?All day my enemies taunt me....? (Psalm 102:9)
When the Nazis waltzed into Austria in the Anschluss of 1938, they made it immediately and abundantly clear what the new policy was to be regarding Jews in the old-new province of the Reich. As part of that policy, the Nazis first order of business was to humiliate and terrorize the local Jewish religious leadership and their families. Humiliation of Jews at the hands of uniformed Germans, the Nazis knew, made the Jews more pliant and it confirmed and justified the contempt non-Jews felt towards their Jewish neighbors.
In Vienna, Nazi officers selected the famed Rabbi Avrahom Yaakov Friedman of Sadigora, known among Hassidim as the Sadigerer Rebbe, for their entertainment. They forced the scholarly religious leader to sweep the streets clean, under the mocking gaze of on-looking Germans and Viennese. The Rebbe told his Hassidim, ?It doesn't bother me to be a street-sweeper, are not the roads of Vienna also the roads of God? What upsets me is the desecration of God?s name, that the Jews are being degraded in the eyes of the non-Jews.? According to the Rebbe, he made a vow at that point that if God would eventually enable him to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then he would willingly sweep the streets there.
In the Land of Israel, on June 30, 2003, it was day one of another Israeli pull-back in Gaza. Unrestricted Palestinian Authority traffic was renewed on major thoroughfares in the region. Armed PA guards stood watch over some of the main roads. Israeli soldiers who served at the major Gazan junction of Gush Katif after control was handed over to the PA, as well as civilians who used those roads, recounted that almost every Arab car that passed by had a Kalashnikov rifle gleefully, tauntingly, pointed at the Israeli soldiers or civilians. The IDF orders, of course, were to ignore the provocations.
Again: ?What upsets me,? the Sadigerer Rebbe said, ?is... that the Jews are being degraded.....?
We are being degraded again, Rebbe. But this time it is in the Land of Israel. We have no other streets to go to; these are our streets. Our national honor must be recaptured here, and it must be done now.
Some may say that doing battle - physical or otherwise - over an esoteric value like ?national honor? is childish, misdirected, even immoral. But it is not. It is of supreme practical importance. A people that allows its national symbols to be degraded and its holy sites desecrated, that allows its enemies to publicly call for the death of its members, that allows its most basic historical claims to be mitigated by relativist claims about ?competing narratives?, that suffers international vilification and lies with equanimity - that people is ultimately undermining both its own morale and its deterrent capabilities. In so doing, it is diluting any moral claims it could make in support of its own physical self-defense, when the time comes. The nations of the world, friend or foe, will conclude that if that people is unwilling to defend its honor, then it must be a dishonorable people. Such a tolerant, forgiving nation is destined to either accept perpetual victimhood, or to be forced to regain its honor - its deterrent capabilities - using means far more tragic than would otherwise have been necessary.
Allowing Arab gunmen to drive by waving their Kalashnikovs mockingly at Israeli soldiers now means that Israelis will die by those Kalashnikovs later, may we be spared. The Arab terrorists running the Palestinian Authority have been allowed to denigrate Jews in their media for ten years, Arab mobs chant ?Death to the Jews!? in the streets of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Arab leaders incessantly lie to the world and to us, and Israeli leaders repeatedly mumble apologies for Jews living in their ancient homeland. We made excuses for our Arab enemies, we ignored them, we passed the buck, we allowed them to carry out moral crimes with impunity. And the result of all this forbearance has been steadily increasing violence directed against Jews here, and everywhere. What the state of Israel could have prevented ten years ago by standing up for principle, with minimal political and physical costs, it will now have to put an end to with massive force and destruction - if it can do so at all.
The Sadigerer Rebbe, who died in 1961, did indeed keep his wartime promise after he arrived in the Land of Israel. Early every morning, before most people were even awake, the dignified Rebbe would take a broom in hand and sweep the streets around his Tel Aviv home.
When is the state of Israel finally going to end its degradation and sweep the streets clean of threatening, mocking enemies?
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Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor at Israel National News.com, and frequently writes for National Review Online. His commentaries have been published internationally and translated into several languages. His homepage is www.nrk-online.com.
