If #NeverAgainIsNOW, then the time is now for deep Jewish introspection.
Outside of Israel, our anxiety-fueled paralysis only escalates along with the hatred towards us on all sides. Meanwhile, the majority of our leadership has fallen silent – aside from the occasional condemnation and the feel-good, easy wins.
Jewish survival, emancipation, and prosperity were not built upon easy wins. It did not feel good. The evacuation boats, the hiding, the begging for immigration papers, the name changes, the blood, sweat, and the tears, all drove us towards today’s luxury existence that is once again being shaken up by the brutal nature of reality.
A significant proportion of worldwide Jewish resources are put toward issues with an external focus. The antisemitism watch, the lawfare, lobbying, and the Israel advocacy, to name but a few.
However, whether as an individual or as a nation, I believe that problems are rarely ever solved with an external focus. If the problem affects you, then it is yours, so the focus must be internal. If a boat is sinking, the problem is not the ocean water, but the hole in the fabric of the boat.
If world media – political Left and Right, Christians and Muslims – are all focused on the Jewish people, it must mean that internally, we possess something worth focusing on.
So what are we missing?
Our various enemies, whether gay or Islamist, strangely all have a uniting north star, be that “globalize the intifada” or “take down the capitalist system.” Whatever it may be, it is clear that hatred and resentment are extremely unifying.
As the Jewish people, what unifies us? Shared trauma and relatable stories of our family’s exile?
We are seeing the results of over 2,000 years of division, persecution, and galut (exile) replacing our true identity. Combating antisemitism and Jewish geography cannot be all that brings us together. Nor is “standing with Israel” – as a Jew, you don’t “stand with Israel” – you are Israel. So it’s time we start living it.
Today, only 35% of Jews in America aged 18-34 identify as Zionist, and a shocking 70% of non-Orthodox Jews in America marry outside of the tribe.
These alarming facts are undoubtedly the product of an identity built upon generational pain and the necessity to escape it. It makes perfect sense how we’ve ended up here; it was almost inevitable, but it is perilously unsustainable, and together we must demand better for our future.
The hard truth is that the nations will never love us, never accept us as one of them, and they will never accept us even as just another nation. So it’s time to release our painful attachment to how they view us, and to turn our focus inwards towards understanding who we are as the Jewish people. They don’t hate us because they ain’t us; they hate us because we ain’t us.
The kid who arrives at school visibly desperate to make new friends will find few. The kid exuding self-confidence, strength, and pride will not need to look for friends at all.
In this way, our greatness should speak for itself.
Dangerous potential
Being Jewish means that you are chosen. Not superior to others, but that you possess great responsibility. Whatever your level of observance, as Jews, we all share something far deeper than somebody else’s definition of religiosity, and something far more powerful than the lashes of our turbulent history.
In Jewish teaching, individuals are seen as vessels for the divine.
I compare the Jewish people to a vessel transporting gold bars across the ocean. If we, as the vessel, separate, become divided from our purpose and begin to sink, then what went wrong? However evident it may seem that the flooding water is the deadly threat, it is our vessel that is failing.
The dangerous potential of water is well understood; it remains constant. However, the water only becomes a problem if the vessel begins to fail. Our vessel of Jewish identity, unity, and divine purpose is covered in holes, fractured, and we are focusing outwards, frantically attacking the ocean.
Many Jews today are more familiar with Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens and their hatred than Eliezer Ben-Yehuda or Shimon Bar Kokhba and the greatness of our heroes. Many of us have visited Auschwitz more than we have breathed in Jerusalem.
We say #NeverAgain in hope and sorrow more than we say Shema Yisrael out of belief and pride.
If we want to return to our greatness, if we, the Jewish people, want peace, then we must have strength. King David gave us this wisdom over 3,000 years ago: “God will give us strength. God will bless us with peace” (Psalm 29).
From this, we must remember that peace is a fleeting blessing, and that strength is our responsibility to protect all that matters: our children, our family, our community, and the truth.
Jewish values (aka the Torah) are the foundation of every society we call civilized today.
We must stop fearing what we possess within and face it head-on. If we stay disconnected from our responsibility as a nation, disconnected from what makes us just as great as we are hated, then we will have a very troubled future.
The most important questions to ask are often the most uncomfortable and difficult to answer. The hardest conversation you will ever need to have is with yourself.
“Pain in all walks of life is unavoidable. But the pain that we create by trying to avoid pain is avoidable.” – RD Laing.
Now it’s time for us to come together as an international community. If #NeverAgain really is now, then as Hillel said, “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?”
The writer is the founder of Peace Through Strength, a brand new network uniting the Jewish community to operate together through one ecosystem. Having previously volunteered as a Krav Maga instructor, Birthright Israel guide, and in Jewish community security, he made aliyah and left behind his career in construction management to pursue his dream: to transform what is fragmented Jewish strength into a connected international movement. Wherever you are in the world, take part in forging the future of strong Jewish leadership with Peace Through Strength. www.peacethroughstrength.global