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Did you see that picture of athletes kneeling before BLM activists? And the elected Democrats? And policemen?

Our leader, Mordechai, was willing to die rather than bow before the wicked Haman.

A Jew doesn't kneel before a president. He doesn't kneel before a king. He certainly doesn't kneel before an activist demanding payment for crimes he didn't commit.

A Jew kneels before Hashem.

Preserving Jewish Privilege

A lot has been spoken about white privilege. A lot has also been spoken about Jewish privilege.

Does that mean a Jew goes to the admissions board of Harvard University, speaks a few lines of Hebrew, and POOF! He's in?

Does a Jew go to the Human Resources department of Goldman Sachs, dance the hora, and five minutes later his mother is on the phone talking about "my son the investment banker?"

You have to work day and night, hour after hour, to get into Harvard. Getting a job at Goldman Sachs is no easy task, but the real work begins once you walk in the door. Investment bankers put in 18-hour work days.

We didn't magically rise to the top of the ladder in America because we felt we deserved it. Our grandparents worked. Our parents work. We work.

If anything, the fact that Jews have succeeded when for so long we were forcibly not allowed into places of privilege like Harvard only shows you the stubbornness and perseverance of Jews – and our willingness to do whatever we could do.

Why are there so many Jews in banking? For a long time, a long time ago in Europe, it was the only thing Jews were allowed to do!

We didn't become the shining star of hi-tech in Israel because of our skin color. It’s because for the last 80 years hundreds of millions of “people of color” wanted to continue Hitler’s work and we had to stay alive by building the most advanced army on earth. Hi-tech Israel was born in IDF Unit 8200.

We work – and we work against the odds.

We Were Never Aristocrats

Our grandparents weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They came into the world we know with a number tattooed to their arm. They started out emaciated, sickly, and with nothing but constant mental horror over what they just went through.

Did they ever ask the Germans to kneel?

They were too busy building a life for themselves and their children.

Who is the poster child for inherited Jewish Aristocracy? I would have to say Jared Kushner. Born with a lot, he went to even greater heights. But how did he get such opportunity?

His grandmother lived in a Nazi ghetto. She had to endure the selection process where a Nazi casually decided whether or not to shoot her – five times. Her father was so malnourished, he didn’t have the strength to stand up on his own feet. They fled the ghetto to fight the Nazis alongside Jewish Partisans in the last year of World War II.

Jared’s family, like so many of our own families, fought the greatest evil on earth.

When the war was over, they had nothing. They moved to America in 1949 and Jared’s father started out as a construction worker. Jared’s family, like so many of our own families, started out at the very bottom with absolutely nothing.

Did they complain? Did they demand anything from anyone else? Did they even call themselves victims?

Like every other Jewish family, they got right to work.

Whatever Jewish privilege Jared Kushner enjoys, whatever Jewish privilege any of us enjoy, it was purchased with sweat, blood, and lots of tears. Paid for by the toil of people who deserved everything the BLM is asking for… yet never requested a thing.

Never feel bad for what you have. For what opportunities you were given. Never kneel before another man.

If you feel unsure of what you have, then bow!

Bow before Hashem and say thank You.

He is the One Who gave you all you have right now.

Say thank You by seizing upon the 613 opportunities every day to make things better for all mankind.

Forget about what you have and other don’t. Stand up to this world by focusing on what you can do for everybody that others can’t. . . and do it!

Get to work.

David Ben Horin works as a marketing manager in a hi-tech company in Hadera and loves Israel passionately. He can be found at https://www.proudlycandid.com/

This article also appears on the Breslev.co.il site.