American Jewry’s Stunted Sons

From the Hebrew Bible through the Netanyahu family, the survival and flourishing of Jewish civilization has depended on what could be called a series of profiles in courage. Jews have followed the Torah of a God whom we have not been afraid to challenge. We overcome the most difficult circumstances, and continually prove our resilience against the jealous insecurities of others.

Jews can also be warriors. But when historically they lacked the means to fight on their own behalf, they developed alternate models of grit and strategies of self-defense by investing in brains over brawn. They even had the guts to mock some of those same strategies. Yiddish says: Got zol ophitn far goyishn koyakh un far yidishn moyakh; God protect us from the might of Gentiles and from the cleverness of Jews. We admit that even our best qualities don’t always serve their purpose.

As long as Jews remained confident that the Torah is a tree of life to those who cling to it, they fashioned models of courage appropriate to their situation. The key phrase here is as long as Jews remained confident. We know that in the 19th century, as ideas of Enlightenment began to take hold, many lost faith in the Jewish way of life. The forces that claimed to represent progress—in science and technology, arts and education, political and social thought—persuaded many Jews that other cultures were more advanced than their own.