Vayigash 2023
Over the past five years and especially since October 7th, antisemitic acts have been on a sudden and jarring rise, and Kesher Israel has been no exception. The number of incidents at Shul, whether people driving by and yelling “Heil Hitler,” or nearby graffiti about the situation in Israel, has risen in recent months. This past Sunday, as you know, Kesher Israel faced an antisemetic incident that was more significant and scarier than in the past.
Each Sunday morning after davening, we serve breakfast and I teach a class on Chasidut pertaining to the weekly Torah portion. The class had ended and only myself and a few others were in Shul, when a man drove a rented van onto the sidewalk up to the doors of the Shul, got out and began spraying a foul smelling spray, yelling “Gas the Jews!” Of course we were scared that, God forbid, the van could be filled with explosives. We left out the back door and called the police. Thank God, there was nothing in the van, and though some congregants were shaken up, no one was injured.
On the bright side, the immense media attention following the incident highlighted the antisemitism which synagogues face and the need for increased funding for security. On the other hand, it brought home for us that the zeitgeist has changed. From Harvard Yard to Georgetown, people are calling for the death of Jews. The seemingly sudden change in perspective regarding what is “acceptable” behavior toward the Jewish people leaves us with cultural whiplash, feeling a bit less safe, and more anxious than before. If 20 years ago someone had said that in 20 years, Jews would not enter a Shul without armed guards, we would have thought them mad and labeled them paranoid.
Last week, I was meeting at Kesher with the Georgetown clergy as part of our periodic Georgetown Clergy meeting. This was the first time we had met since October 7th. The first thing they did was to all turn to me and ask how we at Kesher Israel are doing. I explained to them how Jews feel at this moment. I imagined that in their eyes, Jews are powerful, privileged and relatively wealthy, and so I found myself prefacing my words with, “I know this sounds crazy,” but Jews are genuinely scared. We are thinking about who can protect us, and whether we will have to run. I told them that all through history, things have dramatically gone up and down for the Jews, life was good in medieval Spain until it was not, so too in 20th century Germany, and England in the 13th century, Iraq in the 19th century, Morocco in the time of Maimonides, and so on.
In our current parshiot, the Torah documents the first time the Jewish people went from a high to a low, from a place of status to a place of persecution in the blink of an eye. From Joseph being the second to Pharaoh, and his vital economic advisor, saving Egypt itself, to “the king who did not know Joseph.” The Pharaoh who somehow could not remember what he owed to Jewish loyalty, Jewish intellect and world saving Jewish innovation. Ultimately, the Jewish people suffered and eventually had to leave Egypt and go to Israel. Pretty familiar stuff.
I think, like all of us, I am of two minds. I believe that America is different, that the government is not persecuting us and that the Constitution and our system of democratic government can protect us. And yet, I can hear the voice of my day school Rabbi echoing in my mind, “halacha Esau soneh es Yaacov! It is a natural law that Esau hates Jacob and will persecute him throughout history. Yes, it can happen here.”
Like many of us, I worry that one day there will be an American president, educated on today's Ivy League campuses, who does not remember Joseph. Does not remember how weak Israel once was and only knows Israel in the trompe l'oeil picture painted by its haters, a country of the strong and privileged persecuting the poor underdog. A picture which ignores Israeli diversity and history, its status as a sovereign country, and judges it based on a glaring and untrue double standard; ignores an Israel which tries hard not to target the innocent; an Israel which represents the remnant of a middle east once teeming with communities of Torah for 1000 years and now cleansed of Jews, save for one place: between the river and the sea.
