The Failed Certainties of Our Lifetime
Historically there were no accurate warnings in advance of catastrophes. Only vague prophecies about human imperfections.
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This is a guest essay written by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
We humans love certainties.
We think we know, but more often than not, we stumble on. Our history is replete with failed systems and misguided leaders.
Look at the Bible. Even the best of them is fallible. And the Bible makes no attempt to cover up or excuse the mistakes of our religious and political leaders. Judges, kings, priests, rabbis — all have misjudged and failed to some degree.
Attempts at finding ideal political solutions and systems of governance have proven to be failures eventually. Predictions are even more fallible as we grapple with a world where good often seems bad and bad seems good.
Historically there were no accurate warnings in advance of catastrophes. Only vague prophecies about human imperfections. Characters such as Nostradamus were suitably vague to be capable of multiple interpretations. So are the fashionable predictions derived from Biblical sources about much later events. And despite the Talmud telling us not to try predicting the arrival of the Messiah, we have not stopped trying to for the past 2,000 years.
All great empires around the world so far have collapsed at some stage. A few have been reconstituted. No one predicted the eclipse of Greece, the Decline of the Roman Empire, or the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire. The collapse of Napoleon’s armies, and Hitler’s until they happened, of course. They were overconfident. They thought they had much more power and the result was less.
Let’s look at how often we have been wrong.
In the West we assumed…
… that the politicians and bureaucrats would by now have realized that the very appeasement policies that led to the Second World War would only prolong conflict in the Middle East by persisting with policies which have consistently failed.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we thought that capitalism had proved the victor. Francis Fukuyama even suggested the end of history. (He then claimed he did not mean it.)
We could not predict the rise of the evil alliance of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. Or the invasion of Ukraine. We thought that Cuba was bound to collapse (as well as Venezuela and other dictatorial South American regimes).
And certainly, we ordinary people did not imagine October 7th.
We may think we know what might happen in the next year few years politically or environmentally. But the evidence is that we do not.
We did not predict Covid. The greatest things that happened in history have been things we did not predict (like the resurrection of the Jewish state). We might have sensed there would be shifts in power, rises and falls. But did not know how or when.
It is the nature of this world and its inhabitants to grow overconfident and make disastrous mistakes. Look at the failed certainties of our lifetime.
As Jews we assumed…
… that orthodoxy was going to disappear, both in the Diaspora and Israel. America would always be the Goldene Medina for Jews. Antisemitism in the Western World had been curbed. That Holocaust Museums and education would prevent antisemitism.
China would never become antisemitic because it has (virtually) no Jews. Now it is the biggest spreader of antisemitic propaganda through its TikTok.
In Israel we assumed…
… that the Arabs would be willing to share territory. That they would agree to peace after the War of Independence, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1990s Oslo Accords treaties, and the 2000 Camp David Summit.
After we achieved peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, we thought conflict would end. That leaving Lebanon and Gaza would bring an end to fighting and that “mowing the lawn” in Gaza every now and then would keep Hamas under control and quiescent.
We thought there were enough moderate Muslims to counterbalance the jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood. We thought Israel might pivot away from the USA and Europe toward China or better still India. And that Israeli intelligence combined with political leadership would know what was going to happen on October 7th.
All this because of overconfidence, relying on the “status quo” and not considering other ways of “skinning the cat.” And then we believed that it was possible with one decisive campaign to eradicate terror and Hamas. But we should have known that America, so fixated on appeasement and compromise, might support us initially, but would never allow Israel to win.
In his book, “The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost,” history professor Cathal J. Nolan wrote:
“The idea of this decisive battle will always be more alluring than winning by attrition both morally and aesthetically to generals and theorists and to publics hungry for war news of victory, yet exhaustion of the enemy has in modern times more usually achieved political ends in big wars fought among great powers, which suggests that more humanity is needed.”
We must be skeptical of our certainties and be open to challenging and examining them. All this does not mean that things will only get worse. History is full of cycles. Against the odds and inexplicably, things might change for the better. There are moderate Muslims who realize they must stand up against terror and violence.
Just as we have our zealots as well as pacifists. In Israel there have always been moderates and optimists. It is just that every time there is violence, viscerally one tightens up and closes the gates for protection. We may one day see peace, tolerance, friendship, and understanding however remote it seems now.
We do not control the future, but we can influence it. It is when one has the illusion of control, that one ends up losing control. When you think you have more power than you have, the confidence becomes arrogance. Napoleon was very successful in battle. So was Hitler before they both failed. So was Russia. And so are too many leaders today.
The idea that the world can become a better place sustains us with hope — however dark the situation may appear. For some this is what Messianism promises, for the future not the present.
We all have different narratives and loyalties that conflict and seem irreconcilable. In the meantime, as individuals, regardless of what those around us might do, we know we must pursue the good, justice, and honesty and remember that we all come from one source. We might be groping in the dark, worried about the future, but we cannot not give up.
Yes indeed survival requires strength and ignoring the appeasers.
Of course you can quote Tanakh.And rightly so. But look at how differently Jews and Christians for example treat the same texts. The question is how we can reconcile a spiritual story with rationality or historical events. In the end one decides which approch one prefers.