We came together. We gave voice to the belief that We are One. One people in covenant with One God. Ultimately, that is the promise of our history. That is the power of our destiny. We may disagree – passionately – but when push has come to shove, we have stood as one community, united before God and our forebears. We are all interconnected with yesteryears, bound and committed to Mesorat Yisrael.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks teaches that “…despite Judaism’s emphasis on the individual, it has a distinctive sense of what an individual is. We are not alone. There is no sense in Judaism of the atomic individual – the self in and for itself…. Instead, our identity is bound up horizontally with other individuals: our parents, spouse, children, neighbors, members of the community, fellow citizens, fellow Jews…. To be a Jew is to be a link in the chain of the generations, a character in the drama that began long before we were born and will continue long after our death.”
It is imperative that we know our history. Otherwise, our lives lose their meaning. Knowing our history means our lives are not part of a long span of meaningless, ticking seconds. We are part of time filled with events and meaning, eras and epochs: Avot, Galut, Mitzrayim, Geulah, Midbar, the conquest of Eretz Yisrael, Shoftim, Melachim. Discrete eras; connected but unique and different.
Not long before leaving this world, Moshe Rabbeinu said, “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.”
Moshe Rabbeinu demanded that we know our history. How does one fulfill the obligation of Pesach – “In every generation, every person should see himself as if he personally came out of Egypt” – if one does not know his history? Once I was a slave. Now I am free.
And yet we live in a time when whole Jewish communities turn their backs to our history. During the last seventy years – seventy years, not ancient history – we Jews have experienced two monumental historical events – events unprecedented in our history. Without wrestling with these two events, it is impossible to live as an enlightened Jew; it is impossible to live in the penumbra of God’s miracle.
The Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel are seminal events. In Rabbi Berel Wein’s words, “these two cataclysmic events changed Jewish society radically if not even permanently.”
[Editor’s note: Rabbi Wein’s op-ed on the subject appears on page 8.]
But for a large segment of the Orthodox community, these events are not in any way recognized, commemorated or acknowledged.
A cynic was asked why Jewish history is not studied in yeshivas and haredi circles. He shrugged and answered, “That way they can write their own.” But fabricating one’s own version of history does not change the reality. The Haggadah clearly delineates the bitter galut we endured, but then demands that we sing the Hallel, recognizing that we were rescued from that galut and crossed the Yam Suf. Galut ended. Geulah arrived.
In our own time, when the gates of Auschwitz were closed, the gates of Haifa opened.
Ignoring these two major events of our collective Jewish history because they don’t fit into some historical lexicon or theological dictionary is simply absurd. The God of Galut is the God of Geulah. It cannot be otherwise.
Denying God’s gift to us, challenging it because many of Israel’s founders were non- religious, characterizing the state with ugly obscenities, does not diminish its ultimate value and certainly does not excuse our not praying for its well-being every minute of every day of our lives.
