IF

Too often I found myself saying something like,  “If only I hadn’t done this or that” and them went on to contemplate how very different things would have been, if I had taken note of the word if, stopped to think about what I was doing and changed direction.

The most popular poet of his day, Rudyard Kipling, even wrote a poem called if. I can still remember some of the lines by heart and they sum up, for me, the eternal Jewish story:

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise…..

The unreasoning hatred in this world to the Jewish people is one of the great mysteries of the human story. It is the oldest social disease and, unfortunately, it is still virulently present in today’s society. The answer is certainly not in assimilation – with the echoes of the Holocaust still reverberating – when German Jews believed they were fully integrated into German society.

Let’s face it. Jews are accustomed to remaining alone. To quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “It means a people prepared to stand alone if need be, living by its own moral code, having the courage to be different and to take the road less travelled.” 

We have seen too many ideologies and theories (social and economic) ultimately fade into oblivion. It is better to be alone with truth and faith than to be part of the crowd of followers.

We suffered two brutal centuries of slavery in Egypt, and still circumcised our sons. We overcame efforts to deny us our religion in the Hanukah story; the attempt to wipe us out in the Purim story. We watched twice as our holy Temples burned and still kept faith with Judaism. We were marched off to Rome as slaves, but never forgot we were Jews. For nearly two thousand years we have lived scattered throughout the world, always as second-class citizens subject to relentless oppression, blood libels, crusades. In 1492 we preferred to escape in ships rather than follow the Spanish orders to abandon our faith. In the 17^th century, half a million Jews were massacred by the Polish warlord Khmeilnitsky – which, by the way, led to the Hassidic revolution.

Yet all these failed to destroy us, failed to remove us from the pages of history. Miraculously, every period of persecution we endured, led to greater things. Egyptian servitude was followed by our liberation, the giving of the Torah and re-entering the Land of Israel. The destruction of the Temple resulted in the creation of the synagogue and the Jewish Golden Age in the Diaspora. The horror of the Holocaust was followed by the creation of the State of Israel and ingathering of the exiles into the present Jewish commonwealth.

The profound if word was the one cited by Theodor Herzl in the introduction to his book  Altneuland. “If you Will , it is no fairytale/dream” is Herzl’s famous motto which set the stage for the return to the Jewish Homeland. Herzl most probably wouldn’t have become an advocate for Zionism  if not for the Dreyfus case which occurred in his time.

Israel is not the Utopia that Herzl envisaged in his book, but the most significant part of his dream that has been fulfilled is that there is now a place where it is okay to be Jewish. The late American poet Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” This, then, is the outcome of Herzl’s vision, and, as we look around the world today, every Jew wherever they are, can take pride and comfort in Herzl’s vision becoming a reality.