M

y shochein tov here at the front of the magazine Reb Yonoson Rosenblum writes this week that despite his friend’s perception of lockstep Rosenblum-Kobre agreement he has come up with something on which he and I disagree. I’m not convinced the perception is correct to begin with but if it’ll help matters I’ll work on being a bit more disagreeable (although I think I’ll defer that project until after the Yamim Noraim).

Reb Yonoson writes to critique my column of two weeks ago addressing a Bret Stephens piece in the Wall Street Journal about anti-Semitism. I’ll try to restate my thoughts on the topic hopefully making my original intent clearer and allaying at least some of his concerns. But I want to note at the outset that it was not about Mr. Stephens nor did I “charge” anything about his level of Jewish knowledge. It was specifically to emphasize the substantive over the personal that I spent my first 48 precious words speaking well of Mr. Stephens as a person and writer.

But I also noted the demonstrable truth that a Jew who isn’t schooled in looking at the world through a Torah lens is inevitably going to at least partially misdiagnose historical phenomena like the “longest hatred.” I did so because the point of my column was to be a corrective to such misdiagnosis (and also ironically as a limud zechus for Mr. Stephens which apparently didn’t turn out very well).

And while it’s true that “profound grounding in Torah” may not “characterize everyone writing for Mishpacha” I don’t imagine Reb Yonoson is really arguing for a theological free-for-all in which Bret Stephens’s views on a topic on which Chazal have spoken extensively are to be given equal weight to that of Torah scholars. Readers can be assured that what we write in these pages is reviewed by people who are indeed possessed of deep Torah wisdom and importantly consult with those even wiser in Torah than they.

Stephens citing an observation by the historian Paul Johnson wrote of the societal decline that Jew-hatred portends for the nations in which it flourishes and I wrote that I largely agreed with him. Indeed I see as Reb Yonoson does the malign effects of Jew-hatred on those who embrace it as a striking manifestation of Hashem’s promise to Avraham Avinu of u’mekallelcha a’or I will curse those who curse you. I agree too that Stephens’s Jewish readers would indeed have been enriched by knowing that history corroborates Scripture in this regard — if only he had told them so.

The problem is that although I agree with Stephens — and with Robert Wistrich’s notion of anti-Semitism as a “function of Jewish chosenness” which Yonoson correctly sources in Torah — I’m quite certain they don’t agree with me. They and the larger society whose worldview they share do not at all agree with the classic Jewish understanding of anti-Semitism as a Divine wake-up call and a spur to introspection and return to Hashem.

But even more troubling than the rejection of this understanding by Messrs. Stephens and Wistrich is the fact that one encounters Torah-observant Jews who are also deeply uncomfortable with it or even implicitly dismissive of it. To be frank it is to the latter that my column was in the main directed.

I tried to address what I thought might be one source of their discomfort which is the sense that we are somehow blaming the Jewish victims rather than the Jew-hating perpetrators. In truth of course the Jewish response doesn’t remove one iota of blame from upon the heads of those who despise and harm us whom I wrote “Hashem will take care of… as only He knows how for all eternity.”

To be sure great care must be taken not to presumptuously place the blame for Jew-hatred or anything else on specific groups or individuals. Absent prophecy that’s arrogant folly and as the Mishnah (Bava Metzia 59b) rules attributing the troubles of another Jew to his sins violates an explicit Torah prohibition of ona’as devarim.

But just as that prohibition presents no contradiction whatsoever to the fundamental Jewish notion that “it isn’t the snake that kills but the sin” (Berachos 33a) so is an affirmation of generalized Torah truths about anti-Semitism not an exercise in blaming the victim. Understood properly it provides reassurance to the victim that life is not random but overseen by a caring G-d and utilized properly protects the victim from further travail.

Since I had no issue with what Stephens had written I argued only that he had ignored — rejected by omission really — the far more relevant and fruitful focus on the lessons anti-Semitism might hold for us. Those lessons are twofold. One is to see the animus directed at us for what the Torah tells us it is — a Divinely orchestrated catalyst for spiritual introspection and self-betterment.

