I’m Jewish. At 65 years old I have never felt the cold hand of antisemitism, or as it should be called, a hatred of Jews. I was brought up in a time when discrimination was all but gone. I did not have to escape a pogrom or pick up arms to defend my right to exist. I was free to do, to think, or to say almost anything if I did not physically hurt anyone else. As our sixth President, John Quincy Adams once said “Posterity; you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it”.
However, in 2024 I sense the culture has changed. I can feel it, I can hear it, and I can see it. By now you too have heard the maniacal chant by ill-informed college students and professional agitators, “From the river to the sea…,” referring to the annihilation of the State of Israel. The Jewish-hating malcontents and their ilk know nothing of history or truth. Yet, they want my people, my fellow Jews, exterminated. Most will not come out and say it outright. They are cowards. They use the terms Zionist, occupier, or colonist. They are part of the leftist, BLM, Antifa, social-justice crowd who want to tear down the Western World with their Marxist, woke worldview. Need proof?
According to Vatican News, since 2009, over 50,000 Christians have been slaughtered in Nigeria by the Islamist Boko Haram. Yet hardly a peep from the traditional media. In Sudan, a year-old civil war is raging, and sixteen thousand people have been killed, 8.2 million have fled their homes, and there is a looming hunger crisis. The Sudanese Christians are caught in the middle of the battle. And yet there has been little reporting on the nightly news of these events.
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Every day and night the legacy media of the world spotlights the war in Gaza since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. Israeli young people dancing at a rave were murdered by Islamist terrorists. Israelis in their homes were mercilessly butchered, women raped. Israeli, American, and other citizens were kidnapped and executed by these vermin. Five Americans are still being held hostage and not a yellow ribbon on a tree or a poster on a bulletin board at a Post Office. Ask yourself why there is so much news on Gaza. The Israelis have the right and moral obligation to defend themselves from terrorists, yet there is no worldwide outrage about the massacres in Africa or in other places in the world. Why are college campuses exploding with hate for Jews, yet there are no marches, chants, or concern for Christians who being persecuted?
I was recently reminded of a passage in the Torah, the Jewish Bible, in Genesis 15:18 “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’ ,” meaning present day Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. The Jewish people were promised all this land by God. Does this divine promise mean Israel should fight the nations that occupy this land? Of course not. Yet, for the Jews there is a different set of rules.
That begs the question how do you deal with the fight over land and the grief of feeling your world is about to break apart? Paraphrasing James Madison, how can you console your mind with reason and overcome the passions of the heart and the desires of the stomach? Personally, I have found some solace in old texts.
I was browsing at a local bookstore and found a title, “The Pursuit of Happiness” by Jeffrey Rosen. He is an author and the president of the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Using original sources, Rosen cites the books the American Founders read and studied prior and during the American Revolution. The book creates the appetite for pursuing the principle of happiness through the writings of many ancient wisdom philosophers such as Pythagoras, Senica, and Marcus Tullis Cicero. Cicero, the Roman lawyer, orator, scholar, and statesman wrote his Tusculan Disputations, in about 45 B.C.E., after his daughter Tullis died following childbirth. Overcome with grief, Cicero removed himself from the public and retired to his villa in Tusculum to console himself and write Tusculan Disputations in five sections titled, “on the contempt of death, on pain, on grief, on emotional disturbances, and whether virtue by itself is good enough to live a happy life”.
Over millennia word definitions have evolved and today happiness is defined as short-term pleasure. In the time of Cicero and the Founders such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, happiness was defined as the pursuit of long-term virtue through the practice of self-mastery. A person accomplished happiness by disobeying their desires and emotions and prioritizing their reason through the classical virtues of temperance, which is moderation, prudence which is wisdom, justice which is fairness, and fortitude which is courage.
Incorporating this appeal to reason would go a long way in our responses to the world as it currently manifests itself. The only thing you can control is your turbulent emotions. You can find peace in the tranquility of a calm mind. Like most of you, I have read the vile words on social media about Jews. I have heard the vitriol on the news. Imagine if the same thing were said about Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, or gays.
It’s expected that those who are attacked will lash out and react. It has become unfamiliar to use the virtue of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude of the ancients. It takes discipline to reject that which has found a voice in discontent and rejoice in the knowledge that controlling oneself is the highest use of the good.
I have understood that persuasion, patience, and persistence is the only way to save our republic, and indeed our world, without getting into a global conflict. The exception is when tyrants and evil want to do the opposite. Taking up arms by using force is the despots’ only solution. Then they should be met with disproportionate force to protect one’s sovereignty to defend the dignity of the individual. The limited power of the federal government has one major purpose, to protect the individual rights of its citizens. With a weak President our fellow citizens and country are at risk.
John Quincy Adams wrote “America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature.” My hope is that our representatives use their persuasive skills and use reason to protect all people to live in peace.
“Am Yisreal Chai” meaning “the Jewish People Live.”
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