1) Divine Irony
I like to remark that God has a sense of humor. Case in point: we are famously aware of the mandate for the People of Israel to be a light unto the nations. And yet, the modern-day State of Israel appears to be the least popular country in the world. I imagine that Israel’s critics would point to that fact as proving that, indeed, it is not fulfilling its proper mandate to be a shining Light of morality. But that would be a shallow understanding. R. Yishmael teaches us, in his 13th principles of exegesis (see here) that when two verses appear to contradict each other, you need to find the third verse which reconciles between them. If our two contradictory verses are “shining your light” and “being popular”, then perhaps those two factors are not necessarily correlated. It may even be that they’re inversely correlated.
Yosef Soloveitchik (The Rav) would point out to Haredi critics of Zionism that there must be something inherently Jewish about the State of Israel, something that even the Goyim can perceive, because it’s the most hated country in the world! Therefore, as secular as Israel claims to be, it still must be doing something authentically Jewish! At first, that seems like dark humor. But it’s actually quite profound, in diagnosing an inverse correlation between popularity and timeless principles.
Think of how Mordechai the Judean refused to bow down to Haman. I imagine that his stance (no pun intended) must have been unpopular not only with Haman himself, but with many thousands of his Persian compatriots as well, who were all too eager to join in on a war against all of the Jews in response.
It’s only centuries removed from that incident that the objective observer, the reader of the Megillah, be he/she Jewish or gentile, can perceive the heroism in Mordechai’s principles. Perhaps the State of Israel is in a similar position today. If popularity were the litmus test for being a light unto the nations, then my native Canada would likely fit the bill above any other country. Canadians are admired and respected everywhere for being polite and courteous people. However, with all due respect to the land of my birth, that’s also because they don’t ruffle any feathers. They’re not as powerful as the USA, and therefore not forced into the role of world policeman, a role in which the USA, UK, France, and other NATO heavy hitters often find themselves.
And so, in writing this piece, I asked myself, in response to the what the Rav left unanswered: what is it that the secular state of Israel is doing that does indeed come off to the rest of the world as being so inherently Jewish?…
2) A People Who Dwell Apart
The Rav also remarked, on a separate occasion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE18YlW1aHw at 1:40), something which I’ll paraphrase here from his original Yiddish, which my father helped me to translate:
“I try and tell my gentile neighbors that our attachment to Israel is no different than that of the Irish American to Ireland or the Italian American to Italy, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know that it’s not really a true comparison. Our attachment to Eretz Yisrael is different, more transcendent, and they can perceive that”.
America’s leading antisemite Nick Fuentes has corroborated the Rav’s instinct from seven decades ago. He has said in various podcast interviews (note that I won’t link to him on principle) that Zionism is different than all other nationalisms; that no other nation has the same narrative of having first spent thousands of years in exile and then to return to their Land once again; that this unique fact creates an intensity of identification between Jews and Israel which other nations don’t possess. Sometimes our enemies understand us the best. You can sense the envy in Fuentes’s insight. He knows that we have something in our Zionism which his racist white nationalism will never be able to achieve, because our identity is based in something more timeless than race; whereas his sense of identity is tied into a modern and transient construct which won’t endure, and he knows it.
Our enemies often understand us the best, albeit through a warped lens. In the movie the Dark Knight, the Joker says to Batman:
“Don’t talk like one of them! You’re not. Even if you’d like to be… to them, you’re just a freak; like me.”
So too does the antisemite tell us: “don’t pretend you’re like any other national movement, you’re not”! And they’re right. And so, what is it about modern Israel that’s so Jewish and unique that they can perceive?…
In this week’s parsha of Balak we read of Bilam’s oracles about Israel, one of which declares:
Bamidbar 23:9 –
כִּֽי־מֵרֹ֤אשׁ צֻרִים֙ אֶרְאֶ֔נּוּ וּמִגְּבָע֖וֹת אֲשׁוּרֶ֑נּוּ הֶן־עָם֙ לְבָדָ֣ד יִשְׁכֹּ֔ן וּבַגּוֹיִ֖ם לֹ֥א יִתְחַשָּֽׁב
“As I see them from the mountain tops, and I gaze on them from the heights – Behold this is a People that dwells apart, and they are not reckoned among the nations.”
The Talmud in Sanhedrin 39b teaches from this verse that the Jews will never be considered just another nation; they are destined to always be deemed as distinct and unique. Bilam was our wicked adversary, but God forced a timeless truth into his mouth. The leading antisemitic white nationalist in academia, the obscure psychologist Kevin MacDonald, titled his pseudointellectual book about the Jews: “A People That Shall Dwell Alone”, after this verse.
I’ll have to concede to being a conventional YU guy by once again invoking the Rav (as well as by invoking his son below). The Rav spoke of two covenants: the covenant of fate (Jewish Peoplehood) and the covenant of destiny (Jewish Religion/Torah). I’d say, based on that construct, that the early secular Zionists were not so into the Torah part of things; but they certainly did embrace the covenant of Jewish Peoplehood. And it turns out that having maximal commitment to one of these covenants (Jewish Peoplehood) and at least partial commitment to the other covenant (Jewish Religion) is sufficient to render the State of Israel Jewish enough for the entire world to be able to perceive its inherent Jewishness, with all of the complex mix of admiration and envy and rage which that elicits.
I mention “partial commitment” to Torah, because even the early mainstream secular Zionists like Herzl and Ben Gurion showed a degree of respect for Tanach and for Jewish traditions, and were not as anti-religious as the Haredim portray them to have been; and the State of Israel only continues to become more and more traditional each decade. I don’t envision an Orthodox theocratic Israel; but the more traditionalist path that it’s on today vis a vis Jewish identity seems quite right to me.
