“Es Past Nicht” and Jewish Pride

A certain British politician once chided Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield (1804–1881), about being Jewish. “Indeed,” he responded, “I am a Jew; and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages on an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon.”

In these difficult days for the State of Israel, and the increase of anti-Semitic invective spouted by leaders across the globe, we must gird ourselves by taking Disraeli’s response to heart.

The Secret of Redemption

The Chassidic master, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov is quoted as saying, “In remembering, lies the secret of redemption.” This, indeed, is a crucial message for all Jews under siege. From the recognition of our unrivaled past, we should be able to draw the strength to confront our enemies and build a glorious future in spite of them. Moshe Rabenu taught us this secret as just before our ancestors entered the land of Israel: “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will explain to you.”[1]

Moshe sent a strong message to all Jews living in all future generations that they will only be able to hold onto their land as long as they remain intimately connected to their history, so they will always stay conscious of the reason for their existence.

Indeed the Jews have more history than any other nation, and it is a history of quality, not of quantity. We Jews do not pay homage to the heroic deeds of gladiators or the astonishing victories of armies, but rather to the soaring moral accomplishments of individual men and women of faith who made this humble people into God’s chosen nation. While we often fought physical battles to ensure our survival, we never lost sight of the fact that existence would be meaningless if not for the nation’s spiritual purpose. Our people’s exalted ethical standards and spirituality were always the source of our pride and honor, and without question, our most valuable national treasure.

The Gentile author, Lyman Abbott, once wrote:

We gentiles owe our life to Israel. It is Israel who brought us the message that God is one…. It is Israel who in bringing us the divine law, has laid the foundation of liberty… It is Israel who brought us our Bible, our prophets and our apostles…^[2]

The French historian Leroy Beaulieu added that:

As compared with the Jews, we are young, we are new-comers; in the matter of civilization they are far ahead of us. It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the walls of the ghetto. No sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us even on those paths which we had opened up without their aid.^[3]

Solid Ground?

When observing world Jewry’s spiritual condition and the general atmosphere in the State of Israel today, we find so many Jews who have forgotten who they are and what their mission in the world is all about. It is as if they have lost their past. More and more they have given up remembering and as a consequence of their indifference to their roots, they render the idea of redemption nearly impossible. In many secular Israeli schools, Israel’s exalted spiritual past is scoffed at and only considered in the context of a purely academic study of Jewish antiquity. Meanwhile, Israeli society desperately searches for its raison d’être in technology, secular academia, and the attempt to generate a flourishing economy. But the more the secular culture achieves its goals, the less solid ground remains under its feet.

Long before other nations had the words to speak about re-discovering their “roots,” Jews understood that there is no reason for survival into the future without a clearly defined mission.

No people’s mission can survive without the belief in the importance of the goal and uniqueness of those who seek to achieve it, both of which derive their life-force from the original “root experiences”[4] of the past.

The Sense of Obligation

The secular call for extreme tolerance and assimilation, so often heard ringing in the halls and lecture rooms of Israel’s universities, will, if heeded, ultimately put an end to Israel’s meaningful existence. Only in the actualization and expression of one’s uniqueness is one most able to contribute to others, because only then does a person possess something special to share. The pride we should feel about our unique heritage should not inflate our sense of importance or serve as a reason to demand greater privileges, nor should it motivate the creation of a nation of “blue-blooded” elitists. On the contrary, when a Jew truly knows who he is, he will feel a tremendous sense of obligation and responsibility to the rest of the world.

There is a powerful expression in Yiddish: “Es past nicht,” which means that “It does not suit a Jew to do such things.” Because a proud Jew feels that he must develop himself in order to be of real value in the nation’s quest to accomplish its divine mission of being a light to the nations, certain deeds become abhorrent in his eyes. A Jew does not feel burdened by this self-control. He enjoys it, because his discipline and the dignity with which he behaves, emanate from his feelings of pride. The State of Israel faces more violent crime, more drug addiction, and more domestic abuse than ever before. The pervasive sense of purposelessness prevelant in segments of secular society is causing Jews to self-destruct. The same is true about segments of the religious community which no longer grasps the deeper meaning of its Jewishness. No legislation or police enforcement can solve this epidemic. Only when the notion of “Es past nicht” returns to the secular and religious Israeli vocabulary, will there be renewed hope for the nation. Then we will know that the redemption is nigh.

Notes

[1] Devarim 32:7.

^[2] Quoted in Rabbi J.H. Hertz, A Book of Jewish Thoughts, (London: Oxford University Press, 1920), 131.

^[3] Ibid., 174.

[4] See Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections, (NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 8-14.