A World Without Jews

Since the dawn of the Christian era, and many would argue well before that, a large part of the Western World determined that Judaism and Jews embodied irredeemable evil. This from the people who gave them the values that constitute the foundation of religious belief in Western civilization. Values like “Love your neighbor as yourself “ and “Be kind to the neighbor in your midst.”

Let us put aside any argument for the benefit of Jews for society, which Jew-haters would never acknowledge anyway. Not the Nobel Prizes—Jews were awarded 216 as of 2023, 22% of the total—not the wealth creation and philanthropy, not the professional services like doctors and medical research.

Instead, let us imagine the Jew-haters’ dream fulfilled: a world without Jews.

First, there would be tears from some. After all, as Dara Horn pointed out, the world likes dead Jews. Then, what? Does anyone believe that the Middle East would become an oasis of peace and tranquility? That the Sunni would lie down with the Shia, with apologies to Isaiah? That prosperity, human rights and respect for women would blossom? That Iran would cease its attempt to impose itself on the entire Muslim world? Or would the absence of Jews in Israel only yield yet another dysfunctional, corrupt dictatorship and more rivalries?

Widen the scope of this exercise of the imagination and consider Europe, which actually did murder most of its Jews, leaving a remnant that is under constant assault. If the tiny number of Jews was no longer there, how exactly would Europe’s problems with Russian aggression, economic challenges, and the evisceration of NATO by the U.S. be resolved?

The world today is becoming another battleground as America becomes isolationist, and Pax Americana disappears. After the Second World War, America helped stabilize the nations of the world and another world war has been averted for 80 years. Now, Iran, China, Russia and North Korea constitute an alternative to American hegemony. The one and only state standing in the way of their ascendency is Israel. If the Jewish state did not exist—and Iran is working feverishly to accomplish that goal—then there would be no bulwark against an inevitable conflict between the West and its determined enemies. In this case, the loss of the Jewish state would not result in an improvement in the world, as Jew-haters would have it, or even a return to the status quo. It would herald a serious deterioration of global stability. This is one case where the absence of Jews would have a catastrophic negative effect.

Again, widening our horizon, it needs to be pointed out that Africa is ablaze with conflicts. Does anyone know or care? There are over 30 raging conflicts in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Burkina Faso and Congo to name a few. There has been a Sudanese civil war since 2023. Tens of thousands have died, countless numbers have been dislocated, misery reigns. Where are the campus protests? Where are the world’s newspapers and TV cameras? What sordid, perverted Jew-hating media focuses most of its resources on Israel and neglects an entire continent in turmoil? Would a single one of these wars end if there were no Jews, no Israel?

Judaism is a test that the world fails. The test has three components: historical, material and moral.

History does teach for those who want to learn. One of the lessons is that there is no such entity as a permanent empire. Every empire collapses and disappears. All conflict, where one country or group attempts to overtake another, is folly and absurd in the eyes of history. The empires of the past that defeated ancient Israel are all gone and the current attempt to destroy Israel would yield the exact same result. Attempting to destroy Israel today would be the beginning of the destruction of the destroyer.

The material failure is blindness to the unique importance of Judaism to the world. Paul Johnson, a Catholic historian, writes that the Jews were the first to “create sequential, substantial and interpretive history” and ancient Jewish literature is “the verbal presentation of the human personality in all its range and complexity.” Thomas Cahill is another Catholic, whose book “The Gifts of the Jews” enumerates the many ways that the Jews have contributed to civilization over the course of thousands of years.

The material failure is blindness to the unique importance of Judaism to the world.

Finally, the moral failure. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks addresses the issue of “the dignity of difference,” which is the basis for religious pluralism in the West. Jews introduced morality as we know it today. Sacks analyzes the biblical verses before and after the Flood. Before the Flood, the Torah teaches that men and women are created in the image of God, but after the Flood there is a dramatic shift: “Genesis 1 tells me that I am in the image of God. Genesis 9 tells me that the other person is in the image of God … After the Flood, God taught Noach and through him all humanity, that we should think, not of ourselves but of the human other as in the image of God.” This is what Rabbi Sacks calls the greatest religious challenge, and it is what I refer to as the third failure of the world regarding Judaism.

These three failures—historical, material and moral—guarantee Jew-hatred, conflict and endless suffering for all. To paraphrase the German theologian and opponent of Nazism, Martin Niemoller, after they come for the Jews, they come for those who think they are safe. However, Jew-hatred is the symptom of a decadent society. No one is safe in a country consumed with Jew-hatred.

A world without Jews would constitute the end of the dream of people accepting one another, the loss of all hope for peace in the world.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.