Civil Society

We are a people proud of the gifts we have given mankind, proud of surviving against all odds, and confidant that we have much more to offer in the future.

Many other claims are made about us, mostly by people who have never met or interacted with us.

Some assume that we are one of the larger population groups on the planet. In fact amount to only about ¼ of one percent of the world population. We have had a large impact, however, on the course of human development.

Let's start at the beginning of our long journey. The first Jew was Abraham, father of Isaac and Ishmael, well-known to all Peoples of the Book. Jews see ourselves as the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac, and through his son Jacob. Jacob's (also called Yisrael in the Bible, which became Israel in English) twelve sons became the first Jewish family. Their offspring left the land that would later become the Holy Land, and settled in Egypt, where they eventually were enslaved. After their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian captivity, they were brought to Mount Sinai to receive G-d's teaching, the Torah. This encounter between Man and G-d became a cornerstone belief of both Islam and Christianity.

After forty years and the birth of a new generation, we entered the Land of Israel. We never fully left. We would build two political Commonwealths, each with a Temple in Jerusalem that was ultimately destroyed by enemies. Each time, we were exiled; each time, some numbers would stay behind, dwindling in the worst of times to a few score families, but always leaving a Jewish presence in their land. Their coreligionists, while physically distanced from the land, would turn their hearts and prayers to it three times a day for two thousand years.

The First Temple, that of Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians in the year 586 before the common era. Much of the community was exiled to Babylonia, in what is today called Iraq. Even when the exile eased up some seventy years later, many Jews did not return to Israel (where a Second Temple was built, and later destroyed by the Romans in about the year 70) , but remained in Babylonia. Some began to travel to points close (Syria) and well beyond, where they established communities.

In the course of two thousand years of forced separation from their homeland, Jews settled around the globe. We never, until modern times, knew full equality or security. In good times, we were tolerated (at the whim of changeable forces); in bad times, we were slaughtered, forcibly converted, and expelled. Christian Crusaders, on the way to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims, were encouraged to help themselves to supplies in Jewish communities along the way by massacring the inhabitants. (When they got to Jerusalem, they were resisted by Muslims and Jews fighting alongside each other, until the Jews were burnt within their synagogues, or houses of prayer.) As a vulnerable minority denied political rights, we were frequently targeted and scapegoated. We were the convenient people to blame for the Black Death in medieval Europe. When Bogdan Chmielnicki's Cossack hordes in the Ukraine fought their nationalist struggle, they wiped out a third of the Jews in the region. The Russian Czars dealt with popular discontent by encouraging mass looting and bloodshed called pogroms. We were expelled - sometimes multiple times - from, Portugal, Germany, England, France and other lands. The most famous expulsion - from Spain in 1492 - sent 200,000 Jews desperately seeking any place that would take them. Many did not make it, killed along the way. Survivors went to Turkey, Amsterdam, and in following generations, to North and South America.

According to non-Jewish historian James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million (Constantine's Sword, page 26)." In a history drenched with blood, we lost countless numbers - but, almost inexplicably, people from all countries joined them as well as converts, prepared to identify with our message and share our destiny. These converts were accepted, and continue to be accepted, with open arms, and their genetic contribution helps explain some of the diversity of racial features that Jews exhibit.

In time, two great branches issued from the original trunk. One moved north and west, to the German-French Rhineland, to Central Europe, Russia, Eastern Europe and Western Europe. They would be known as Ashkenazic Jews, after the Hebrew word for Germany. A different route took Jews to the Iberian Peninsula, to the rim of Africa, to Iran, and to the Arabian Peninsula. Colloquially (if not somewhat inaccurately), these Jews are often referred to as Sephardic Jews, for the Hebrew word for Spain.

There are about 13 million Jews today, and we are spread out over 102 countries. We speak 8 main languages: English, Hebrew, Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Farsi and Arabic, but many others as well, including Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, German, Turkish, and Amharic. The largest concentrations today reside in Israel, the United States, Russia, France, Canada, the UK, Argentina and Germany. Much of today's Jewish map was shaped by events in the middle of the last century.

The Nazi Holocaust during World War II was the only attempt in history to create a systematized program to eradicate an entire people, using all available technology and mechanized processes. Hatred of Jews is irrational, and often counterproductive. The Germans were so intent on wiping out the Jews, that they diverted crucial resources from the battlefield, hampering their war effort. Even after it was clear that they had lost the war, the Nazis kept the gas chambers and crematoria going. By the end of the war, they had killed six million Jews, including a million children.

Arab lands hosted about 900,000 Jews until the establishment of the State of Israel led to almost all of them either leaving or being forcibly driven out of those countries. (Prior to that, Jews often - but certainly not always - fared better in Muslim countries as protected dhimmi than in Christian Europe.)

Although Russia still has a sizeable Jewish population, the fall of the old Soviet Union meant an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Jews after seventy years of persecution under the Communists.

