Have you ever been on a tour of a city which once boasted a strong Jewish community? Prague, Budapest, Cracow, Frankfurt, Cairo, Lublin, York… there is no shortage of fascinating historical cities to go to and explore the remains of what once was a hub of Jewish life.
How about imagining the following scene. A tour group travels to visit the remains of… Jewish Manchester. They are shown the various shops where the Mancunions Jews once bought their groceries, where the Chasidic community lived, where Jews would go to pray. They stand and listen as their tour guide explains how strong the Jewish community of Manchester were, how diverse, how secure. And they think to themselves – that was then. Such a thing can’t happen now…
The blueprint for the last 2000 years of Jewish exile is found in a story in this week’s Parshah. Yaakov comes to the house of Laban and is welcomed in, marrying Laban’s daughters and entering Laban’s employment. He is wildly successful, building up Laban’s wealth as well as his own personal fortune. After some years, Yaakov perceives a change of attitude towards himself; he is no longer welcome where he is. He feels threatened and leaves, and is confronted by an angry Laban, who tells him “Everything you have is mine”.
Substitute the name Yaakov for the Jews, and Laban for any choice of countries in which the Jews have sought refuge, and the story becomes the story of our People. Whether the country is England in the 11th century, Spain in the 15th, Czarist Russia or Nazi Germany, this story has played itself out time after time. The Jews are invited into a country. In this new country they slowly build a life for themselves. They become prosperous and influential. Eventually they become crucial to their host country. However, by this point envy starts to take hold of the host nation, swiftly followed by hatred. And at some point, they are forced to move on.
Rabbi Meir Simchah of Dvinsk (1843-1926) writes that there is a purpose for this constant cycle, much as anti-Semitism generally serves a purpose. The Jew in exile is always prone to lose his identity, to forget he is different, he is a Jew, and to become more and more like the nation around him, eventually abandoning Judaism altogether. Rabbi Meir Simchah writes of the danger that comes from thinking that “Berlin is Jerusalem”, and that this belief is subsequently destroyed with the growth of anti-Semitic feeling. Coming years before the onset of the Holocaust, his words appear prophetic.
May we all come to appreciate and love the uniqueness of the Jewish People, and may anti-Semitism disappear forever.
Good Shabbos, Dovi.