The other night I had dinner with a dear old friend and colleague. After catching up about our families and personal lives, the conversation moved, inevitably, to the state of the Jewish people.
My friend, an astute observer of history, offered that our generation experienced a unique set of circumstances in the life of the Jews: We were born in America the wake of World War II. Having vanquished Germany and Japan, the United States made them and much of the rest of the world into markets and trading partners, leading to an unprecedently long economic boom. And, in the shadow of the Shoah, antisemitism was banished from polite society. American Jews flooded into universities and rapidly ascended in the economy and general society. A Jewish state was founded, largely underwritten by American support.
American Jewish life, which for so long had focused on basic survival, now shifted in large measure to focus on thriving: The question now was less how to ensure safety and physical wellbeing than how to convince Jews to remain identified as Jews when society no longer forced it up on them.
That was the social context in which the two of us, both born in the 1970s, came of age. In the long history of the Jewish people, it was a phenomenally rare moment. In many ways, we might say it was a luxurious one. Until the last decade or so, it was the world we thought we were operating in. And, it turns out, we were probably naïve to think that it would last, that history wouldn’t revert toward the mean.
I have no idea what the events of recent days and years will mean for the Jewish people. What I do know is that I feel fear and anxiety rising, as I expect many other Jews do too. (I’m reminded of the old Jewish telegram: “Start worrying, details to follow.”) I also know that my mindfulness practice is indispensable in such moments, and I’m grateful for it. It helps me to notice that fear and anxiety—and not be trapped by it.
On another evening this week, I had occasion to wander in a bookstore. Unsurprisingly, I found myself in the religion and spirituality section. And I noticed that it comprised two bookcases. One of them was called, “World Religions” and had books on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and so forth. The other bookcase was labeled, “Judaism.” There it was: our tiny but ancient people, representing one five-hundredth of the world’s population today, producing ideas and wisdom far out of proportion to our size.
I smiled and remembered a teaching of Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin (1887-1933). He comments on the phrase, “Thus it is written in the Book of the Wars of YHVH” (Numbers 21:14): “The nations of the world triumph by means of good weaponry and sophisticated armaments… But the people of Israel have a completely different weapon—the Book… As the verse states: ‘Not by military might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says YHVH (Zechariah 4:6).”
That is certainly true, and certainly an aspiration I share. But as Rabbi Shapiro witnessed in his own lifetime and would have beheld at even greater scale had he lived just a few more years, spiritual strength alone was not enough to save Jewish lives in the face of violent actors committed to our destruction. That realization, as much as anything, has driven much of Jewish life for the last 80 years—and it is at the heart of an increasingly violent debate in Israel over military service among Haredim.
A popular theory has it that the Magen David (Star of David) can be understood as two triangles. One of them points up, symbolizing transcendence: ultimate reality is not in that which we experience, but in something beyond this world. The other points down, symbolizing immanence, the very opposite: The Divine dwells here in the world in which we live. The two triangles together embody a paradox at the heart of Jewish life, namely that we live both in the world and apart from it, in our bodies and in our books, in the workweek and in Shabbat, in our will to survive and our aspiration to flourish.
I don’t know what the coming days and months will bring. But I do know I will be meditating, praying, and acting as wisely and mindfully as I can to bring about a world in which Jews and all people can be safe, free, and at peace. I hope you will too.