TJS S3 Purim 5779: The Oldest Hatred, a practical analysis

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You have enemies? Ask Victor Hugo. Why, it's the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it. Disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear. Well, I'm trying to stay serene and see the clear horizon ahead, because I'm Rav Mike Feuer, and this is The Jewish Story. Foram Interlude, analyzing the oldest hatred. Good foram, good foram, it's foram this week. And amongst the many things that we're celebrating, we're celebrating the We're celebrating the victory over our enemies. You know, and it's a little bit unique amongst all the moments of salvation that we've seen throughout the course of our history.

This victory was actually in our hands. And we can and we should even seek the divine face that lies behind the mask of Purim. If you want, send me an email and I'll send you a connection to different ideas. But right now, I want to focus on what I see to be an essential message that our sages wanted to impart by presenting us with a Megillah as a story of political intrigue. And that is, this fight is on our hands. Haman is the enemy. He's the sort of opposite of Mordecai and Esther in the Megillah. And we'll look soon enough at his particular beef with Am Yisrael. And it's important, actually, to focus on its words, because just as our friends often define us, so do our foes. You know, everybody agrees that you can know someone by the company they keep.

And I'd venture to say that the opposite is true as well. We choose our friends, God willing, as a reflection of the values and character traits that we hold most dear. and our enemies choose us for the exact same reason. And it might just be that the more aggressively they fight us, the more essential the value which they're opposing. And thus we have quite a bit to learn from Haman's evil statement there in the third chapter of the Megillah when he says to Ahasuerus, there's a certain people scattered and dispersed amongst the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of other people and who do not obey the king's laws. It is not in your majesty's interest to tolerate them.

And before we parse these words, let's just recall that Haman doesn't stand alone. As Megillah says, after these things, that the king of Hachasverosh lifted up, he magnified, Haman, the son of Hamdata, the Agagite. And this line is there to clue us into the epic battle that underlies the local struggle that Esther and Mordecai are forced to wage on Haman. Because Agag, Haman's ancestor in this verse, was the last king of Amalek. Now, who's Amalek? That's a big discussion. And a bit of it will come out in what follows. But for those of you who don't know anything about the epic struggle between Am Yisrael and Amalek down through the generations, I'll just give you two foundations from our foundational text.

First is the portion that we read last week in the synagogue. As the special mitzvah, there's a special commandment to not only remember what Amalek did, but to wipe them off the face of the earth. Zachor at Asher Asalach HaMalek. Remember what Amalek did to you. B'derech betzeitchem mimitzrayim. On the way, when you were coming out from Egypt. Asher korcha bederech vizanev b'cha kol enecha shalim acharecha. who either came upon you on the way or tried to cool you down, as we'll see in a second, and he attacked the weak that were coming from behind. And you were weary and worn out, and he did not fear God. Now, a lot of what Amalek is can be learned from this earth. I mean, after all, who would jump on Am Yisrael right after the Exodus, and why?

The Midrash, which is bought by Rashi, if you're familiar with the text, tells us, Asher Korcha B'derech, who cooled you down along the way, gives an image that, imagine Am Yisrael was like a boiling bath that nobody in their right mind would jump into. We were on fire with God and the purpose of history coming out of Egypt. And this madman Amalek, who had no personal stake in the question, we weren't coming out to take his land, jumped in that boiling bath. And even though he himself was scorched forever, He cooled it down so that everybody afterwards could take their turn. Meaning, there was a point in our history, coming out of Egypt, when it was so apparent to not only ourselves, but the world as a whole, where we were coming from, why we were leaving, and what we were meant to do, that the world might just have been filled with the light of God.

And along comes Amalek, and pours cold water on that excitement. Not only that, but that sort of itching phrase at the end there, where you were sort of worn out and weary and didn't fear God, poses a particular question. Which one does that apply to? Is it Amalek not fearing God? Or Am Yisrael not fearing God? Or both? There's something in the essence of Amalek. They appear in our history at a time that we lose our faith in God and they represent what it is to live in a world without God. And that leads me to the other texts. If you want to take a look at it, it's in the 25th chapter of the book of Amidbar. And it's Bilaam, the great prophet of the nations, after he's gone through many iterations in his failed attempt to curse the Jews, who finally opens his eyes and sees what history is all about.

