European Jewry: Stay or Go?

Our tradition teaches: Mishenikhnas Adar marbim b’simhah, when [the month of] Adar enters, one must increase joy. (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 29a) For me, as I imagine for you, it has been a difficult commandment to fulfill as we greeted this new month with a sense of gloom. No sooner had we announced the arrival of this month containing Purim, than we awoke to the news of the most recent violent incident of European anti-Semitism, a shooting at Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue. We pray that the memory of Dan Uzan, the murdered synagogue security guard, be for a blessing and that his family be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

As the Jewish world absorbed the news from Copenhagen, the remarks that Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered in the wake of the attack seem to have touched a nerve in the collective Jewish psyche. “We say to Jews,” Netanyahu declared, “to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home … We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: ‘Israel is the home of every Jew.’ … To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms.”

Repeating a sentiment he first expressed after last month’s Paris attacks, Netanyahu’s statement was understood to be a not-so-subtle warning that for European Jewry, the writing is on the wall. Copenhagen would not be the last anti-Semitic attack, and the Jewish community would do well to leave its hostile environment and come home to the Jewish homeland. With more than 7,000 French Jews having immigrated to Israel in 2014, double the number from the prior year, Netanyahu pressed forward on Sunday with a $45 million plan to encourage further aliyah from France, Belgium, and Ukraine.

Netanyahu’s remarks provoked a series of rebuttals from both within and without the Jewish world. The governments of both France and Denmark affirmed the past, present, and future importance of French and Danish Jewry to their respective countries. In the words of Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, “They [the Jews] belong in Denmark. They are a strong part of our community, and we will do everything we can to protect the Jewish community in our country.”

The most vociferous responses to Netanyahu’s call for mass immigration, however, came from the leadership of the Jewish community. Both the French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia and the Danish Chief Rabbi Jair Melchior expressed their disappointment with Netanyahu, with Melchior explaining, “Terror is not a reason to move to Israel … People from Denmark move to Israel because they love Israel, because of Zionism. If the way we deal with terror is to run somewhere else, we should all run to a deserted island.” Or, in the pointed words of ADL National Director Abe Foxman: “I don't think he [Netanyahu] should urge them … No, I don't think we should so easily grant Hitler a posthumous victory.” Should European Jewry stay or go? It is a debate that is playing out in the halls of Jewish philanthropy. Should UJA or the Jewish Agency direct resources towards supporting and protecting Jewish life in Europe or should those funds go towards facilitating the immigration of European Jewry to Israel? It is an internal Jewish debate that, prompted by the news of the past month, has spilled out into the open – a debate reflecting the angst of being a diaspora Jew.

It is also a set of circumstances that is not new. We need look no further than the scroll of this season, the book of Esther, to understand the tensions we face. In the words of the great scholar S.D. Goitein, “Esther is an Exilic book, written in the Exile, for the Exile.” (Bible Studies, p. 62) Esther isn’t the only biblical narrative to take place outside of the land of Israel, but Purim is the only Jewish holiday commemorating a victory over anti-Semitism in the diaspora. But more telling than its location are the diasporic tensions it reflects: the socio-political condition of the Jewish community of ancient Persia. “There is,” explains Haman to Ahasuerus, “a nation, apart and scattered from those of every other people of your empire. Their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws. It is not in your majesty’s interest to leave them alone.” (Esther 3:9) In this single verse, Haman gives expression to the neurosis of diaspora Jewry. A minority population that is vulnerable to the whims of the majority population. A people who are suspected of dual loyalties and powerless to address their exposed condition. Megillat Esther is not overly preachy, it is supposed to feel like a fairy tale; but like all great narratives, it is filled with vexing questions. Was Esther right or wrong to hide her Jewish identity? Is the scroll’s take-home message to assimilate into non-Jewish culture, or to maintain boundaries between the Jews and the host population? Purim indeed celebrates a diaspora victory, but why does it do so without mention of God or a return to the land of Israel? Is its message one of hostile resistance and revenge or of accommodation? Is it a defense or a critique of diaspora life? The answers aren’t clear and I don’t think they are meant to be. Esther forces us to squirm on the needle point of these and other questions without offering tidy answers. But the most enduring challenge of all, the one that we have never shaken off and continue to struggle with today, is the haunting spectre of Haman. Is diaspora Jewry in a perennially contingent status, where one day it’s fine and the next it’s black? Is it just a matter of time before another virulent Haman-like expression of anti-Semitism rears its head, and we, like the Jews of Persia, find ourselves waiting on a miracle for salvation? The book of Esther serves as a sort of anti-Semitic looking glass for every age: a wake-up call for the diaspora princess who has fallen into a terminal slumber, a condition that can only be liberated, at least in Netanyahu’s mind, with the kiss of national Jewish life. (A. Shapira, Modern Judaism, “Anti-Semitism & Zionism,” p. 231)

