May 21, 2004

"Jewish Cynicism: A Tragedy and a Cure"

Zalman is an old friend. His frequent calls begin with, "Did you hear what happened?" Our most recent conversation ended with Zalman predicting doom for Jews everywhere. Israel, he says, will self-destruct because Jews can't get along with each other. Bush will turn against Israel if he is reelected. Kerry is a left-wing Arabist. Zalman has more to say as he applies his doomsday prognostications to the full spectrum of Jewish life.

Doomsayers are everywhere. It's easy to make dire predictions because they require little effort or imagination. Some argue that Jewish cynicism is an essential quality, that without it, Jews would have been vulnerable to false prophets and ideology. But Jewish cynicism is not an essential quality to our survival. It is a symptom of a serious illness.

Most Jews immigrated to the United States from Europe before World War II and few children of immigrants acquired Jewish knowledge and observance. Parents surrendered any hope for Jewish continuity in America. "It’s America," they said, and their lack of faith in America’s Jewish future resulted in an entire generation of American Jews lost to assimilation, apostasy, and Jewish illiteracy.

I remember the admonitions of an old Jew in a New York subway when I was twelve years old. He approached me with a smile on his face and pleaded with me to remove my yarmulke. He predicted a bleak future for me. "They hate Jews and will never hire anyone with a yarmulke," he said. I remember, too, the name changes from my youth when the Cohens became the Kerrys and the Kaminetskys became the Kayes.

Jews without faith run from Israel to live anywhere in this world. Germany now has the third largest Jewish population in Western Europe surpassed only by France and England, and its numbers continue to grow. Most of Germany’s new Jewish residents come from Israel and the former Soviet Union. Do the Jews there think it's better to live in the land soaked with Jewish blood than on the soil their fathers prayed and hoped for?

Cynicism, skepticism, and doomsaying constitute a psychological malaise, but there is a cure. I discovered it among the many great men, most especially Gedolai-Torah, I have known. Each had the courage to be optimistic even in the most difficult times. My late Rebbe and Rosh Yeshiva, the Gaon Rav Yisroel Gustman, z. l., surpassed all others in his greatness in Torah, but his hope and optimism, his perennial smile, shattered the darkest of human experiences. He suffered through the Holocaust and lost his only son to the Nazis, saw his Kehilla Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, go up in flames, and yet had strength and faith. My wife and I once walked the streets of Jerusalem with him in the middle of the night, as he often did. He looked up at Jerusalem's new, tall buildings and recited David’s words, "Walk about Zion and encircle her, count her towers. Mark well in your hearts her ramparts, raise up her palaces, that you may recount it to succeeding generations. For this is!
G-d, our G-d, forever and ever. He will guide us like children." (Tehillim: 48).

Israel faces unprecedented challenges today. There are many who want to lead but "not all who wish to take the name may come and take." (Berachot:16b) David, our greatest warrior and most inspired leader taught: "Weeping endures for a night but joy comes in the morning." (Tehillim 30) My late father explained the verse to me: "It is unique to Judaism that the night must precede the day so that we should know that all suffering will end and night is never forever." I would neither trust nor vote for a leader, in Israel or this country, bereft of positive visions and affirmative attitude. Pessimism is paralytic.

That is why Arab terrorism is a failure. Yes, the terrorists have successfully killed our men, women, and children, but the mad and barbaric savages who kill and willingly die are denied hope for life in this world by their phony prophets and leaders. If only a leader would emerge in the Arab world who would teach hope and optimism, then peace would follow.

We, the people of Torah who were the first to teach and practice faith, should know without a doubt that Hashem’s promise not to forsake His people is true for all who believe and trust that the new day is better than the old night. My friend Zalman may excitedly react to any mention of peace as an impossible dream, but those with the courage to have remember these words from the Zohar: "You have nothing that stands in the way of the will." (2:162).

Shabbat Shalom