The Eighth Deadly Sin

The response from much of the Diaspora Jewish community today is one of hand-wringing and very little action, following the October 7th massacres in Israel.

Memorial candles for victims of the Holocaust

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This is a guest essay written by Saul Goldman. You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

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The slogan “never again” was a promise that Jews made to themselves after the Holocaust.

It was an oath to the effect that Jews would no longer allow Jew hatred to go unanswered. Many in my generation grew up with a mantra about teasing. We would chant, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but name will never harm me.”

Yet, like so many other dogmatic conceptions, we were wrong. Teasing is a mild form of bullying and words become deeds. Furthermore, bullying is a warning that must never go unchallenged. Silence, our sages teach us, is tantamount to complicity.

By our silence during the Holocaust, we became complicit in the murder of our fellow Jews. We were guilty of the prohibition forbidding us to stand idly by. I imagine that at the time many Jews believed that there was little we could do.

The response from much of the Diaspora Jewish community today is one of hand-wringing and very little action. Maybe Diaspora Jews, beneath their display of patriotism, actually have a similar feeling of helplessness in the face of overwhelming numbers of antisemites. Perhaps Diaspora Jews are insecure about their place in American, Canadian, European, etc cetera society, so they speak too softly.

One thing is clear: Silence is deadly. That is why it is a sin. Speak up and act up before it is too late.

Jews and Judaism were conceived in the caldron of battle and courage. Like every other free nation in the world, the Hebrews fought for their liberty. Indeed, Moses called upon every Hebrew to remember the Passover as a symbol of the eternal vigilance necessary to remain free.

But, over centuries of homelessness when there was no one special place, our choice was clear. It was no longer “fight or flight”; it was only flight. One ghetto was as good as the next. For Jews in Israel, the choice is only to fight for we have no other place to go.

Diaspora Jewry, on the whole, appears confused.

If Diaspora Jews claim that America, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and so forth are their homes, they must fight for it, for these countries that used to make Jews feel safe. Many of these countries are under attack and confronting an existential war without a shot being fired.

We should not be too hasty in drawing comparisons with the Jewish situation in Europe before World War Two. However, it would be foolish not to consider the correlations between the rise of Jew hatred then and now. In defending ourselves, we defend America, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and so forth. Because those who hate Jews hate everything America, Canada, Europe, et cetera sought to become.

When the Hebrews proclaimed “liberty throughout the land…” their call evoked hope in all mankind. We set off a process in history that redefined the nature of man. He was not longer to be an object in what Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber described as an I-It relationship; he was to be a subject a reflection of his Divine creator.

American emancipation from England began when Englishmen adopted the vision of Israel’s emancipation from Egypt. Benjamin Franklin even suggested that the new nation’s seal be an image of the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea.

Our fight is for the soul of America and other democratic countries. Antisemitism is the early warning challenge that should call all Americans to rally. But if Americans, Canadians, Europeans, et cetera fail to rally around the Jews, that too is a message; a warning.

Good does not always conquer evil, but the good people must never give up. Each year, we celebrate an ancient political conflict in which the few, the very few vanquished the many. Purim is a tale of good and evil as well as the courage that is always needed in the face of evil. Esther and Mordecai led a civil rebellion in Persia against a Jew hater.

Hillel Kook was the grandson of Israel’s first chief rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook. He was one of those Jews who believed that doing even a little was better than nothing. Kook came to America to organize Jewish resistance to the Holocaust and to resist the passivity of American Jewry. Kook took the pseudonym of Peter Bergson and organized the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.

Members of this organization were Congressman Will Rodgers, Jr., Senator Guy Gillette and the British war hero, Colonel John Henry Patterson. They organized rallies all over America.

Ben Hecht, the playwright, wrote a pageant which was presented on March 9th, 1943, in Madison Square Garden. Titled “We Will Never Die,” the pageant memorialized 2 million European Jews who had already been murdered.