And it says, And he continued with his theme and said, that Amalek is the Rishit Goyim. He's the first of nations, but his fate is to perish forever. Now, what does that mean? Rishit Goyim. It could mean a lot of things, but for our purposes and for this understanding of the oldest hatred, this strange antagonism that the Jews seem to evoke in every society where we find ourselves, then you can just know this, that it means, Reishi Goim means that there's two ways in which the world can go. There's Israel and there's Amalek. That Amalek is somehow the inverse of what it is we're meant to do in the world. And that's why, by the way, when we don't fear God, we won't stand in the awe of the Divine Presence, well, those who don't fear God rule the world.

Two ways it can go. And that's perhaps why God actually declares a war down through the generations between God and Amalek. because the reality is the question for Am Yisrael is not why there's war between God and Amalek. Why in general, by the by, is a question that lies above most of us pay grade and it rarely bears useful fruit. I'm not really going to say why the hatred of the Jews is the oldest, most pervasive and persistent hatred that humanity knows. And by the way, why it's making a stunning comeback right now. I mean, I have what to say about that, but the real question is, and the one that we have to embrace isn't why, but what. What can we learn from this hatred about our essential mission in the world and what can we do about that hatred that will get us back on track?

And of course, there's also the how. How do we feed Amalek? So sometimes in order to understand a thing, you've got to go to its roots. And the roots of the hatred of Am Yisrael are somewhat hard to discern. If you ask our sages, you can open up the Gemara in Shabbat, page 89A and B, and you'll see that they saw the roots of that hatred actually at Sinai. Mount Sinai, when we received the Torah, they say, Yardasina l'umot a'olam. That a hatred came down, and it's a little bit ambiguous what they mean, that what came down with the Torah was either a hatred of the nations, or the nation's hatred of us. And really, as we'll see as this podcast goes on, These are two sides of the same coin. That the Jewish insistence on being different is something which both causes antagonism in the eyes of the world and something which causes within us an antagonism to others.

And furthermore, that the Torah, of course, isn't just about us being different. It's an assertion that there is one God. In the face of the whole idolatrous practice, there's an idea born into the world at Sinai that there's a right and wrong way to be in the world. that there's one God and none like unto that God. Now that's within our tradition, but if I look into text in the so-called extra-biblical portions, the earliest reference I'm aware of, of a somewhat deep-seated antagonism toward the Jews, toward Am Yisrael, is actually found in Hekateus of Abdera. I'm sure I said his name wrong, but we're talking about four centuries before the Common Era Greek, who tells a very interesting story. He says, and in ancient times, a disease arose in Egypt, and the common people ascribed their troubles to the workings of a divine agency, and because they had many strangers of all sorts dwelling in their midst, practicing different rites and religions, and their own traditional observances in honor of the gods had fallen into disuse.

And what do people do when they suffer and there's a stranger in their midst? Well, you guessed it. They drove out the foreigners. and he goes on to say that the most outstanding and active among them banded together and as some say were cast ashore in Greece and certain other reasons this is part of the whole Greek origin story that sees their culture as rooted in Egypt but he says also the greater number were driven in what is now called Judea which is not far distant from Egypt and was at that time utterly uninhabited. The colony was headed, he says, by a man called Moshe, outstanding both for his wisdom and his courage. But get this, the sacrifices that he established differ from those of other nations, as does their way of living.

For as a result of their own expulsion from Egypt, he introduced the kind of misanthropic and inhospitable way of life. Now, this is the earliest characterization that I'm aware of, of the Jews as intrinsically misanthropic and inhospitable. Now, there's more than a little bit of irony in this, because here's a Greek labeling the Jews as inhospitable, while the Greeks were well known to despise all barbarians. And in fact, that sort of hatred of the lower cultures around them was something that they bequeathed to the Romans, who, of course, were the inheritors of the Greek culture, and the next great civilization that learned to hate us. Now, if you've been a listener of the Jewish story for some time, then you know that the Romans had their political beef with us, and in all fairness, it wasn't without cause.

