Apathy Is "In"
By Andrew Lewis
If you are reading this periodical, it is a good sign for the Jewish community. You have an interest in Jewish issues and affairs, and you have acted upon it. Though it is a small gesture, you have demonstrated exactly what the Jewish people have a dire need for.
Threats to our people are undeniably numerous and potent. About a third of the world’s Jews reside in Israel, a nation constantly under threat from many directions and where it takes a plane but four minutes to fly across its entire length. The remainder of the Jewish people resides in diaspora, spread across the world, often in a state of increasing assimilation. While threats to our (potential) peaceful existence are generated by The Protocols and the some 129 Professor of Middle East Studies seats in American universities bought out by Saudi Arabia, among many other things, the most destructive instrument of our demise is the apathy of the young diaspora Jews.
Neil Lazarus, traveling lecturer and expert on Israeli and Jewish affairs, was dramatically shaken by the blasé reaction of American students to one of his speeches concerning the plight of Israel under threat from terrorist organizations with the United Nations breathing down its neck. “But sir,” one of the students replied when he inquired about the utter lack of emotion in the room, “Apathy is ‘in.’”
If this author may draw conclusions, the genesis of these feelings lies in early education. Hebrew school and religious school fail miserably in any attempt to excite young Jews about their heritage; nor do they even succeed in any lasting education, reducing the practice to a mere guilt-motivated waste of young students’ Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. If that isn’t enough to turn someone off of Jewish pride, the obligatory visits to every Holocaust museum in one’s path will at first shock and then numb a subject to the suffering of our people. The truly horrifying images in Holocaust museums are dulled by the fact that most American models and celebrities look very much like Auschwitz survivors with makeup—but that’s a completely different article.
Additionally, the ways in which we celebrate our culture and history may very well drive how we feel about it. This author grew up a Reform Jew, enduring religious ceremonies ranging from the excruciatingly dull to the almost insultingly secular. Conservative synagogues, by the experience of this author alone, have taken the excruciatingly dull tradition of some Reform communities and decided they were not yet dull or long enough. Sadly, it may surprise some Jews that Jewish ceremonies were not always carried out with the trademarks of Christian mass ceremonies—choirs, pipe organs, and alternating rising and sitting sections of both Hebrew and English prayer.
This author’s eyes have witnessed a great change in Jewish friends after visits to Israel. The doubters are numerous, but there is something about the Holy Land that can awaken what has not been touched by endless hours with a rabbi trying to get as much excitement out of an acoustic guitar and songs befitting eight-year-olds as he can. The difference between being taught about Massadah and visiting the site and realizing exactly what took place there. Pounding tables while singing and dancing to “Havenu Shalom Alechem” after a hearty Shabbat meal certainly will dispel the myth of boring Jewish tradition. It is one thing to listen to the BBC report as if Israelis spend their day killing civilians and quite another to walk through the streets of Jerusalem, seeing the looks on the faces of every citizen begging for a peaceful existence with their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, boyfriends, and girlfriends safely at home.
Yet recent reports say that 52% of American Jews say that if Israel were to no longer exist tomorrow, it would be no personal tragedy for them. In the eyes of many Jews, being a vigilant and educated Jew is too difficult and inconvenient when compared to the passive acceptance of anti-Zionist rhetoric and renouncing what so many have proudly died for.
Hatred for Jews and Israel seems inevitable and unstoppable. This is false. This destructive process can be resisted with a united effort. This does not charge one to become a hyper-sensitive individual, easily tossing “anti-Semite” and comparisons to the Nazis around. Rather, this author wishes to encourage his brothers and sisters to be proud and be smart. No other people have survived this long and become this powerful after millennia of oppression, massacre, and degradation. No nation has returned to its home capital after so long an exile. Our ability to endure is an admirable credit to our spirit, something that can only be beaten by our own apathy and disconnect with our people. As every cadet in the IDF swears at the end of his or her training, Sheinit Mitzadah loh tipoh—“Massadah shall never fall again.”
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