With time: a new generation with no knowledge of its past . . . naivete and ignorance (and danger) know no boundaries
We sometimes believe that with ‘the passage of time’ that the doing of good deeds in the world can “heal wounds” and send us all rather blissfully off to a world writ large that has been healed and perhaps even ‘perfected.’ So much for the current fetish-like fascination on the part of many Jewish communities teaching our young that Tikkun Olam is the answer to all ills . . . . as if that was the only legitimate or appropriate form of Jewish worship available to our current and future generation(s) of young Jews.
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Unfortunately, along with a loss of memory and thereby a loss of history comes a deadening of our senses, a certain blindness, and an inability to see ‘the world as it is’ rather than how we would like to see it.
This could just be understood as forgetfulness — but it ‘too easily’ leads to just plain ‘idiocy’ and all too often, to its lurking bastard sibling: ‘self-loathing’ which almost out of the blue (and yet, not surprisingly) just happens to arrive at our doorstep and knock (seemingly unannounced) on our doors . . . . and yes, at the very doors of the very schools we have both created and nurtured in order to instill in the next generation knowledge and with that knowledge our ever-persistent place in the history of the world writ large.
Bottom line: In speaking before Jewish audiences of late, I have had the opportunity to ask out loud: how’s that been working out for you . . . for us?
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Genesis 24:64
וַתִּשָּׂ֤א רִבְקָה֙ אֶת־עֵינֶ֔יהָ וַתֵּ֖רֶא אֶת־יִצְחָ֑ק וַתִּפֹּ֖ל מֵעַ֥ל הַגָּמָֽל׃
Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac. She alighted from the camel
וַתֹּ֣אמֶר אֶל־הָעֶ֗בֶד מִֽי־הָאִ֤ישׁ הַלָּזֶה֙ הַהֹלֵ֤ךְ בַּשָּׂדֶה֙ לִקְרָאתֵ֔נוּ וַיֹּ֥אמֶר הָעֶ֖בֶד ה֣וּא אֲדֹנִ֑י וַתִּקַּ֥ח הַצָּעִ֖יף וַתִּתְכָּֽס׃
and said to the servant, “Who is that man walking in the field toward us?” And the servant said, “That is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself.
וַיְסַפֵּ֥ר הָעֶ֖בֶד לְיִצְחָ֑ק אֵ֥ת ל־הַדְּבָרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשָֽׂה׃
The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done.
וַיְבִאֶ֣הָ יִצְחָ֗ק הָאֹ֙הֱלָה֙ שָׂרָ֣ה אִמּ֔וֹ וַיִּקַּ֧ח אֶת־רִבְקָ֛ה וַתְּהִי־ל֥וֹ לְאִשָּׁ֖ה וַיֶּאֱהָבֶ֑הָ וַיִּנָּחֵ֥ם יִצְחָ֖ק אַחֲרֵ֥י אִמּֽוֹ׃ {פ}
Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death.
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Propaganda, historiography, or just historical fact . . . to be a Jew or a friend of the Jewish People requires us to learn and to teach the next generation of Jews that we are not disappearing and the faults of the world cannot be alleviated or solved by the disappearance of the Jewish People from the face of the earth or by driving the Jewish people out from their ancestral homeland, from the river to the sea . . .
a continued note: . . . there appears a hidden self-loathing on the part of many young Jews today, lurking behind a thin veneer of ‘Zionism as Jewish-evil . . . as if the return of the Jewish people, after being raped and murdered and driven out of their ancestral homeland, where the same fate would await them while merely seeking a place of refuge, albeit as unwelcome refugees in lands not their own. For recent generations of young Jews, Jewish history was thought to be either an exaggeration or a false narrative invented in order to subjugate peoples of color in America, especially with the newly minted ‘Indigenous Peoples of the World Narrative’.
Here is where facts have been ignored and the wrongs of history have been thought to be a fault of . . . . you guessed it, the Jews.
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Facts and History are vitally important, so much so that the so-called “historians of current Academia” seem befuddled by and rather painfully just cannot accept the truth of Jewish history because the truth does not square with their colonialist white-dominated views of history.
“their rather pitiful and current rendition of truth is often dressed up and disguised as nationalist liberation movements, righting the wrongs of both history and of white rulers — but it is simply and straightforwardly, just plain Jewhate sometimes dressed up in a fancy dress of antisemitism.
As we all can glean from history, ultimately they, their teachings and their sycophants will find themselves consigned to the ash heap of history . . . as they always have found themselves — and it is where they belong.
Despite them and their evil – we the Jewish People will live, and we will continue to thrive, we Jews, we Zionists, we People of the Book, who despite everything, we have persisted in life . . . from the very beginning of time to this very day.
We always will . . .