It's what I call the insistence of Am Yisrael to be the indigestible element of empire. We would not bow knee to the foreign tyrant within our land. But it turns out the Romans also had a fair measure of this Greek cultural hatred as well. Because if you look into the Roman historian Tacitus, second century, very important recorder of the events here in the Middle East, right before he describes the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the first century, he offers a brief account of Jewish history. It's a mix of fact, fiction, and downright slander. Listen to what he says. Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness.

The rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or intermarry with Gentiles. Though most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race. The Jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded. Now, we could wallow in the self-satisfaction of knowing the world hates us, But I want to note that there's an important message for all Jews in this particular type of hatred, which seems to be the oldest one that we can find, whether it's the Gemara's origin story at Sinai or the Greek or here in Tacitus. By the way, it's a hatred that maintains its energy right up to today, and that is that the hatred of the Jews stems from the fact that we insist on being different.

as Haman said, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king laws. Now, I believe that the Torah is our source code. It's kind of, so to speak, the spiritual DNA of Am Yisrael. And that means that even though we can argue from now until Mashiach about what exactly the Torah is, where it came from, and even what it's asking of us, that in my eyes what it means to be a Jew is to struggle to make the Torah's vision real in the world. And we have to embrace the fact that being separate is part of that mission. Right before giving the Torah at Sinai, in the book of Shemot, in the 19th chapter, God declared us, Mamleche Kohanim V'Goi Kadosh. That's a kingdom of priests or ministers, as I like to say, because there's an element of service in the word Kohen.

And Goi Kadosh, a holy people. And to live a holy life means to live separate from much of what binds the rest of the world together. But that separateness is meant to be symptomatic, not essential. And I think that that is a key element of the hatred that we've suffered ever since the Torah came down to Sinai. What do I mean? Take the word in Hebrew for marriage, kiddushin. It comes from the same word, kadosh. But why? Well, the Torahs explain because when you get married, you are devoted to your spouse. Now, it's true that you're separate from all other women if you're married. But your separateness from other women is not what makes you married to your wife, but rather the inverse. Your devotion to your spouse is what makes you separate from all other people.

The real meaning of kadosh is devotion. And if we want to succeed in defeating Amalek, and not just in surviving in the world, then standing separate from the world has to be in service. In service in particular of our mission of redemption. Redemption, by the way, which applies to the whole world. And as far as I can tell, it was the combination of these two elements, political and cultural stubbornness, the insistence on being the indigestible element of empire, and on being different, that effectively built the hatred of the Jews into the very base of Greco-Roman culture, where it remains to this day. Ironically, in history, once the Roman occupation really began, and the Jews were scattered in exile throughout their empire, suddenly holding fast to these so-called misanthropic and inhospital ways of life became the key to our cultural survival and frankly the keystone to any hope for fulfilling our mission of universal redemption.

And it's amazing. Can you hear Haman's words? There's a certain people scattered and dispersed amongst all the other peoples in the provinces and realm, which the Romans did to us, whose laws are different from those of any other people, which we had to hold fast to lest we disappear, and who do not obey the king's laws. Well, that one, frankly, is just a lie. And it's not in your majesty's interest to tolerate them. You know, if Amalek wants to win, then physically scattering us isn't enough. Our memory, our story, our very way of being has to be erased. And so how convenient it is that the opposition to the Jews was able to take on a new non-political form just as our political life was coming to an end.

So we went from being the indigestible element of empire, holding fast to our inhospitable and misanthropic ways, and perhaps missing the boat in understanding that being separate was meant to be in service of our devotion to mission, went right from that into being the obstinate refusers of salvation. You know, there's no fight like a family fight. Every child has to differentiate themselves. And in the case of the birth of Christianity and the advent of what's called replacement theology, these children actually needed to get rid of their parents, not just walk away. And in the story of the history between the Jews and the Christians, there's a particular personality who really owns the credit for starting that fight.

And it would have to be Justin Martyr. He was born around 100 in the Common Era. He was known as the early Christian apologist. He came to Rome actually during the reign of Antoninus. That's 138 to 161 for those of you who like numbers. Meaning he set up his school in Rome after the three Roman Jewish wars were over. After this idea that the Jews were indigestible and culturally repugnant had already been baked into Roman society. And his anti-Judaic writings had been called by some scholars the origin of Christian anti-Semitism. It's a new phase. He was the first to argue that the Romans were not responsible for the death of Jesus of Nazareth, meaning that the Jews killed him. But most importantly, Justin Martyr appears to be the originator of the idea that the church is actually spiritual Israel, that has replaced physical Israel.

