The Hate that Starts
With the Jews
Rafael Medoff’s article, “The Bibas Deniers” (March 28) deals with the beastly murder of the Bibas babies as one example of the world’s hate for Israel and the Jews. I would like to expand on that thought here, bearing in mind what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said in 2016, “The hate that starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.”
Jew-hatred has been a constant factor for millenia in much of the Western world. Jews have always been a separate and distinctive people, not willing to adapt to the religion and culture of their host countries. They are the perennial outsiders and since they were always a small percentage of the population, and mostly defenseless, they were always convenient scapegoats who have constantly been accused of any and all problems in the societies they inhabit, and thus bore the brunt of hatred, ostracism, and death.
During the Crusades, between the 11th and 13th centuries, when the Crusaders were marching to “liberate” the Holy Land from Islamic rule, along the way they savagely massacred tens of thousands of Jews who had nothing to do with their mission. During the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century Jews were accused of poisoning the wells of their Christian neighbors even though the real cause was mice fleas. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period of great social and political unrest, the deadly pogroms in Russia and Poland were the order of the day where 100,000 Jews were estimated to have been wantonly killed, only because they were Jews. In 1939 the Nazis singled out the Jews for extermination even though their main goal was European domination. And in the Middle East, every single Arab/Muslim nation has completed the work that Hitler started, and they have completely cleansed their lands of Jews. The Mideast, outside of Israel, still remains almost entirely Judenfrei.
Today, much of the world, instigated by Islamic forces and aided by Russia and Iran, are in a concerted effort to destroy Israel even though the real goal is to destroy America and all of Western civilization, to be replaced by Islamic-ruled regimes.
I humbly submit that Rabbi Sacks’s statement should be modified somewhat to:
“The hate that starts with the Jews is never about the Jews.”
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
The Seder –
Yesterday & Today
The wonderful Is It Proper feature in the Pesach issue (April 11) asks if it is proper to incorporate current events into the seder.
It’s up to the parents and grandparents to conduct the seder according to their families’ liking and in a way that will keep everyone engaged. Anyone involved in chinuch understands that texts are not meaningful in and of themselves. Students must hear about how the issues of yesterday still matter. And relating them to the issues of today gives them relevance, and deepens our understanding of the way that we live in the world, and connects it to how our ancestors lived. This connection, properly made, shows that in many ways we are still fighting for our freedom.
Raquel Hanon
Via email
