Anti-Semitism and Zionism

The ugly duckling's life is deeply affected by his encounter with anti-Semitism.  And indeed, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are very basic components of our identity.  For many of our brethren, this is the starting point of Jewish and Zionist awareness.  Must this be the case?  We must answer in the negative, and emphasize that this popular position expresses only a partial truth, and therefore is erroneous, even damaging.

     The picture must be complete.  We will attempt to reconstruct it using the concepts established by Rabbi Soloveitchik in his seminal work, "Kol Dodi Dofek."

     Rabbi Soloveitchik's Weltanschauung contains a wonderful synthesis of classical Jewish thought and modern, particularly existentialist, philosophy.  "Kol Dodi Dofek" is a summary of Rabbi Soloveitchik's approach to contemporary history.  The work itself is divided into two parts.  The first part is a direct analysis of the events that led to the establishment of the state of Israel.  The second part contains a more general analysis of Jewish history.

     "Kol Dodi Dofek" is written in a unique style.  Rabbi Soloveitchik uses biblical characters who actually represent various contemporary Jewish characters.  It is in a way a continuation of classical Midrashic literature.  The Scriptures are a source of inspiration that help us relate to the world around us, but also provide a framework and create a terminology for use in expression of our responses to our experience of the world.

     The ugly duckling faces the problem of his identity.  Rabbi Soloveitchik points out a biblical character who faces the same situation:

"And they cast lots and the lot fell upon Yona.  And they said to him, please tell us for whom has this evil befallen us, what is your trade and from where have you come, what is your country and of what nation are you? And he said to them, I am a Hebrew and I fear the God of the heavens, who created the sea and the land." (Yona 1:8-10)

     Rabbi Soloveitchik sees in Yona the Jew who is faced with the question of his identity.  Yona is the Jew trying to run away from God, trying to escape his fate, and be "swallowed up in a different reality outside of it," but he cannot.  The storm brings him back.  The storm is anti-Semitism.

     Yona is commanded to identify himself, to recognize his Jewish identity.  He must decide about his future.  The modern Jewish reality in which we live is the result of the coalescence of two similar decisions.  These decisions are expressions of two covenants that have been with us since the birth of the Jewish people: the Covenant of Egypt, "and I will take you to be My nation and I will be your God," and the Covenant of Sinai, "and he took the Book of the Covenant...and he said here is the blood of the Covenant which God has established with you..."  These are the two covenants that match two types of reality, both in the individual and in the nation.  The first is a covenant established in the wake of a new reality that is beyond man's control: "the Covenant of Fate."  The second is established out of desire and choice: "the Covenant of Destiny."

The Covenant of Fate

What is the meaning of this sense of loneliness? Yona experienced what the Maharal writes of the Jewish fate.  Thus, Rabbi Soloveitchik writes:

This sense of a fate-laden existence of necessity gives rise to the historical loneliness of the Jew. He is alone both in life and death.  The concept of a Jewish burial-plot emphasizes the Jew's strange isolation from the world.  Let the sociologists and psychologists say what they may about the incomprehensible alienation of the Jew.  All their explanations are naught but vain and empty speculations which do not shed any intelligible light on this phenomenon.  Jewish loneliness belongs to, is part of, the framework of the covenant of fate that was made in Egypt.  In truth, Judaism and separation from the world are identical ideas.  Even before the exile in Egypt, with the appearance of the first Jew – our father, Abraham – loneliness entered our world.  Abraham was lonely.  He was called Abraham the Hebrew, Avraham ha-Ivri, for "all the world was to one side (ever echad) while he was to one side (ever echad)" (Bereishit Rabba 42:8).  When Balaam saw the Jewish people dwelling tribe by tribe, he apprehended the mystery of the solitary mode of Jewish existence and proclaimed in a state of amazement: "Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations" (Bamidmar 23:9).  Even if a person achieves the pinnacle of social or political success, he will still not be able to free himself from the chains of isolation. 

[From the translation of the Hebrew by Lawrence Kaplan.]

Jewish history is a mystery.  The explanations of the unique Jewish experience of loneliness are, in the final analysis, useless.  Nevertheless, let us indulge in a little such analysis with psychologists and sociologists.  We have much to learn from them, although the problem itself will remain unsolved.     

Translated by Gila Weinberg