By Stephen Smoot
Deuteronomy 7:6 states of the Jewish people that “for you are a holy people to the Lord, your God: the Lord your God has chosen you to be His treasured people, out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.”
The next verse reads “not because you are more numerous that any people did the Lord delight in you and choose you, for you are the least of all the peoples” (in population.)
In the Jewish tradition, and somewhat less so in the Christian, being chosen by God confers little comfort, safety, and security. Being chosen seems to have the same loose connotation as the Old Testament phrase “the Day of the Lord.”
“The Day of the Lord” in that context is the day when He comes to close all accounts with those who oppose Him, a “day” of trials and tribulations more than joy and comfort.
Between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, according to the Old Testament, Terah left the land of his forefathers, the city of Ur of the Chaldees. He took his clan, which in this context means family, close friends attached to the family, and sometimes also slaves. Slavery was common among all civilizations in antiquity.
That clan included a son named Abram as his daughter-in-law Sarai. Abram later becomes Abraham, when he shows himself willing to follow the will of God even to the most extreme of demands. This dedication brought about the Covenant, under which the Jewish people have lived in their relationship with the Lord ever since.
Over the millennia since, great men and women, great nations, and even great civilizations have risen and fallen. The Jewish people have remained in existence, bound by their worship of the Lord, their adherence to His law, and following the traditions and rituals of their faith, no matter the cost to them – which often rises to frightful and terrifying levels.
The Lord’s choosing of the Jewish people as His own has meant that they have had to drink from a much longer series of bitter cups than any other nation or people in history. They suffered as slaves during their Egyptian captivity, knew a brief period of security and power from their exodus through the monarchy of David, but decline started again under King Solomon.
Assyria conquered and carted off 10 of the original 12 Tribes of Israel in 722 BC, the Babylonians smashed the rump state of Judah almost two centuries later, seizing the leading peoples of the land. Cyrus the Great in turn conquered Babylon and extended his protection to a people he also saw as under the special protection of his own Zoroastrian God.
The Jewish people then saw dual dangers in both the oppression of their people by the Hellenistic Greeks after the conquest of Alexander, wresting their freedom temporarily before succumbing again to Imperial Rome after years of violent and determined resistance.
Rome wanted to eliminate even the memory of Judaea (as they called the land) and the Jewish people in the Levant. They scattered Jews through the most remote parts of their Empire as far as they could remove them from their leading city of Jerusalem. Romans sent most to the future nations of Spain and Germany, where the Jewish people endured repeated persecutions over the centuries.
Wherever they went in the world, the Jewish people knew no permanent security. Muslims define their faith as “submission to God,” which sets itself in opposition to a Jewish religion that allowed for struggling with God as part of personal growth. Christians continued to blame Jewish people even many centuries later for a small sect pushing the Romans to execute Jesus Christ.
Jewish people saw fearsome persecutions in the medieval Holy Roman Empire. Russia served as the origin of the hateful word “pogrom,” which referred to officially sponsored mass mob attacks on Jewish people and property.
They took blame for what they were and also what they were not from the very beginning of their people down to modern times, giving them a role that no other nation or people could fulfil.
Always small in number because they do not proselytize (which Rome eventually came to appreciate), always subject to a much larger and often hostile majority, and always unapologetically worshipping and conducting rituals in their own way, the Jewish people provide history with an interesting measuring stick.
One can gauge the religious, social, and sometimes even economic freedom and tolerance of a society based on how they treat the Jewish people.
Scientists will use what they call a “control” element that remains the same regardless of other conditions. A control helps scientists to measure other aspects of the experiment against that which does not change or changes very little.
Through history, a few nations have proved not only tolerant, but hospitable to the Jewish people. Cyrus the Great of the Persian Empire saw their god Yahweh as one of the forces for good in the universe. The late Roman Empire tended to ignore the Jewish people in favor of sporadic persecution of proselytizing Christians.
Jewish refugees also, at least for a time, found safety in Ottoman Constantinople. The Hohenzollern dynasty of Prussia and the German Empire also had little appetite for persecution of the Jewish people.
Throughout most of its history, the Roman Catholic Church also stood for the protection of Jewish people in the lands directly governed by the Pope. Churches of nations such as Spain, when they launched persecutions, did so at the behest of their temporal sovereigns, usually not the Holy See.
Perhaps the shining light of national hospitality, however, has come in the United States of America.
Jewish people found prejudice in America, but rarely persecution. Active harassment of Jews, especially immigrants, was undertaken by the Ku Klux Klan between World Wars I and II. Interestingly enough, the Confederate States of America, whose battle flag was used by the KKK for its own purposes, appointed Judah P. Benjamin, born of a Sephardic Jewish family, to Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State of that ill-starred nation-state.
By the 20th century, Jewish immigrants regarded New York City as a safe haven. Soon it outstripped Jerusalem and European cities as the largest Jewish city on earth. It retains that distinction.
In the United States, Jewish people have known more safety and security than in almost any other part of the world in modern times. That comfort level, however, has declined considerably in recent years.
The cities that seemed to offer the most security and opportunity to Jewish Americans have grown more and more hostile to people of that faith and lineage (counting those of Jewish ancestry who are not active in the religious faith.) Colleges and universities routinely allow mass protests aimed at intimidating Jewish students and employees, as opposed to exercising peaceful free speech. Cities give permits to organizations dedicated to spreading more antisemitic hate than the KKK ever dreamed of expressing.
Anti-Jewish hatred has spread fastest among the urban educated elites. Meanwhile, in rural areas such as Grant County, West Virginia, one can see residents flying the flags of the United States, State of West Virginia, and the State of Israel in proud support.
One of the catalysts has come from the war started by Gaza-based Hamas against Israel. Hamas committed the worst crimes against the Jewish people seen since National Socialist Germany. Though Israel has not come close to visiting the violence against Gaza that the Germans saw during the war started by the Nazis, antisemitism has flourished through attacks on Israel’s conduct of the war, mostly based on propaganda lies from Hamas itself.
Whatever the Allies did to defeat Germany, Hamas has certainly earned the same level of violence needed to destroy the threat they pose to Israel.
The State of Israel exists, in part, because of the Democratic Party of the United States. Harry Truman defied bigots and also those without prejudice who wished to build Middle East policy on cooperation with Arab states. Today, only eight percent of polled registered Democrats support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas.
History will certainly judge the United States by what happens next. The nation endured centuries of painfully overcoming racial oppression and prejudice. After all of that progress, however, will America now allow itself to fall into that majority category of states through history where Jews have had to live in fear?