As he says, for the true spiritual Israel are we who have been led to God through their Savior. Now, in his eyes, the suffering of the Jews is just because the church has replaced them and that Jesus has replaced the law and the Christians are fulfilling that which was given to the Jews. And he wasn't alone. In the coming generation, Tertullian would argue that the problem wasn't the God of the Jews or the text of the Jews. The problem was the Jews themselves. And this type of hatred based on a need to eliminate the Jews in order to replace us arguably reached its peak in John Chrysostom in the 4th century. He was the Archbishop of Constantinople. You know, his big issue was to try to stop the Christians from going to synagogue on Saturday and taking communion on Sunday.

It's kind of a spiritual hedging of the bets that apparently was still quite common in the 4th century. And so he delivered a series of eight sermons on the wickedness of the Judeans. Get this. Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? And this is very reasonable. In the old days, the Jews acted impiously toward the prophets. Now they outrage the master of prophets. Notice, refusing salvation. Tell me this, he says, do you not shudder to come into the same place with men possessed who have so many unclean spirits who have been reared amid slaughter and bloodshed? You know, it's interesting that in his sermons, Christ's poem actually pulls his characterizations of the Jews from proof texts that he found in the Bible and not from his experience in 4th century Antioch.

And that's because he's really beginning a path that will set itself in stone during the Middle Ages. The Jews are rapidly becoming an idea that needed to be subdued rather than just a people that needed to be conquered or even eliminated. And notice, what they are is unclean spirits. There are whole studies. We could go on hours and hours characterizing how the Jew becomes the anti-salvation, becomes the devil himself, the source of evil, demonic possession, you name it, within early Christian culture. But it's not the whole story. It not enough just to say that because we the obstinate refusers of salvation that they hate us Because we spoken elsewhere back in Season 1 about what known as the Witness Doctrine Augustine of Hippo provides a theological framework that actually gave space within the mind of the Church for the continued existence of the Jews.

Because Justin Martyr and Tertullian and John Chrysostom were headed for the final solution. They saw no space for the Jews to continue, in particular since the church had actually been meant to replace us. Whereas Augustine said that the Jews actually will never perish, that we will continue to live on for two critical reasons. One, because the Jews are living proof that the Christian scriptures are true. I mean, after all, they're deriving all their theology from our books. And if some pagan happens to say to the church father, well, hey, where did you get that idea from? Here from the Jewish prophets. Who are these Jews? oh, there aren't any left, it's a hole in the argument. Whereas if you can point to the Jews, well then, you've got what to talk about.

However, he points out that the Jews must be in a degraded state. Because the goal isn't just to prove the veracity of scriptures, it's to prove the truth of their interpretation. And therefore, the Jew must live on as witness, but in a degraded state, testifying to what it looks like when you refuse salvation. as he says they make visible to the Christian faithful the subjection that they merited because they in the pride of their kingdom put the Lord to death and so the Lord placed a mark upon Cain lest anyone coming upon him should kill him meaning you keep the Jews alive just like God put a mark on Cain but he's got the mark of Cain a decade after Augustine wrote that that was in Contra Faustum if you want to look it up he actually solidified his doctrine around the verse in Psalms, which says, Slay them not, lest my people forget.

Scatter them with your might. And thus you get the model for the whole medieval role of the Jews, scattered amongst the nations, kept alive, but in a degraded state in order that they testify to the truth of Christian interpretation. And this is what we call the hermeneutic battle. It's a fight over who has the proper reading of the text, right? Meaning whoever can read the text in a way, which not only explains the present, but can get us to the future in which we believe has the true power. Now, I'm not going to try to recapitulate the entire Middle Ages. Go back and listen to season one if you really want to understand the depth of this struggle. But it is important for our purposes in understanding the oldest hatred to get two things.

