[Avodah] "And Nevertheless ..." The Great Enigma of World History

[Yitzchok Levine]

The older I get the more I want to know "What is Yahadus really all 
about?"  IMO, one can know a lot of halacha, a lot of gemara, etc., 
and still not possess an overview of what Judaism is all about. IMO, 
RSRH gives one insights that help one acquire a Torah outlook.

On Shabbos I read Rav Hirsch's essay Adar VI  in The Collected 
Writings of RSRH. As I read it, I found it time and time again an eye 
opener. I have posted this essay at 
http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/adar_vi.pdf . Below are 
some selections from the essay. YL

All this is depicted in that dire prediction of Israel's future. The 
Children of Israel are seen in the "enemy country;" they are charged 
with the theft of the very ground beneath their feet, of the very air 
they breathe. They are "despised;" they have forfeited that which 
should have been "their wisdom and their insight in'the eyes of the 
nations,"  the ideals that should have shown to the nations of the 
earth how the Name of God shines upon Israel and that should have won 
Israel the respect of the world. They preferred to compete with the 
cavalries of the nations, with the armed might of the princes, with 
the politics and the political sagacity of the sovereign states. They 
attempted to vie with the others on a level not permitted them, when 
in fact it was their mission to teach the nations by their own 
example, in life and history, that such trappings of material power 
are secondary, transitory and wanting.

And so the Children of Israel lost the respect of the nations, with 
whose physical prowess they were never meant to compete. Because they 
regarded the very core of their existence as merely "accidental," 
they were repaid measure for measure in that their existence truly 
became "accidental" in the midst of an arrogant mankind, armed with 
violence, which could only see that the exiles who accidentally had 
been scattered among them lacked the foundation upon which they, the 
nations of the world, had built their glory and greatness. There is 
among the nations no eye which appreciates that quiet grandeur, that 
everlasting might which should shine all the more brightly during the 
dark periods of Israel's history; an ideal which-if only the exiles 
themselves had perceived it as their one true remaining 
treasure-would have placed Israel as a shining light upon the horizon 
and would have presented even these remnants to thinking men as the 
miracle nation, worthy of their respect.

The nations, aware that Israel does not have what they consider the 
trappings of power, do not understand the greatness which Israel does 
in fact possess. Therefore Israel finds itself "despised" in enemy 
country, without personal and civil rights, scorned as a lowly worm 
among earth's creatures. The Biblical prediction portrays the 
Children of Israel as "rejected" everywhere, a foreign body, 
disruptive, troublesome, an obstacle to the unity of the host nation, 
intruders whom the nation,  must literally eliminate or disgorge if 
it is to regain its balance.

       The Jews are the only element that cannot be absorbed by the 
state; they are a problem for which political wisdom cannot find a 
solution, an entity which no political authority can encompass.

<snip>

("let it be written that they be destroyed"-Esther 3, 9). The 
purblind policy of Haman was to demand a royal decree authorizing him 
to exterminate the Jews. Antiochus sought to attain the same 
objective with a sword in his right hand and with all the cunning of 
seduction in his left, appealing to the senses and befuddling the 
mind. That which cannot be exterminated physically by murder could 
well be vanquished morally by diabolical, gentle seduction; a policy 
that persistently employs both violence and temptation to achieve its 
ends may be sure of success. This is indeed the policy which has 
poisoned the air breathed by the unfortunate exiles over hundreds and 
even thousands of years.  Haman's example is followed only from time 
to time if someone's patience has worn thin, or if a Haman runs afoul 
of a Mordecai and seeks to slake a base thirst for revenge or an even 
more sordid avarice under the guise of concern for the welfare of his 
country. By and large, the atmosphere in which the history of the 
exiles unfolds follows the pattern set by Antiochus. The unfortunates 
have been subjected to the pressures and the ridicule of crude force 
on the one hand, and the satanic smile of seductive temptation on the 
other, in the hope that they will be destroyed physically and morally 
at the same time.

And then the Roman-Christian world took a certain book from the hands 
of that very despised and rejected nation which had been marked for 
destruction, and hailed this book as a promise of the world's 
redemption and of their own deliverance from the corruption of 
paganism. The adherents of this creed even began to worship a son of 
these exiles as their divine savior, and to revere that book and that 
son as the foundation of all future civilizations and of the 
advancement of salvation on earth. Then they felt they could no 
longer dismiss out of hand the suggestion that the origin, the 
destiny, the history and the teachings of these scattered exiles had 
been attended by a "special  Divine element." At that point the urge 
to destroy the Jews was given an intellectual rationalization: the 
"Divine" element that had been manifest in these exiles had become a 
thing of the past; the Jews themselves had cast it aside and 
therefore God had scattered them among the nations,  "to break My 
covenant with them."

At one time, it was claimed, the Jews had indeed been the Chosen 
People, whom God had blessed and found worthy of bringing about the 
salvation of the world. But now they are the pariahs whom God Himself 
has despised and rejected. He Himself has canceled His covenant with 
them and marked them for destruction. Therefore those who hate, 
oppress and persecute the Jews are performing a sacred task that is 
pleasing to God. ("They that rule over them bring them misery in the 
name of God"-Isaiah 52, 5). That spirit which might have salvaged the 
fate of the Jews had turned the hatred and persecution of Jews into a 
religion. thus cutting off even the last hope of the exiles.

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