It is so easy to lose track of history, at least when life is pleasant. It’s like watching a mesmerizing sunset: you can lose track of where you are and the time until the show is over. Likewise, as long as our personal histories are under control and nothing seems to be threatening them, we tend not to care about what happened 80 years ago, or what may happen 80 years in the future.
That is ALWAYS a mistake, though it is not always apparent. History is like one of those huge oil tankers. When they want to stop the tanker they have to put the brakes on a good mile before they do. They are so heavy and carry so much oil that quick stops are out of the question being incredibly dangerous. Likewise, history is huge and carries a lot of baggage built up over long periods of time. If you want to change its course, you have to start early, not when it starts to annoy you. The Jewish people revisited that lesson around 1938 and, it seems, are about to relearn it the hard way.
The problem with history is that it repeats itself. The problem with people is that they forget this.
Maybe forget is too strong a word. Holocaust survivors, the few that are left and see what is going on today, look on with extreme nervousness. What happened to them was so ugly and terrifying that it left an indelible mark on their subconscious mind. Even if they managed to return to some semblance of normalcy after the war, their brains lived on high alert the rest of their lives. Their subconscious mind probably sensed a turn for the worse once again even before their conscious mind did.
But we, the fortunate ones, did not witness the Holocaust, not in person and not in the news. Our generation was either not yet born, or too young to know and appreciate what was going on thousands of miles across the sea. Our appreciation of horrifying and sadistic does not go very deep, getting stuck somewhere between our heads and our hearts.
Consequently, we haven’t forgotten per se that what is going on today is an updated and expanded version of pre-World War II antisemitism. We just don’t recognize that it is, not having personally experienced it. And since most Jews have ignored the Torah’s command to learn history well so that we can recognize the symptoms of the next impending disaster (Devarim 32:7), they don’t have the data base to make the comparison and learn what, in the past, has been a life-saving message. Well, at least until after it has already done its killing.
We’re like people who keep putting out little forest fires as they spring up. There’s one. There’s one. There’s another. At some point, shouldn’t we ask, “Hey, is someone deliberately lighting these fires, and if yes, why?” The best way to avoid a forest fire is to arrest the arsonist before he lights it. The best way to avoid Holocaust-like effects of antisemitism is to “arrest” the source of the problem in the first place.
What IS the source of the problem in the first place? There are two possible answers, the Torah’s and the secular world’s.
The Torah says very specifically in Parashas Bechukosai and Parashas Ki Savo that enemies attack us, the Jewish people, when we no longer merit divine protection. That has never stopped being true, though it may be harder today to see the direct connections than in the past when we had prophets.
The secular world chooses to believe that it has nothing to do with our spiritual behavior. Rather, they believe, the world is filled with racists, and some target the Jewish people. We may not be able to rid the world of antisemitism, but at least we can try to beat it back and keep it at livable levels. If we can’t, then, well…
People thought that by building Holocaust “museums” it would keep the world informed and prevent future genocide. They thought by creating an ADL that it would be enough of a frontline to keep the rest of us safe. We thought that after one Holocaust, very few antisemites would have the stomach for another.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It only takes half a century for people to forget horrors of the past that happened to someone else. People born after them had no connection to them to begin with, and they certainly won’t go looking for one. Add to that a general laziness to learn “impractical” knowledge and decades of dumbing up and you get, for all intents-and-purposes, a history in which the Holocaust did NOT occur.
So many Jews find it so baffling and offensive. It is too much to get their heads around that some of them choose to join the antisemites rather than fight them. Others choose to put their head in the sand and pretend that the antisemitism will take care of itself. It never, ever has.
Only a very, very small group understand antisemitism for what it is, though they feel powerless to do much about it. You can shoot its “soldiers” in self-defense or go on the offensive and counterattack. But at the end of the day, it’s the General that makes the difference, and that’s God. You have to get on HIS good side again.
I used to tell people when discussing the topic that if you took current history and fed it into a computer, and added Jewish history as well as Tanach, and then asked the computer for the most logical explanation for it all, the computer would probably answer, “God.” Not as a matter of emotion, not as a matter of religion, but as a matter of logic. He’s the only logical common denominator that unifies all three.
But darn, that yetzer hara of ours just puts up a wall and takes advantage of ignorance and emotional weaknesses.
“Eat, drink, and be merry”?
That his line.
Throw caution to the wind?
That’s the yetzer hara’s way.
Hope for the best and ignore the worst?
That’s been the result in the past. The question is, will it be the result in the future as well. Only history will tell…