First of all, for the masses of European Christianity, who were neither as learned as the church fathers, nor frankly as concerned with the finer points of theology and textual analysis, the old political cultural hatred of the Greco-Roman world was just as good. It just gained a new, let's call it religious impulse or religious impetus in this era. We're the other. Obstinate refusers of salvation and the Christian lifestyle, just as we've been the indigestible element of the Greco-Roman world. There's nothing new here. It's a new paint on an old hatred. But the second point is critical, because it actually offers us an insight in what we can do about this hatred. The hermetic battle is a struggle to read our sacred texts in a way that can shape the future according to Christian belief.

And the very attempt by those who hate us to claim our most sacred stories should be a big wake-up call. It should tell us just how powerful those stories are. Now, I'm not recommending that anybody go out there and engage in interfaith polemics and start telling all the non-Jews they see that they got it wrong. But I am saying this. First and foremost, know your story, people. And if you're going to know your story, it means you have to take these texts seriously. Frankly, I don't care if you believe they're written by God, humanity, a committee, or somewhere in between. It makes no difference to me. Know your story. And second of all, look into those stories, into those texts, and learn to tell a healing story, a story that empowers, that unites, one that can not only bring our people home physically but that can help us see the presence of God here on earth which is after all the entire goal of that story so it's unavoidable I have to make at least a brief stop in the modern era late antiquity gave us that political cultural hatred of the Jews which was rooted in our unwillingness to obey the king's laws as Haman said we were the indigestible element inhospitable and misanthropic.

Christian Jew hatred added to this replacement theology. By the way, the original identity theft. And that led to a bitter struggle over our story and the fight to be the ones who actually hold the task of bringing creation to fruition, of telling a redemptive story. And thus the Jews became the obstinate refusers of redemption. By the by, I did leave Islam out of this quick overview because I can't do everything. And because, frankly, they actually don't really jump on the Jew-hating bandwagon until the modern or even post-modern era. Maybe we'll reflect on that some other time. But for now, from indigestible element of the empire to obstinate refusers of salvation to alien other in the modern era.

Once again, can't do it all. Go back to season two for the whole picture. But for now, what you need to know is that the price which Enlightenment asked of the Jews for entry into modern society was to check our culture at the door. They were willing to accept this as long as we were willing to finally melt into that universal human stew, which, by the by, wasn't so universal. It was actually secular Christian culture in Europe. And how this failed. Because once the Jews were actually ready to become citizens and, quote, obey the king's laws like Haman asked, and even give up our culture by giving up the religious laws that made us different from those of any other people, up pops racial anti-Semitism.

And our desire to conform and assimilate suddenly becomes irrelevant because the Jews are irredeemably other. That's right. The message here is quite clear. If you're a Jew, you can run, but you can't hide. You know, the ultimate expression of this was the fact that the Nazis pulled monks and nuns out of their monasteries and convents to kill them in the concentration camps as Jews. These were people who didn't just see themselves not as Jews. They had joined the other side. Now, I don't have the time to analyze modern anti-Semitism. The literature is too vast, and frankly, the bill is still out. but in order that I can set the stage for the final part of this somewhat grim look at the oldest hatred I do want to point out that in the mind of modernity the Jew wasn't just a corrupting racial element that had to be purified racial anti-Semitism because as Hitler said the Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul I come to free mankind from their shackles that racial national element represented, of course, best by circumcision, is nothing new in this story.

In a sense, it goes back to the Greco-Roman roots of Jew hatred, where that element that simply isn't like everyone else, just like Haman said. But this idea of conscience adds a new piece to our story, and it deserves a thought. You know, philosophically, most people agree that Hitler was borrowing the idea from Nietzsche, who claimed that the Jews, with their, quote, revolt of slaves, had subverted the natural order and instituted in the world the morality of slaves. It was a morality which was opposed to what he called the morality of masters, meaning the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Now, in fairness, Nietzsche didn't hate the Jews. He just hated this idea, and he particularly blamed Christianity for popularizing it in Europe.

There's so much that could be said here about the world in which we live. But for now, to me, Hitler was a powerful proof that you can know a people by its enemies. That we could indeed call Israel the conscience of the world. And that gives an insight on the origins of the hatred of Am Yisrael in the modern era. Listen, no one likes their conscience. But at least when it succeeds, it can make it proud of ourselves. The problem with the conscience is not when it succeeds in making us the best person that we believe we can be. The problem is when the consciousness fails. Because when the consciousness fails to actually change our behavior, it doesn't just go away, it persists. It lives on. It's an indelible part of who we are.

