In this week’s Torah portion, Miketz, Joseph becomes the second-in-command to Pharaoh and, utilizing his power, saves the Levant from famine. Pharaoh honors Joseph, promotes him to second-in-command, and things are wonderful in Egypt for the Children of Israel. But we, the readers of the Torah, know that two parshiot later a new king will arise who did not know Joseph and will enslave the Israelites and make a decree to kill them. Pharaoh will declare, “Let us be wise, lest they multiply, and when we get into a war they will join our enemies and fight against us and leave the land.”
The Jews are so loyal, so helpful to Egypt, such a part of society. What prompts this Pharaoh to suddenly fear the Jewish people and invent a conspiracy theory that the Jews, when push comes to shove, will not be loyal and will overthrow the Egyptian people and their sovereign? Is the Torah teaching us that, ultimately, Jew-hatred is a fact of history, a natural progression, and there is no way to avoid it? Is there some lesson here for us? Some hint at how to avoid this cataclysm again in history? These questions, of course, are all too real for us this week after the shooting of Jews at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney, an act that leaves us horrified but not surprised.
Jewish thinkers throughout history have tried to understand the consistently recurring antisemitism perpetrated against us in every generation. According to the Talmud, the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt was a punishment for the sins Abraham committed, such as questioning God’s promise that he would give Abraham the Land of Israel. Rabbi Chasdai Creskas disagreed and suggested instead that the purpose of the Egyptian exile, and by extension Jewish suffering generally, is not punishment for sin but “a process which prepares the hearts of the Israelites to receive the Torah and teaches about God’s providence.”
The Abarbanel rejected Rabbi Crescas’ explanation, citing the biblical statement that we all are punished only for our own sins, not those of our ancestors, and the idea that the exile was a preparation to receive the Torah and to acquire true faith is untrue. In fact, just the opposite was the case; the physical labor in Egypt inclined them toward physicality, saying, “Who will give us meat?”
So if antisemitism is not a punishment for sin and not some pain of love to prepare us for greater achievements, then what is it all about? Why are the Chosen People a constant target for the world’s hatred and violence?
Perhaps the Jewish people are such a unique entity that we hold up a mirror to the world. Everyone either wants to supplant us or to rid the world of us, and sometimes both. The Jew is enigmatic. We are the image of everyone’s sins; for Americans, we are racists, and for Europeans, we are colonizers. We are vermin and we are the puppet masters. We are the capitalists and the socialists, the universalists and the particularists, the right and the left. All roads to hatred end with us.
The Talmud (Kiddushin 70a) teaches that anyone who invalidates others is really projecting their own blemish, their own flaw and sin. Perhaps antisemitism is a way of diagnosing the flaws, terrors and sins of our world. As the Chosen People, though, we must not be satisfied with being chosen as the target of degradation and violence—we must respond as a kingdom of priests, holding up an additional mirror, a constructive mirror, for humanity to recognize its shortcomings and work to change them. Antisemitism means that we have an obligation to lead the world on a path out of its dung heap of hatred and darkness to a time of greater light. This Chanukah, may God give us the strength to lead the way.