Scattered to every corner of the earth, it is impossible to speak of Jews as a single ethnicity or race or culture. Rather, our very diversity testifies to the many stops we made along the way from antiquity to present.

Somehow we survived. Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Christian philosopher wrote, "It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the Jewish people.... This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singular long time... For where as the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold... My encounter with this people amazes me..."

Oftentimes, when denied all opportunities, we were poverty-stricken, but still valued literacy, education (we were the first to structure a system of compulsory education for children) and acts of charity. When given the chance - as in Europe after the Enlightenment -we blossomed. We have won a hugely disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes and Field Medals in mathematics. Wherever allowed to flourish, we bettered the society around them through their contributions in government, the arts and sciences, and by building communal institutions like schools and hospitals. In every country we lived, we served their hosts well and loyally - in government roles and in the military.

(In some areas, we are disproportionately small. We have our sinners as well as our saints, yet we produce fewer serious criminals than other groups. The prison population of the United States is about 1.5 million, of which about 1700 are Jewish, approximately one in a thousand.)

Jewish contribution to the universe of ideas is even more impressive than their academic honors. Here are summaries from two contemporary non-Jewish historians:

"Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews." (Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews, pg. 240-241)

"The Jews gave the world ethical monotheism, which might be described as the application of reason to divinity. In a more secular age, they applied the principles of rationality to the whole range of human activities, often in advance of the rest of mankind….The Jews have been great truth-tellers and that is one reason they have been so much hated…To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice… (Paul Johnson, History of the Jews, pg. 582-585)

We were gradually granted equal rights in many Western countries, but this did not solve their problem. France, one of the first countries to gradually offer equality to its Jews, was home to the creation of the French National Antisemitic League, as well as the notorious Dreyfuss Affair, in which the first Jewish officer to join the general staff of the Army was accused of - and ultimately vindicated regarding- a charge of treason. Germany, in some ways the most refined culture in Western Europe, transformed itself into a veritable culture of killing during the Holocaust, coordinating every segment of society. Jews who saw it coming had nowhere to flee.

Have Jews taken certain lessons from history? Tentatively, we can point to some common themes. We have a long history, and a profound sense of the past. We remember persecution - and thus inordinately tend to align themselves with causes that champion the underdog, the stranger, and the newcomer. (Only one country on the face of the earth ever actively sought to import poor black people. In two dramatic airlifts, Israel brought over 36,000 penniless Jews from Ethiopia to escape famine and political upheaval.) We understand vulnerability, and react against it. As a survivor people, we applaud those who make it against the odds. We continue to embrace the values of education, and of taking care of each other, as well as of the general community.

Misinformation about us is plentiful. When all the conflicting claims about Jews are assembled, the result would be comical, if not for the tragic consequences to Jews who suffer because of them. Jews have been accused of being so unaccomplished that they never showed any accomplishment in the arts or sciences (Voltaire); others assume that we are all lawyers and doctors. We have been mocked for their poverty, while others believe we are all rich. At any given time, there are people claiming that Jews care too much about morality, or care for it not at all; that we are hopelessly stupid, or much smarter than average. People see Jewish designs on taking over the world, while others deride us for being too passive in the face of adversaries.

Jews often had a way of ending their suffering by simply opting-out of Judaism. The majority who did not held on to a dream for the future. What does that dream mean today? Certainly not a world of Jews. We have traditionally shunned proselytizing to others. We see no need to make the world Jewish. The classic Jewish dream - one that appears in the Bible, and is used to end Jewish prayer services three times a day, every day of the year - is that the world will one day recognize a single G-d (Muslims already see G-d this way!) conduct their lives with a firm consciousness of standing in His presence. In such a world all inhabitants, Jewish and non-Jewish, would live in peace and harmony with each other. (The chief reason that Jews do not proselytize is that we see no absolute advantage in becoming Jewish. We warmly accept converts - but we do not seek them. Judaism teaches that non-Jews who obey seven principles of proper societal conduct enter Heaven, without any need to follow Jewish practice. Traditionally, these seven "Noachide laws" are: 1) Not denying the Oneness of G-d; 2) Not murdering; 3) Avoiding a number of illicit sexual relations, including incestuous relations, adultery, and bestiality; 4) Not blaspheming; 5) Not stealing; 6) Not eating meat that was taken from an animal while is alive or before it has completely expired; 7) Setting up an equitible court system to oversee
the other six laws in a just manner. The expectations from Jews are far more demanding and complex.)

Rather, Jews believe that there is value to their continued existence as a distinct group for the same reason there has been till now - we have served as both the conscience of the world, and the transmitters of unpopular new ideas. The first novel idea that got us in trouble with others was a pure, undiluted monotheism. Part of the message of the Jewish G-d is that there will come a time of universal peace, happiness and enlightenment known as the Age of the Messiah. The certainty that it will come led observant Jews to pray, and to continue to pray, for the arrival of that time. It led all Jews, observant and not, to constantly work for the improvement of world society, materially and spiritually, as part of the preparation for that great Day. This is still our great preoccupation.

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