“A Civilization with Wisdom of Thousands of Years Should Know Better”

Happy February, everyone!

One year ago this month I treated the world to a haunting depiction about why my project is necessary, giving 100 examples of Jewish anti-Goyism from the Internet (from comments as well as from articles).

One year after that week, in which I shocked quite a number of people, I see that there is little that has changed–in fact, I see that the anti-Goyism on the Internet has intensified.

Although one year of perspective gives me the ability to see that there is indeed a “silent majority” of people who have views quite similar to mine about a Global Jewish Future, one that includes Israel, the United States, and many other countries as well. In this silent majority are those that understand that there are two stories about Jewish Europe, one of renewed life and another about renewed struggle.

But that silent majority is, indeed, silent.

Instead the microphone is taken from them (where, I think, it rightfully belongs), and is given to journalists who have one job: to tell a story that sells. In order to tell a story that sells, it is necessary that the story have only one side.

The one side of these stories are often those of calamity and negative energy, which has a pervasive effect on Jewish life today as I believe that it promotes a sense of victim mentality that I find is not helpful for looking forward.

On a side note, glimpsing the interwar period in my class on Advanced Reading of Yiddish Texts makes me realize that a comparison of today to the 1930’s is positively obscene.

Ansky describes a world in the First World War in which it was believed that “ninety percent of Jews were traitors and ten percent were spies”.

To say that those days are being revisited only serves to sell stories and to spread an unhealthy sense of fear.

One attack on a synagogue is always too many, and to compare those of recent months to Kristallnacht–a state-sponsored crushing of Jewish Life throughout a country of 90 million–is silly at best, very harmful at worst.

One does not build a future with a soul that is swamped with fear. One builds it with a sense of alertness as well as a mixture of hope and caution.

To the Jewish Community of the world today: I fear that we have too much fear. It does not serve any future well. It only serves us into being manipulated by those seeking to profit off of humanity being scared.

A civilization with wisdom of thousands of years should know better.