The Jew Beyond the Natural Order

he preparation for Pesach, more frenzied than that for all other festivals combined, finds its culmination as family and guests gather around the seder-table. Tranquility and calm replace the mad rush of the previous weeks. Seder (order) has been restored... or so we think. Just as we are ready to commence this much anticipated meal, a tiny squeak is heard from the direction of the youngest of the fraternity. And with the question "Why is this night different? " attention is drawn to the strange assortment of foods and relishes on the table.

"Order, is this what you people call order? What normal people eat matza, charoset and maror or do any of the other weird and wonderful things you are gearing up to do this evening?"

There is an old Yiddish folk-saying "Bei Yidden es is nishto kein seder." There is no seder (order) amongst Jews. They no sooner embark on the seder (order), and the child asks "Why is this night different?"(1)

There would seem to be more than a grain of truth in this saying. The Talmud says, "This nation is compared to the stars and compared to the dust, when they rise, they rise to the heavens; when they sink, they sink to the dust."(2) Greater than others, less than others... yes! Equal, normal, ordinary...no!

During our glorious, yet tortuous, history we have risen to heights unequalled by any other nation or people...but we have also been trampled underfoot by all other nations and people. We are a nation which has given the world so much, yet has suffered so much in return.

If the lofty concept of morality exists, it is due to the Jews; and if the degrading concept of holocaust exists, then that too is due to the Jews.

In his mad rantings to his friend Rauschning, Hitler, yemach shmo, put it this way:

"It is true we are barbarians. That is an honored title to us. I free humanity from the degrading suffering caused by the false vision called conscience and ethics... They are Jewish inventions. The war for domination of the world is waged only between the two of us...the Germans and the Jews..."(3)

Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, saw Jews as the cultural force that had overthrown the natural order of might makes right, the law of the jungle. What is known as Western civilization and morality, he claimed, are in reality perversions of natural law and a violation of the ideal human order of domination of the strong for no other reason than the fact of their strength (4).

The Jew tries to raise Man from the ugly "natural order" of the survival of the fittest to a "superorderly" morality which alone can make him Human. But Man, not yet ready to be elevated, denigrates the Jew and subjects him to a "suborderly" existence. Either way, the Jew knows no order. Superorder, suborder...yes! Order...no!

And yet, in spite of all the above, in spite of millennia of historical precedent, the Jew still persists in a stubborn struggle for acceptance, for normalization, for order.

The assimilationist Jews of Germany saw the baptismal font as a carte blanche for their integration into society. It was an acceptable price to pay for "normalization", for "order" . The assimilationist Jews of Russia saw the "Jewish Problem" as a product of a bourgeois class system. Once we break down the barriers, they said, the Jews will be like everyone else...normal.

The capitalist Jews of Germany and the communist Jews of Russia each sought to solve this so-called "Jewish Problem" in their own way, the Germans through making the Jews "ordinary" Germans, the Russians through making the Jews "ordinary" people. Certainly they achieved something. People ostensibly stopped being anti-Jewish, Jewishness being associated with a religious system to which the Russian and German Jewish assimilationists no longer adhered. This was instead replaced with a hatred based on stock and race - antisemitism . And with this new label came a level of suffering and degradation which within a few years surpassed that of all of the previous three and a half millennia of Jewish suffering combined.

The German Jews and the Russian Jews had each forgotten that for Jews there is no "order".

But there have been highs as well as lows. After our extraordinary survival of two thousand years of dispersion, we were finally able to re-establish sovereignty on Jewish soil. In a miraculous string of victories, Israel, that mite amongst the nations, has proven herself superior to the might of over a hundred million Arabs. "When they rise, they rise to the heavens.(2)"

What a glorious opportunity for Jewish revival, for Jewish self-expression, for Jewish development!

Yet in spite of the extraordinary heights and depths of the last half-century, heights and depths which prove beyond all doubt that we are not an ordinary people, there are still those of our brethren clamouring for us to become a nation like all other nations (5), that Israel become a secular country where Jews happen to reside, rather than a Jewish country. People who, like Gershon Shocken, one-time editor of the well-known Israeli daily "Ha-aretz", say that for Israel to survive there must be a removal of the prohibition against intermarriage, there must be a complete integration of Jews and Gentiles. Only this, they claim, is consistent with the spirit of the New Israel.

They say this in the hope of "normalising" the Jews, of solving what to them is the "Jewish Problem". They take no heed of the fact that what was once anti-Jewishness and later replaced by anti-semitism, now goes under the guise of anti-Zionism in absolute defiance of any attempts at normalisation. When the Jew attempted to assimilate religiously and socially his escape was blocked by anti-Jewishness being replaced by anti-Semitism. When the Jew attempts to assimilate nationally, "to become a nation like all other nations", his escape is blocked by anti-Zionism. The pariah status of the Jew as an individual has been replaced by the pariah status of Israel as state. The Jews are simply not a normal people. Amongst Jews, there is no order!

So let us learn the lessons of history, let us forsake this quest for "normalisation, for "ordinariness", for "acceptance" amongst the nations, and let us accept instead our role as G-d's "special people(6)", as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation(7)". Let us accept our role as a special and separate people with a special and separate Torah, while at the same time continuing to impart morals and ethics to all of mankind so that Man can eventually discover his Divinely human image. It may be a role which has at times been plagued with tragedy and frustration, but it is our role, and the only (8) possible role for a Jew. It may be an extraordinary goal, but let us not forget that we are an extraordinary people.

On this festival of Pesach, this occasion of the birth of the Jews as a nation (9), I wish all of you increased sense of Jewish identity, speciality and mission.

NOTES

1. In Torah, too, the written as well as the oral law, there Is no order. Talmud Pesachim 6b, Bava Kama 102a. Cf. LaTorah U'Lamoadim, Rabbl S. Y. Zevin, p349.

2. Talmud, Megillah, 16a

3. Sparks of Glory, Prager. M. pXIV

4. Ibid pXIII

5. Cf. Ezeklel 20,32.

6. Exodus 19:5

7 Exodus 19:5

8 "The thought which enters your mind shall never come to pass, that which you say "we will be as the nations, as the families of the world"...' By my life", says the Lord G-d, "I will rule over you with a strong hand, and an outstretched arm..."" (Ezekiel 20:32).
9. Ezekiel 16:4,5 s (Rashl, Metzudot).