Rav Kook also predicted that this would happen to the Zionist movement; that as much as it might try to shed its Jewishness, it would not be able to do so. Or, in the words of the Joker: “don’t pretend you’re like the rest of them, you’re not”.
Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, said something quite mystical himself about the Zionists, when he said: “They think they have made Hebrew into a secular language, that they have removed its apocalyptic sting; but that is not so… God will not remain dumb in the language in which He has been adjured so many thousands of times to come back into our lives.”
“God will not remain dumb” is an old-time way of saying that God will not remain dormant. To put it into more yeshivish terms: you can’t take Hashem out of Lashon Kodesh, or of any society which speaks it, even if you try.
In a public lecture at YU, I once heard Prof. Haym Soloveitchik opine about the commentary of R. Meir HaKohen of Germany, the Hagahot Maimuniyot, on the Rambam. R. Meir had endeavored to interpret the Sefardic Rambam through an Ashkenazi lens. Prof. Soloveitchik remarked, with a genius that only he could convey, and in a line that has stuck with me ever since:
“But it turns out that you can no more Ashkenazify the Rambam than you can Russify Huckleberry Finn”.
As a corollary, I would say: it turns out that you can no more secularize Jewish Peoplehood than you can Russify Huckleberry Finn. The uniqueness of Jewish Peoplehood is so timeless and precious and fragile, that once you devote yourself to defending it, you’ll necessarily be subject to the divine process of Nisayon, of trial and ordeal, for the entire world to witness. And it’s that concept of Nisayon that I’ll explore now.
3) Divine Trial
Pirkei Avot 5:3 says – (from sefaria)
עֲשָׂרָה נִסְיוֹנוֹת נִתְנַסָּה אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ עָלָיו הַשָּׁלוֹם וְעָמַד בְּכֻלָּם, לְהוֹדִיעַ כַּמָּה חִבָּתוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם אָבִינוּ עָלָיו הַשָּׁלוֹם
“With ten trials was Abraham, our father (may he rest in peace), tried, and he withstood them all; to make known how great was the love of Abraham, our father (peace be upon him)”.
Avraham was tested ten times, in order to show the world what faith is. After turning forty, I felt that I’d attained some life experience and wisdom, and I gave a ridiculously ambitiously titled lecture entitled “The Meaning of Life”. I came up with the following: the meaning of life is to take all the malevolence that life throws at you and still maintain a sense of meaning and purpose, and optimism. That’s exactly what Avraham proved at the Akeida (binding of Isaac). He had always been a kind and empathetic person. But true empathy has to be rooted in an awareness of suffering. The Akeida proved that correlation.
It’s hard enough to do that on an individual level. An even greater level is a community which can achieve that. Think of a successful church in a struggling and impoverished city. The struggling people of the city look to that church and they see a community of people who get together each Sunday and sing and laugh and help each other out, even despite all the adversity that they all face. Even higher than that is an entire nation state which can exude that. Maybe it has to be a small nation, by definition, in order to be able to achieve such a thing.
The philosopher Micah Goodman said: “Israel is a small country with a big story… Big enough to give you meaning and small enough for you to have influence on it.”
The root of the word Nisayon is Nes, which can mean miracle, but more plainly means a banner or a flag. The basic association is that it refers to a public display of something wondrous for all the world to see.
The incredible Rachel Goldberg has spoken of how her son Hersh Goldberg Polin would daily reassure his fellow hostages in Gaza by repeating the mantra: “He who has a why can endure any how”. Just a few weeks after October 7th, American General David Petraus, the world’s leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare, declared that Israel in Gaza faced “The most fiendishly difficult and challenging urban operation in the world since 1945”. It’s a frightening statement, but I smiled when I read it, and I didn’t understand why at the time. I would later come to understand: because it’s fitting that the nation with the strongest “why” should be presented with the most difficult “how”. Because only they are equipped with the transcendent sense of purpose required to handle the challenge. That’s exactly what Nisayon means.
The Haredi hardline right wing, as far as I can tell, seems to think that Israel would be a light unto the nations if all Jewish men learned Torah all day, and all of the women raised Jewish children to do the same, and every Jew in Israel observed halacha meticulously, and none of them had to worry about mundane, worldly matters. The hardcore secular left seems to feel, as far as I can tell, that Israel would be a light unto the nations if everyone lived in the style of the Kibbutz, with something approaching the socialist ideal of economic equality of outcome, for Jews and Arabs alike.
The problem with these two utopian visions…is that they’re utopian. The rabbis taught long ago that Torah only works in conjunction with Derech Eretz, the way of the world, and the way of our world is too complicated and messy for utopia, not until the mashiach comes at least.
That’s why Israel is only the first flowering of our redemption, and nothing like the utopian final redemption. I submit that the State of Israel is the imperfect light unto the nations which can actually be achieved realistically in our messy and non-utopian world.
I’ve seen a funny trend online of how to respond too intensely when someone asks how you’re doing: “The horrors persist, but so do I”. Or, in the immortal words of Rocky Balboa: “But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward; how much you can take, and keep moving forward”.
The State of Israel looks at the world, especially since October 7th, and defiantly declares: “the horrors persist, but so do I”. And if you want your own life to have any meaning, then you’d better respond to the adversity that it throws out you the way that Israel does. And it’s in precisely that real-world way that Israel is a light unto the nations.