The intellectual pedigree of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent remarks is not so difficult to trace. The nineteenth-century Russian Zionist thinker Leo Pinsker, in the wake of the anti-Jewish Russian pogroms of 1881, castigated his diaspora co-religionists for deluding themselves into thinking that they would one day find acceptance by their enlightened hosts. “Since the Jew is nowhere at home,” wrote Pinsker, “nowhere regarded as a native, he remains an alien everywhere.” Pinsker’s most famous essay was entitled “Auto-emancipation,” in which he argued that the only remedy for the diaspora Jew’s degraded position was to stop depending on the good will of a host country and to create “one single refuge,” a homeland of our own. And if Pinsker’s language is reminiscent of Netanyahu, it may just be because it was the Prime Minister’s late father, the great historian Professor Benzion Netanyahu, who, whether writing about Jewish communities of ancient Persia, fifteenth-century Spain, nineteenth-century Russia, or twentieth-century Europe, also held this lachrymose understanding of Jewish history. It is a view perhaps best summed up by the elder Netanyahu’s one-time employer Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who in 1937 prophetically proclaimed to his Jewish brethren: “Eliminate the Diaspora, or the Diaspora will surely eliminate you.” Important as the gravitational “pull” of the Zionist dream is for Netanyahu (both father and son), it is also the diasporic push of anti-Semitism that undoubtedly informs his vision. Proof positive is the Prime Minister’s most recent campaign video in which he tells the story of his grandfather being beaten unconscious by an anti-Semitic mob in the heart of Europe. The Prime Minister shares that before passing out, his grandfather thought: “What a disgrace … the descendants of the Maccabees lie in the mud powerless to defend themselves.” If he survived, Netanyahu’s grandfather pledged, he would bring his family to Israel. At this point in the story the Prime Minister looks into the camera and says, “I am standing here today as the Prime Minister of Israel because my grandfather kept his promise.” Agree or disagree, there is no denying that Netanyahu’s ideological vision is remarkably coherent and consistent. It is a vision anchored in Jewish history, attuned to the present threats facing our people, and wholly invested in the future security of global Jewry.

So too, given the events of recent months, it is an assessment that cannot be ignored. As Professor Deborah Lipstadt recently wrote: “This is not another Holocaust, but it’s bad enough.” Being Jewish in Manhattan is an anomaly; our present comfort is the exception, not the norm. Ours is an era where large pockets of the Jewish world, in Europe and elsewhere, live with physical insecurity. No different than the protagonists of the book of Esther, diaspora Jews are holding their breath bracing for the next act of anti-Semitic violence. Like Esther, we appeal to gentile powers for justice, imagining our plea to have some effect, all the while aware that the forces seeking our harm grow closer and stronger. The difference, of course, between our era and that of Esther, is that we do have a home, we do have a State of Israel. Our diaspora is not one of forced exile; it is a choice that has been made. The question is not whether Netanyahu’s assessment is right or wrong. Objectively, his description is on the mark. The only question is the prescriptive one, namely, what shall be done about it? Netanyahu’s answer is mass immigration. If that is not your answer, then it is incumbent upon you, upon all of us, to secure the safety and security of our at-risk brothers and sisters scattered around the world.

The turning point of the book of Esther comes in its fourth chapter when Mordecai, aware of the gravity of the situation, pleads with Esther to intervene on behalf of the Jewish people. Esther initially demurs, to which Mordecai famously replies: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the King’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place …” (4:13-14) It is Mordecai’s final word – makom, place – that is most enigmatic and thus the subject of much debate. What exactly, the rabbis ask, is the “place” to which Mordecai was referring that could deliver Jews from their crisis? While some understand makom to be a veiled reference to one of God’s many names, this year may I make the suggestion that Mordecai was simply giving voice to a proto-Zionist sentiment altogether applicable to our moment. In other words, you, Esther, have two choices: You can either stand up to anti-Semitism or go to a place, a Jewish homeland, in which you will find relief. It is this choice we face today. Diaspora Jewry can either stand up to the present challenges or make aliyah. To do neither, to stand idly by with Jewish lives at risk, is simply not an option. To paraphrase Mordecai: Who knows, perhaps we have attained our position for just such a crisis? May we, like Esther, rise to the challenge of the day, support global Jewry, support the Jewish state and live to see the day, please God soon, that the Jewish people know only orah v’simhah, sasson v’yikar, light and gladness, happiness and honor. (Esther 8:16)