The Torah view of things is so Jew-centric that Chazal teach (Yevamos 63a) Ein pur’anus ba’ah l’olam ela bishvil Yisrael even calamities that befall other nations and don’t seemingly affect the Jews at all are primarily intended as a message for us. No historian in the world would agree with that statement. But they’re all wrong and we’re right having it on good authority from the Author not of history books but of history.

All the more so is it the case then that Jew-hatred itself serves purposes that if we utilize them properly can only be described as constructive for us. Anti-Semitism helps preserve Jewish identity and beats back assimilation by keeping Jews separate and reminding them of who they are; anti-Semitism helps trigger introspection and repentance; anti-Semitism turns us into the “pursued ” whom Hashem seeks to protect (Koheles 3:15); and anti-Semitism atones.

The second type of lesson anti-Semitism provides will often be plain to see and hear in the words of the anti-Semite himself. Dovid Hamelech said it best: “Bakamim alai mereyim tishmanah oznai — When my enemies rise up against me my ears pay heed.” Some of the most important spiritual truths about the Jews and their role in history have been uttered by the greatest reshaim that ever lived from Haman to Hitler yimach shemam v’zichram.

Reb Yonoson writes that I “insist that the only thing we as Jews need to know about anti-Semitism is that it is always a call for a spiritual accounting of ‘Where we have fallen short.’ ” But I did no such thing. I entirely agree with him that anti-Semitism is a built-in feature of life in this world and derives from our uniqueness as Hashem’s nation and possessors of the Torah. But how does that contradict its additional function of conveying His messages to us?

And so I focused on the idea of anti-Semitism as Divine messaging for two reasons. First as noted earlier it’s the message people including too many of our own either reject or simply don’t want to hear about which makes it precisely the one that needs to be heard. Don’t take my word for it just think about it: When anti-Semitism rears its head anywhere around the globe is it only the ADL and its ilk that as I wrote “reflexively jump to blame and retort and look everywhere but to ourselves to search our souls”? Or is it us too?

Second I wanted to explain not merely how the Jew conceptualizes Jew-hatred but how the Jew responds to it. Although contemplating Jewish uniqueness as the source of the anti-Semite’s envy is well and good it doesn’t give the already-observant Jew anything to actually do in practice. But seeing it as Hashem chastising us “as a father chastises his son” and beckoning us to return to Him does.

Reb Yonoson writes that “punishment is not the only framework for evaluating events.” But I wrote about Divine wake-up calls a very different concept from punishment. An anti-Semite’s refusal to shake a Jew’s hand or his taunt in the street are not the stuff of punishment but can certainly be taken as an action intended to rouse us from our spiritual slumber and remind us of who we are and what we need to be doing.

My friend also characterizes my column as “lumping together [the yissurim of taking the wrong coin from one’s pocket] and the results of demonic anti-Semitism” with both meriting only “the same generic response ‘Where did we fall short?’ ” But in his very next sentence he writes that “constant self-examination of one’s actions is the hallmark of a Torah life.” So which is it? The answer is that all are true: Although we should be constantly examining our actions we don’t and so we need reminders from little ones involving pocket change to big ones involving anti-Semitic behavior.

Indeed in all of life looking inward rather than outward when bad things happen is the most mature thing one can do. Even Bret Stephens agrees with that because just this week he began his column by citing Bernard Lewis’s observation “that there are two basic ways in which people and nations respond to adversity and decline. The first… is to ask ‘Who did this to us?’ The second is ‘What did we do wrong?’ One question leads to self-pity; the other to self-help. One disavows personal responsibility and moral agency; the other commands them.”

So Mr. Stephens and I agree that the responsible response to adversity is to ask how one can grow from the experience not whom there is to blame. But he only applies it to individuals and nations facing failure and decline not to anti-Semitism which he likely sees as purely the product of the anti-Semite’s malignant mind from which there is nothing for the Jew to learn. Given the conspiratorial rantings that are the anti-Semite’s usual fare it’s a reasonable position to take — until one opens the Torah and studies what G-d has to say about how His world works and why Jew-hatred exists in it.