When the Nazis waltzed into Austria in the Anschluss of 1938, they made it immediately and abundantly clear what the new policy was to be regarding Jews in the old-new province of the Reich. As part of that policy, the Nazis first order of business was to humiliate and terrorize the local Jewish religious leadership and their families. Humiliation of Jews at the hands of uniformed Germans, the Nazis knew, made the Jews more pliant and it confirmed and justified the contempt non-Jews felt towards their Jewish neighbors.
In Vienna, Nazi officers selected the famed Rabbi Avrahom Yaakov Friedman of Sadigora, known among Hassidim as the Sadigerer Rebbe, for their entertainment. They forced the scholarly religious leader to sweep the streets clean, under the mocking gaze of on-looking Germans and Viennese. The Rebbe told his Hassidim, ?It doesn't bother me to be a street-sweeper, are not the roads of Vienna also the roads of God? What upsets me is the desecration of God?s name, that the Jews are being degraded in the eyes of the non-Jews.? According to the Rebbe, he made a vow at that point that if God would eventually enable him to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then he would willingly sweep the streets there.
In the Land of Israel, on June 30, 2003, it was day one of another Israeli pull-back in Gaza. Unrestricted Palestinian Authority traffic was renewed on major thoroughfares in the region. Armed PA guards stood watch over some of the main roads. Israeli soldiers who served at the major Gazan junction of Gush Katif after control was handed over to the PA, as well as civilians who used those roads, recounted that almost every Arab car that passed by had a Kalashnikov rifle gleefully, tauntingly, pointed at the Israeli soldiers or civilians. The IDF orders, of course, were to ignore the provocations.
Again: ?What upsets me,? the Sadigerer Rebbe said, ?is... that the Jews are being degraded.....?
We are being degraded again, Rebbe. But this time it is in the Land of Israel. We have no other streets to go to; these are our streets. Our national honor must be recaptured here, and it must be done now.
Some may say that doing battle - physical or otherwise - over an esoteric value like ?national honor? is childish, misdirected, even immoral. But it is not. It is of supreme practical importance. A people that allows its national symbols to be degraded and its holy sites desecrated, that allows its enemies to publicly call for the death of its members, that allows its most basic historical claims to be mitigated by relativist claims about ?competing narratives?, that suffers international vilification and lies with equanimity - that people is ultimately undermining both its own morale and its deterrent capabilities. In so doing, it is diluting any moral claims it could make in support of its own physical self-defense, when the time comes. The nations of the world, friend or foe, will conclude that if that people is unwilling to defend its honor, then it must be a dishonorable people. Such a tolerant, forgiving nation is destined to either accept perpetual victimhood, or to be forced to regain its honor - its deterrent capabilities - using means far more tragic than would otherwise have been necessary.
Allowing Arab gunmen to drive by waving their Kalashnikovs mockingly at Israeli soldiers now means that Israelis will die by those Kalashnikovs later, may we be spared. The Arab terrorists running the Palestinian Authority have been allowed to denigrate Jews in their media for ten years, Arab mobs chant ?Death to the Jews!? in the streets of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Arab leaders incessantly lie to the world and to us, and Israeli leaders repeatedly mumble apologies for Jews living in their ancient homeland. We made excuses for our Arab enemies, we ignored them, we passed the buck, we allowed them to carry out moral crimes with impunity. And the result of all this forbearance has been steadily increasing violence directed against Jews here, and everywhere. What the state of Israel could have prevented ten years ago by standing up for principle, with minimal political and physical costs, it will now have to put an end to with massive force and destruction - if it can do so at all.
The Sadigerer Rebbe, who died in 1961, did indeed keep his wartime promise after he arrived in the Land of Israel. Early every morning, before most people were even awake, the dignified Rebbe would take a broom in hand and sweep the streets around his Tel Aviv home.
When is the state of Israel finally going to end its degradation and sweep the streets clean of threatening, mocking enemies?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor at Israel National News.com, and frequently writes for National Review Online. His commentaries have been published internationally and translated into several languages. His homepage is www.nrk-online.com.