Asking the Right Question

In the last online issue of the Tablet, there is a very challenging article by one of my favorite contemporary American Jewish authors, Dara Horn, about a topic which unfortunatelly will never get old and obsolete: the reactions to outside anti-Semitic pressures. 

We have the story of Purim versus the story of Hanukkah, both narratives successful, but as Viktor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way'. Which also means that some people might decide to be on the wrong side of history. Everything is about making choices, assuming it, no matter what. 

An episode of this long story is Yevsektsiya, an institution created in the Soviet Union, designed by Jews from very learned educated (including religiously) families that helped the local authorities to destroy Jewish life - schools, Hebrew-speaking institutions, religious centers. In Horn's words they were looking to make the other Jews 'cool' - I so don't like the term, but it suits ironically the context and the circumstances -, in the long tradition of court Jews. In the end, they ended up in Siberia, a dirty prison cell, a bullet in their head, in the best case scenario completely isolated.

I've heard and meet all my life such people in Eastern Europe. People that willingly accepted to be 'cool' part of an establishment that from the very beginning hated them. Deeply. They were never accepted but used and abused. People that turned against their own people, wrote extensive reports for the 'intelligence' services against their people, sometimes their relatives too. Nothing new under the son, as under the Greek Empire, there were many notable Jewish families that encouraged the same behavior and openly repudiated their religion - including by practicing foreskin restoration for the sake of the Hellenic 'beauty standards'.

Most of them ended up like the Yevsektsiya members, dead - both spiritually and physically. Those who survived the communist times and caught some fresh democratic air, were just a shame for themselves and their community. No one really wanted to deal with them and they didn't look keen to ask for forgiveness either. In many respects they failed, as the communities and synagogues they tried to destroy were still there, against all odds.

Purim and Hanukkah are two sides of the story that I both loved and which offered to those people two noble alternatives. Either be like Queen Esther - be part of the establishment but save your own people - or like the Maccabees - fight openly against the oppression. I've meet many Queens Esther but always secretly envied the Maccabees. Smart is to know when the spirit of the times requires you to be Queen Esther and when the Maccabees.

But although I listen or read stories of assimilation and integration, observed people blindly involved in their activities and their dismise - or disparition, Dara Horn raises a very important question: Did those people find actually the integrity they 'so desperately wanted'? 

This question it's the key and as usual, a question is completely enlightening the whole context. It completely changes the perspectiv and challenges the mindset. Personally, I know that the Queen Esthers were driven exactly by those integrity values. The rest, it remains to be found, if ever.