What have we learned in 5784?
It's a terrible zero-sum situation. While claiming to have nothing against us as individuals, our haters are not willing to tolerate, let alone accept us as a collective, as a people. Having listened (mostly on YouTube) to countless lectures, conferences, podcasts etc. from the last year outlying what this is really about - it is clear that the so-called "Anti-Zionist" ideologists do not want a Jewish homeland, that they do not want Israel to exist at all.
For our haters, the only tolerable Jewish way of life, i.e. existence, would be as a centerless diaspora - which is an oxymoron, since being outside the homeland is the very definition of a diasporic people. And of course, the people who deny us our Jewish homeland and Jewish peoplehood are also maintaining that none of this has anything to do with "real Judaism" and "real Antisemitism".
Yet even in the diaspora, where we are supposed to be welcome, we are now confronted with social violence demanding of us to renounce our "misunderstanding", "weaponization" or even "abuse" of Judaism and the Holocaust, i.e. of our own tradition from generation to generation. In academia and culture, we seem to have already been pushed back to our unfortunate historical "normality" as an undesired people (depending on the context, of course). It what might actually be the end of a Golden Age, it has become quite uncomfortable to uphold our Jewish identity in the diaspora under such social pressure to renounce and, in a way, convert. Once again, maintaining our course requires of us various sacrifices, be it in our professional opportunities, personal contacts, mental health and, at some places, even physical well-being.
Indeed, not all Jews like Zionism. And not all Jews like Chassidism (go figure). Not all Jews eat kosher, not all Jews keep shabbat. "Nobody's perfect", as the saying goes, and for every two Jews there are probably three different ways to be Jewish (if we include whatever middle ground they come up with as a married couple). Our tent includes Sefaradim and Ashkenazim, diaspora and Israeli Jews, Chassidim and Misnogdim, Yiddish and Ladino, Gefilte Fish with pepper and with sugar - to name a few examples. "How lovely are your tents, Jacob!"
The line is crossed when one actively turns on his or her own people because they keep shabbat, eat kosher, make aliya or pray on shabbat for our hostages and soldiers (including thousands from our diaspora communities who are serving in the IDF). When one's disavowal of fellow Jews results in public support for our haters and just as public agitation against the rest of us - that is where our tent is in danger. At the end of the day, there isn't much difference between delegitimizing the Jewish commonwealth to "dismantle settler colonialism" and delegitimizing the Jewish circumcision of newborns to "abolish criminal mutilations" or delegitimizing Jewish slaughter to "stop inhuman cruelty". Hypothetical, intellectual questioning is one thing, but it's a whole other thing to actively incite the gentile public around our diaspora communities in order to raise the price we are already asked to pay for daring to stand with Israel as it fights back.
This year forced us, therefore, to reaffirm our values. Just like the difficult questions dealt with in Israel, we too had to face difficult questions: What does it mean to uphold our Jewish identity in the often hostile environments of the diaspora? How can we strengthen the poles of our tent to withstand such winds?
Having survived Pharaoh, Haman, Antiochus, Chmelnitsky, Hitler and countless other haters, we will survive this too. What began on Ten Seven as a double attack both against Israel and against diaspora Jews, has brought us over this traumatic year much closer to each other. Jewish communities from literally all corners of the earth have come together this year in remarkable ways, supporting each other in shared grief and resilience.
And together, we shall prevail.
Am Yisrael Chai
❤️
Shana Tova