Why are we hated?

A Hebrew version of this post was published today (Holocaust Memorial day in Israel) in Maariv Daily.

Not long ago – as part of the research process for my upcoming book about the Jewish people today (which is currently being translated into English) – I read an article in which celebrated historian Yaakov Talmon sharply phrases a question that has been bothering the Jewish people from its earliest beginnings to this very day: Are the Jews “absolutely righteous, or are they also partly to blame for the calamities they have suffered?”       

This is a disturbing question, one that is at the root of Jewish existence in a world that is not always supportive. It’s a question that can be asked about Jews in general, like Talmon did, and one that can also be asked, more particularly, in reference to the state of Israel. This is so because today’s Anti-Semites do not present ‘the Jews’ as the official cause for their hatred – that designation is reserved for the state of Israel, its policies, its actions, its attitude. In that sense, Israel is a disappointing country, but there’s a certain element of relief in this disappointment. Israel is disappointing because it hasn’t solved the problem of antisemitism. On the other hand, there is some relief in that: it gives us evidence that the Jews are not to blame for antisemitism.   

Like many of the anti-Semites, the early Zionist leaders had a tendency to put a lot of blame on the Jews themselves when they tried to explain the roots of the hatred they faced.  Micha Josef Berdyczewski blamed their insistence on “the ethics of the book” instead of “the ethics of the sword.” Their submissiveness, their meekness, their piousness, the fact that they had become, in the words of Herzl, “unable to assimilate completely” – all of these are reasons for the hatred of the people among which they dwelled. Early Zionism hoped to cure the world of the malady of antisemitism by a chirurgical procedure – an operation that would separate between the Jews and their haters. The moment they are separated, so the theory went, the Jews will be cured of the illness of the diaspora and the non-Jews will be cured of the illness of antisemitism.       

But while the operation was a success, the illnesses remain. The Jews in Israel have not been cured of the illness of the Diaspora, and the non-Jews in the rest of the world – the recent British Labour scandal is a fresh example of this – have not been cured of the antisemitism virus, a cunning virus that can always change its shape and form: when the Jews are capitalists, they are blamed of being greedy; when they are communists, they are charged with being revolutionary traitors. When they are in the diaspora, not having a land of their own is a cause for suspicion and loathing; when they are in Israel, the fact that they have a land of their own is a cause for suspicion and loathing.    

In one of the chapters in the book I wrote, a book that’s dedicated to different questions concerning the Jewish condition in our time, I try to answer the question of “why we are hated.” While I won’t go into this question in depth here, I will only say that the disappointment from the state of Israel as a solution comes with a measure of consolation. If Zionism was based, at least partially, on the assumption that hatred toward the Jews stems from their failure to actively avoid it – that is, to find their own place – and if it turned out that even when they did find their own place the problem wasn’t solved – that their country has actually become another excuse for antisemitism – this strengthens the belief that the Jews, their actions, and their ineptitude are not the root cause of hatred. It strengthens the belief that even if they stop doing this or that – if they end the occupation, cancel Israel’s being a Jewish state, engage in more Tikkun Olam, change their odd ways – the result, as far as antisemitism is concerned, would be disappointing.

All this does not mean that the Jews don’t have a lot of work to do. They definitely need to examine solutions for the occupation, engage in a lot of tikkun olam, and work hard to maintain the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (while constantly debating what that actually means). They need to be careful not to supply the anti-Semites with ammunition, and they need to be careful not to become indifferent to the hatred towards them. They need to continue inquiring who hates them, how much they are hated, and why they are hated. Israel is not a desert island. The Jewish people does not live on a desert island. And yet it is worth understanding that it is very well possible – for different reasons – that even if they were to move to desert island, the hatred against them would not disappear.