People ask me from time to time—Why Israel? Why the Jews? Why are we hated? The possible answers abound—jealousy because of our success, resentment because of our ethical positions, discomfort because of our efforts to reform the status quo, vengeance because classical Christianity held us forever guilty of a murder we never committed, etc. But of all the answers I’ve ever come across, none resonate as much as the perspective of David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish philosopher and economist, whose sobering views on ethics and morality explain much about our moral or immoral selves, many decades after his death.
It’s simple, Hume might argue. We would steal if we could, but we don’t because it’s a liberty that will ultimately come back to haunt us. Others would be free to steal from us and we wouldn’t like that very much. The same is true of murder or perjury. Our ethics are thus based totally on utilitarian grounds. An example which further explicates this point of view is often cited by way of a group of space aliens who find their way to earth. They are intelligent, thoughtful, feeling creatures, but relatively tiny and of no particular use to humans. What would be their fate? Hume’s answer is bleak—they would be oppressed, if not killed. And so, Hume explains, we can understand the dismal fate of the American Indians at the hands of the Europeans or women the world over, trapped by a patriarchal structure that forever sees them as weak and vulnerable and seeks to keep them weak and vulnerable.
Enter the Jews. All of us. All 0.2% (if that) of world population. By all accounts, no one should care about us if only due to the difficulty in actually finding us. But finding us is no problem. Our minute numbers notwithstanding, we are highly visible—in the arts and sciences, or in literature and politics. We are present and extremely visible. Our meager numbers make us eminently expendable among an abundance of humanity whose evolutionary advancement is highly exaggerated. And the fact that attempts to rid this world of us have failed time after time only inflames the hearts of those already given to Jew-hatred or Israel-hatred (they are truly one and the same).
Given all this I not only reject all claims by so many—sadly Jews among them—that the State of Israel has grown too strong militarily. To the contrary, our insubstantial numbers require that we remain a formidable military power, if we intend to survive. David Hume, who understood the plight of the vulnerable, would certainly concur. On this 64th anniversary of Israel’s birth, I pray that this little country keep growing in all ways, and that we hutz la’Aretz Jews (we who live “outside of Israel”) understand the critical role we play in keeping our governmental agencies fully supportive of the only true democracy in the Mid-East: Israel.
One final word. With all the anti-semitism in the world, how can we Jews go about our business with any degree of sanity? We can live daily and fully precisely because the idiots of this world do not define us or our political or social lives. The truth is that the universe is gorgeous, and earth is a precious bead of blue in space, and the hordes of haters all combined hold no candle to the 36 tzadikkim, the 36 righteous people who sustain the earth and the rest of us. We must be wary of those who hate, but we must also resist sinking to their level. With God’s help, the hatred will diminish over time as evolution continues to favor reflective, thoughtful and compassionate creatures, rather than the other types. May Israel continue to be a light onto the nations, playing a significant role in the unfolding of a more ethical human animal over time.
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