But it becomes an annoying voice which just nags from the side, prevents us from enjoying doing what we want to do rather than what we ought. and that's why so many people who are set on living either a meaningless life or an evil life must eliminate their conscience from this perspective at the risk of blaming the victim I could say that the failure of Am Yisrael to live up to our divine mission is actually the source of the world's hatred for us our desire to be separate to live by our own laws to tell our own story could be a source of great joy and love in the world if we succeeded at doing it, if we indeed became the Orlegoim, the light of the nations, which we were designated to be. Listen, I know that this is problematic, and I've upset a number of people by saying it, but I can't deny it's how I feel.

Take it as a call to revisit our mission focus, because I do indeed believe that one of the reasons that the Rabboni Sholam created us was to be the conscience of the world, and nobody likes their conscience when it's failing. For now though I am not ashamed of being labeled as the people who first challenged the notion that might makes right And it fascinating that this is why the postmodern wave of hatred that threatens to engulf us right now that all over the newspapers which focuses specifically on the dynamics of a now once again powerful Jewish people is so painful and important to understand As far as I can tell, in the postmodern era, the hatred of Am Yisrael springs from our reality as a story that can't be reduced to a simple power discourse.

Now, first of all, I place the boundary marker of the modern and postmodern at the gates of Auschwitz, or in the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, if you'd like. It's not really so critical. Either way, the last great myth of secular society died in these two places. The notion of progress. This idea that humanity was still on an inevitable track toward a cleaner, safer, happier world. A myth, by the way, that could not possibly survive those horrors. How could it be that this was the end progress of the most cultured nation in Europe? Or the greatest concentration of technological know-how that the Western world had ever seen? But you know what? Just because a myth dies doesn't mean that we're so quick to let go of it.

And so, coming out of the Nazi era, Am Yisrael actually had a shine in the eyes of the world that we'd never had. We had a moral purity that sprang from our absolute victimhood. Even those who refused to recognize our attachment to this land as a positive assertion, looking into the Bible or looking into our history, they were still able to overcome the long train of hatred. There was no longer a need in that moment that the Jews be a people, quote, scattered and dispersed amongst the other peoples, whose laws are different from those of any other people, and who do not obey the king's laws. It seemed, in the eyes of both the Zionists and the United Nations, that we could suddenly be a nation like any other.

Once again, just a people in our land. Well, that was 70 years ago. And 70 years is a very long time in our age. Long enough for the perpetrators and the bystanders to forget about the gas chambers, if not for the victims. Trust me, we haven't forgotten. And furthermore, those 70 years have been a time of continual war. As we've discussed elsewhere, re-embodiment in the land is a very messy process. And in all honesty, our struggle with the Arabs over this land is quite complex. Go back and listen to the end of season two. I'm not trying to dish you up any simple story. Oddly enough, it's complexity that doesn't seem to work well in the postmodern mind, which you'd think worships complexity for complexity's sake.

Now, I have to make something clear. In my eyes, the two hallmarks of a shallow postmodernism are, number one, the belief in the death of the grand narratives, right? All the great stories and myths, whether they're religions or cultural tales or progress that kept us going and put a sort of a broad frame on all the particular elements of the world, so the death of these grand narratives, and the subsequent notion that everything in life is therefore just a struggle for power. And on a more simple level, you need to know that in the eyes of the postmodern mob out there, there are only victims and perpetrators. There can be no heroes, because a hero is someone who wields power in the name of what's right and good.

But the sacred stories of right and good died the death of these grand narratives. They're just fairy tales to the pseudo-intellectuals of our day. And therefore, a hero is nothing more than a clever villain with good PR. He must be so because he's wielding power. And maybe, just maybe, this is why the idea of Jews having power is now the new source of hatred in the most recent phase of our story of the oldest hatred humanity knows. Just think about it. The old left was willing to tolerate us when we were holy victims, but now that we're wielding power, oi, vavoy, just remember, hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. And that's why the intersectionality movement, if you're familiar with it today, and if you're not, you can write me an email, I'll give you some thoughts on it.

