and the nobleman demands that the serfs buy up the extra whiskey. Who do they buy it from?
The Jews.
For poor serfs, their economic interactions with Jews may be even more infuriating than their theology.
Now let me introduce you to a Jew you may have heard of. His name is Sigmund Freud.
He wrote a book called Moses and Monotheism.
His thesis is that the world was given its moral code at Mt. Sinai. It was called the 10 commandments. It has many commandments that the average person follows but hates. Why is he deprived from committing adultery, or coveting or killing, and worse if he does break these laws, why does he feel guilty?
Freud argued that western morality led to guilt in the population and the source for that guilt was Moses who was ….(everybody) …a Jew.
To Christians, Jews make them feel guilty for everything, so they hate the Jews.
Another reason for their hate is jealousy that Jews are successful. Whatever opportunities they are given they overachieve.
This summer before Kamala Harris picked her VP choice, of the top 8 candidates, 3 were Jewish. Shapiro, Pritzker and Polis.
The current highest-ranking US senator Chuck Shumer, is a Jew.
There are so many Jewish doctors and lawyers and judges and billionaires, way past our proportional numbers in the population.
Even in the NHL this past season there were more than 10 Jews playing and 2 of them were graduates of Jewish Day schools. Of course, those 2 are Canadians.
But Jewish success is anathema to the antisemite.
To them success is a zero-sum game. If you make it big you probably did it by taking away a position that a Christian would have gotten.
Worse you only got to your success because of a worldwide Cabal that is run by Jews who want to take over the world.
The Rothschilds are still a stand in for the gospel of the world plot to run the world by Jews called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. In the United States it was published and distributed by no less than Henry Ford.
Now we have space lasers to control the world.
If we are supposed to be shunned by God, how is it that we are so successful?
Hard work and discipline?
Of course not.
We cheat!
We have a worldwide conspiracy to take over the world.
That is why in the 1930’s Jews were accused of being Communists by the Germans and of being Nazis by the Russians.
My thesis is that antisemitism began with a change of theology, and mutated into an irrational hate, jealousy, and fear; and it is not going away.
Like a viral disease it may remain dormant for a time, but it is always alive and will emerge when the environment is suitable for it to grow and spread.
One more modern development in antisemitism in our time. You have all heard about or experienced holocaust denial?
By forgetting the Holocaust and pretending it never happened, anti-Semites can return to their “blessed” normalcy of anti-Semitism and perceive once again that the world owes the Jews nothing.
So, what can we do about it?
Growing up I used to hear that the cure to antisemitism was education.
“If only these antisemites were more educated, they would see the absurdity of the hate and stop doing it”.
Really?
When Hitler got going with his antisemitic laws, he was leading the most educated and cultured country in the world.
Overnight great Jewish scholars were kicked out of their faculty positions by their colleagues at some of the top German Universities. Jewish judges were taken off their benches, doctors lost privileges at hospitals, and almost no one stood up for them from their professional colleagues.
As it turned out it was good that Jewish physicists were thrown out. They ended up helping the US to make the bomb and end the war.
But our own country was not exempt.
Harvard was infamous for the quotas that they implemented to make sure the student body was not too Jewish. This policy was tolerated by the scholars of Harvard.
So, it is not a matter of education.
Look at this past spring’s encampments on Harvard and at Columbia. They were not just inhabited by ignorant Ivy League students but supported and encouraged by tenured professors who in some cases in October already criticized Israel and praised Hamas.
The antidote to rising antisemitism is not education. Or more correctly not just education. Smart educated people are also prone to the infection.
So, what can we do?
Since the mid to late 1800’s there was an answer that some Jews had. It was called Zionism.
Herzl, an assimilated Viennese Jewish reporter witnessed the frenzied French mob outside the Dreyfuss trial courthouse yelling “Kill the Jews” and realized that if in progressive France, Jews were not safe, they could only be safe in their own country.
His dreams came true and in 1948, 3 years after the holocaust, the Jewish state was born, but Jews in Israel were not safe.
Yes, they won the war of liberation, or as it would have been called, the war of annihilation if the invading Arab armies had succeeded, but were they safe?
In 1956 the Suez crisis started a war.
In 1967 the Six Day War brought a miraculous victory, but it could have, and many feared it would be another war of annihilation.
In 1973 another war with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Israel won but as they say, the Arabs can lose many wars, but they only have to win 1. Israel cannot afford to lose 1 or it’s all over.
In 1976 the PLO hijacked a plane and landed in Entebbe. All non-Israelis and non-Jews were let go but all Israelis were kept hostage.
The intifadas killed well over one thousand Israeli civilians. There were the wars in Lebanon because Israelis in the North were not safe in their homes.
The only team in the Olympics to ever be captured and held hostage by terrorists was the Israeli team.
On October 7, 2023, 1200 Israelis were killed in an invasion by a Hamas force that was then in a ceasefire arrangement with Israel.
Can it not be argued that the most dangerous place for Jews to live is in Israel?
Can we still hold on to the belief that if things go south for the Jews in America, then we have a refuge to run to?
Maybe, but it does not matter.
More Jews live in Israel then in any other country in the world so for their sakes and ours we must support Israel in every way possible.
