Among the most profound lessons we are taught from the earliest chapters of the Hebrew Bible is that if we don’t truly comprehend, value and work hard to preserve a godly sense of order, we are fated to plunge backward into primordial chaos, with the light of godliness severely dimmed if not extinguished.
While efforts to undermine civilizational order by tyrannical and dictatorial ideologies are age-old, we are witnessing now new attacks being launched against our sacred moral and rational order, with resulting manifestations of destructive and devolving chaos abounding
One of many disturbing examples of this phenomenon is the Jew-hatred (sometimes deceivingly presented as “anti-Zionism”) spewing forth from the minds, hearts and hands of sinister antisemites, with too much impunity for the attackers, vitriol for the victims and silence from the world around them. Astoundingly, this is happening in the greatest of places, the USA and Israel.
This is on the regressive road to chaos, to darkness.
Godly order gives us a strong sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong, rational and irrational, good and evil. Chaos and darkness confuse them, reverse them and undermine them.
And we are watching that chaos and darkness set it, as confusion is maliciously being promulgated and discord sown by some small people with very loud and shrill voices, shallow knowledge, immoral intentions and dangerous and violent intentions and actions.
As a non-Orthodox active pulpit rabbi offering my unqualified love of and support for Israel, I set aside the overused stipulations so often offered by rote as a way of toning down and buffering statements ostensibly supportive of Israel – such elementarily obvious givens as “Israel isn’t perfect,” “Israel has faults,” “criticism of Israel is fine,” and “some of these issues are nuanced.”
When you love or support someone, you don’t constantly remind them and others of how imperfect they are; you don’t dwarf your professions of love or support with overwhelming and unrelenting public criticism, demonization, and falsehoods; you don’t claim to love or support someone and then proceed to openly cut them down and undermine them at every turn. That is clearly neither love nor support – it is the opposite.
I state unabashedly, with both pride and humility, and with a large dose of hope and good will, that Israel is right and Israel is good; Israel’s enemies are wrong and malevolent. Israel and the Jewish people are the undeserving victims of age-old hate and attack.
THANK GOD there is once again a State of Israel today, re-birthed in its ancient homeland, the land that has known the national sovereignty of only one people in its existence, the land that has finally again been restored by and to its rightful historic, religious, national and divinely ordained people. Israel and the Jewish people have shared with the world their civilizational, foundation and moral code; they have shared their genius, talent, creativity, benevolence and direction with the world at large; and the world has been made better for it.
The enemies of Israel and the Jewish people intentionally obfuscate all of this, as they seek the harm and destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, and do all in their power to mislead people in pursuit of their unholy goal. Whether out of jealousy, ignorance, religious or social bigotry or the need to scapegoat the world’s oldest and most convenient target, the cowardly antagonists of the Jewish people and Israel are out to make good on their malevolent intent. They, their enablers and their canards cannot be given an inch of leeway, a modicum of consideration, a sliver of acquiescence, for to cavort with such evil or to be neutral or “even-handed” about it is to support it.
Teaching and correcting the ill-informed, and exposing and fighting the hateful prejudices of the antisemites, are vital and monumental tasks. To do so, we must be informed, we must have conviction, we must be strong and courageous, we must be wise and act with wisdom, we must stand for truth and against prevarication, we must not be intimidated, we must be proud of who we are, and we must seek the victory of order over chaos, light over darkness.
This age-old scourge of antisemitism is buttressed by the larger picture of the undermining and deterioration of values, norms, and wisdom. Good people have to stand up and be heard, and not accept but rather fight against the absurdities that surround us, the deleterious regressive ideologies that are harming us, the tyrannical people who are trying to intimidate us and bring down the greatest of nations and civilizations.
Fortunately there are some strong and wise people who are bravely, sensibly and with clear factual and moral foundations making their voices heard, and with great determination and conviction helping to set things right.
For those who say they want peace, and truly mean it, there should be no confusion about which side to take. And take sides we must. For those who seek not regression to chaos and darkness, but rather a truly progressive re-embracing of godly order and light in our world, the path is clear. Each of us must choose wisely – everything depends on it.
Rabbi Jonathan Pearl, PhD, is a congregational rabbi in New York, an award-winning author, musical director of Shirat Yona, with a new book and podcast forthcoming.