That's why their hatred is so fierce for the Jews, because Jews don't fit the new righteousness of victimhood model because we have power. And we furthermore compound it by being betrayers because once upon a time, we were the perfect victim. And whether it's the power of Israel, the nation state, or the power that American Jews became when they became white, as the phrase goes, you need to learn something about this dynamic. You know, there's a new definition of racism out there. When I was growing up, racism meant acting prejudicially toward someone based on their race. It was quite straightforward, and it didn't matter what that race was, but that's no longer true. Today, racism is prejudice plus power.

It, by definition, only involves what they call punching down. When someone who's in a position of privilege and power, who's part of the structural oppression and violence on which our societies are actually built, I do see a lot of that as truth, and they reach out to crush the weak, that's racism. And that's how it can be. in a crazy sense that if an African-American man runs amok and shoots white police officers out of hatred, that it may be an act of hatred, but it's not an act of racism. Or when a congresswoman peddles time-honored, hate-ridden conspiracy theories about Jewish domination, that's not racism, it's punching up. It's a fight against Jewish privilege and the power structures within America.

or against the international colonial structures, which are the structural violence oppressing the peoples of the world represented by, yeah, the state of Israel. Because fighting power and privilege in their eyes is justice, not anti-Semitism. Because if you're no longer the victim, then you can only be the villain. Now there's so much more to say about this, particularly that post-colonial element. But don't worry, there's going to be another show coming up soon. Some of you guys asked me to have another conversation with U. Cohen. I think he's the man to talk post-colonialism with. But if you want actually a classic and chilling example of how outside of recent American politics, this dynamic of Jews as villain rather than victim really plays itself out, check out Article 22 of the Hamas Charter.

You can Google it. It's right there on the Internet. You'll notice that it makes the Jews out to be the most powerful people in the world. I mean, it's bizarre. Who elevates their enemies like that? I'll tell you who. Those who see righteousness only in victimhood and are willing to harness the world behind them. But for right now, I want to end with this. So we've gone from this indigestible element of empire, that cultural holding fast to being ourselves, to obstinate refuser of salvation and the insistence that we're going to be the ones who tell the redemptive story, to alien other of modern society. what it comes down to is that Am Yisrael is a story that won't go away and our current world culture which equates morality with abstract perfection rather than the humble progress that the Torah sees and furthermore our world culture which is more concerned with deconstructing its myth and destroying its heroes than in crafting a meaningful society that can unite the world toward the goal of redemption be it secular or religious I want to be clear.

In my eyes, I do believe that Am Yisrael is spinning our wheels in the mud right now, and we're spattering it everywhere. There's good reason to be upset with the Jews, but I've got news for you. The Jews aren't going away. We wouldn't allow Rome to digest us. We wouldn't allow Christianity to convert us or modernity to assimilate us. We're not going to let this postmodern challenge deny the significance of our story. And now, lo and behold, for the first time in 2,000 years, our refusal to disappear is actually backed by an incredible ability to wield force. This is the great gift that Am Yisrael is poised to offer the world, and it is, in my eyes, the source of their current hatred. And if we want to learn from this latest challenge, what to do, then I say this, learn to wield power in service of the right.

Learn to tell a story in which there are perpetrators and victims, and heroes as well. you can be the hero of that story too and have no fear. We, Am Yisrael, as a people, together with all the people of the world that want to tell the Israel story, will keep failing forward through history. We'll keep transforming our missteps into learning opportunities. And let it be soon, let it be now, God willing, the day will come when we learn to tell a story in which the whole world can rejoice. I just want to thank a few people before I wrap it up here. I want to thank all the folks that give their hard-earned money. for help making this show happen, for keeping it free and widely available. And I want to invite you to join them right now.

You can go to jewishstory.co. That's my website. You'll find all the content there. In the upper right-hand corner, you'll also see a button that says, Be a Patron. And you can click on that button right on through. Give a little bit of per-podcast support. Help me make history, people. This is a lot of labor. I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network. That's thelandofisrael.com for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, P-A-R-D-E-S dot org dot I-L, and I want to thank you for listening. I'm Robin Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Good Purim!