We have the possibility, God forbid, of losing Israel for the 3rd time in our history, and if that happened, I don’t think the Jewish people will survive.
So, we first must wake our own people up. No Jew can feel safe anywhere, so we need all of us rowing together in the same direction.
We don’t have the luxury of Jewish groups like, If Not Now or Jews for Palestine. History teaches us that when they come for the Jews they won’t ask, “what side were you on during the Gaza war?”
Alan Dershowitz in the book Stars of David, said to the author Abigail Pogrebin,
“Columbia University asked me a few years ago to come and speak because the Jews were not identifying as Jews, at Columbia of all places”.
I said, “I can’t do it in the next month, but call me back in two months. They called me back and said, “We don’t need you anymore; we got somebody better who came and really organized the Jewish community together:….Louis Farrakhan. When he came to speak, everybody remembered they were Jewish.
SO, EVERYONE WAKE UP, JEWS ARE NOT SAFE IN THIS WORLD AND WON’T BE IN THIS COUNTRY IF WE DO NOT ACT.
So here are some ways to act, and you may not agree with them all, which is why we have a Yom Tov lunch today so you can argue about this.
This past year has shown us how much Israel is dependent on the support and good will of the United States. Do not take it for granted. We need to activate politically and financially and elect good people from both parties to represent us in Washington. We need people who won’t just support Israel for this cycle, but people who truly believe it is in America’s interest to have a vibrant Democratic Jewish State.
We need to support in every way possible, organizations that have influence and access to the leadership in Washington. Groups like AIPAC.
We need to support groups like ADL who point out antisemitism in our country and can influence the powerful to help fight it.
By the way, did you know that as the Times of Israel reported, “Wikipedia’s editors have voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League ‘generally unreliable’ on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, adding the ADL to a list of banned and partially banned sources, and that an overwhelming majority of editors involved in the debate about the ADL also voted to deem the organization unreliable on the topic of antisemitism, its core focus.”
We need to elect judges who will enforce the protections granted us in the Constitution. We need to elect politicians who will approve the appointments of such judges. The fact that I have to say something that we use to take for granted is a sign of how vulnerable we are becoming.
We must be active in elections to vote out antisemites, racists, Christian nationalists, fascists, and all who would take away guarantees of our freedoms. Freedoms that have long been the terra firma that we have walked on in our lifetimes.
If someone comes to take away black rights, or gay rights, be certain that they will also take away Jewish rights. Hatred knows no limits and the more it is fed, the hungrier it becomes.
We must seek out pro-Jewish and especially pro-Israeli candidates from all parties and put them in a place to do good for us and all minorities.
And this may be the most important thing that we can do. We must see to it that our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are given good reasons to be proud committed involved Jews, because otherwise why would they ever put up with all this?
A demoralized uninvolved uncaring alienated generation of Jews might be the greatest challenge of all to Jewish survival.
Finally, one more suggestion.
I talked about this over 40 years ago when we had race riots in South Florida and antisemitic vandalism, including painting a swastika on the western outside wall of this shule on Rosh Hashana day. If you are scared for your safety and the safety of your family, be proactive and do something about it.
I want to end with a prayer Rabbi Naomi Levy wrote for
When One Experiences An Antisemitic Incident
“I am frightened, God, angry, in disbelief. I never imagined this would happen to me, that anyone would target me for being a Jew. I am deeply shaken by the rise of antisemitism in this country and throughout this world. I don’t want to ignore this incident, nor do I want to overreact, so that I am suspicious of every new encounter. Show me, God, how to not live in fear, remind me that I am not alone. Give me the courage to speak up and speak out, to seek help from those who stand with me and from organizations that will defend my people and all people. Fill me with the determination to join hands with Jews and non-Jews across the globe to put an end to antisemitism and all prejudice wherever it lies. I pray for the day when people will learn to see one another through Your eyes, God. In Your eyes all people are equally loved, equally precious. I will not hide who I am, I refuse to cower in fear. I will not lose my faith in human goodness. Fill me with the strength, God, to turn my despair into hope and my rage into calm, thoughtful action. Grant me the wisdom to transform this act of hate into a deeper commitment to my people and my faith. God, my Shelter, Guardian of Israel, teach me to see that the sacred flame of my ancestors burns brightly within me. I am grateful to be part of a holy and blessed people who have withstood and survived centuries of hate — and still we spread Your light and still we thrive!
Am Yisrael Chai!
Bless Israel God, bless our people, bless this world with peace.
Amen
I am continuing my book tour this fall and winter in support of my book, “Wisdom Grows in My Garden” .Here is the current list of where I will be speaking. I will post more information for each event as we approach the dates.
Oct 20 in the evening at Valencia Palms
Oct 27 Boynton at Temple Torat Emet, 9.30am
Dec 20 Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center Boca Raton lunch and talk
Jan 5 B’nai Aviv Weston
Jan 12 Atlanta Beth Shalom breakfast and talk
Jan 14 Atlanta B’nai Torah at noon
Feb 2 Beth El Boca Raton
Feb 3 Valencia Bay
Feb 6 Wynmor
Mar 6–9 Jacksonville Jewish Center Scholar in Residence weekend