Forty thousand people saw the pageant that first night, and it went on to play in five other major cities including Washington, D.C., where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, six Supreme Court Justices, and some 300 senators and representatives watched it. 

Kook brought to the attention of his committee an idea that he had been developing. He sought to establish a Jewish fighting unit within the American army. His logic was that a division strength unit would become a highly motivated force that could be deployed on the German front. Knowing what the Germans were doing to their relatives would become their battle cry.

He even suggested that their shoulder patch be a Star of David. Kook believed that eventually we would have to fight against the Arab world and hoped that many of these soldiers would come to Israel and become the core of a newly formed Israeli army.

Kook’s plan never materialized because the major Jewish organizations and even the rabbinic leadership of American Jewry were afraid of Jews standing up. Their intention was that Jewry would become an assimilated part of America. In other words, American Jewry would become like any other religious group and sever their ties of blood and soil.

Toward that objective a Jewish unit would be wrong. Of course, when it came to another part of the American scene, the Irish, an all-Irish Regiment (the Fighting 69th) was organized and deployed to Europe during the First World War. So people the likes of rabbis Stephen Wise and Abba Hillel Silver were most vituperative in the attack upon Kook and his hope of getting Jews to fight for their people.

Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress and the leaders of the American Jewish Conference inveighed against the efforts of Hillel Kook and even accused him of IRS violations. Nahum Goldmann urged that he be deported while most of American Jewry remained silent.

If “never again” is our promise to resist in the way we did not resist during the Holocaust, then we must atone for our sins by strengthening ourselves. Does “never again” also mean that those who are silent must be made to speak up and to act up?  Do they understand that their silence is a betrayal not only of their people but of their country?

Presently, our Jewish defense organizations keep a tab on all kinds of antisemitic acts and speeches. It is as if they are engaging in reconnaissance. We have identified the bastions of Jew hatred. They are in universities and in the media. An effective defense demands moving quickly to the offense. How would we attack? Do American Jewish organizations even have a plan of attack? Or, have we forgotten Thomas Jefferson’s warning that our liberty is only guaranteed by our blood?

How would we campaign against universities that platform hate? How would we campaign against an administration that is abandoning Israel by lying about the conduct of the IDF? How do we speak to the heart of a country? We might begin with our Christian neighbors. I believe that Jews and Christians have a special relationship which is historical and theological.

Would I be an Islamophobe if I warned that there is a Muslim threat against Christendom? The two-state solution is a dagger at the heart of the Jewish state because Islam is at the heart of the Palestinian identity. While intolerance is regrettable, ignoring it is criminal. There is no best solution. There is a war between civilizations; between the people of light and the people of darkness.

Why would anyone suggest that an additional state of terrorism be established that is intrinsically hostile to our people? Beyond the obvious pressure of a hostile world, is there a legitimate reason for a Palestinian state of terrorists?

In Western countries across the world, mobs of Hamas sympathizers have intimidated the Jews. Students report fear on their campuses. But, courage, too, is contagious. Several years ago I met Pastor Chris Edmonds, the son of Sergeant Roddie Edmonds who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the U.S. in World War II, and the third-deadliest campaign in American history.

The German commander of the prison camp demanded that the Jewish soldiers in Sergeant Edmond’s command step forward. Sergeant Edmonds had all his troops line up. Asked by the German commander, “Can they all be Jews?” Sergeant Edmonds answered him, “We are all Jews here.”

If we were to translate this kind of courage for our college students, it would sound like: “We are all the IDF here.”

In 1975, when the United Nations declared Zionism as racism, I saw a gentile friend of mine wear a badge on his coat lapel that said: “I am a Zionist.”

There is an element to Zionism that is transcendent. It is not simply about the right of Jews to their own land. It is beyond a national concern. It is about morality, about ultimate truths that are often subverted. Zionism is about the moral voice of history; what German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel defined as the evolution of the World Spirit.

History, however, is determined by what men and women do. History is about time and what we do in that time. History is about the Covenant between God and mankind; it is God’s invitation to mankind, to do our part.

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