The Allure of Powerlessness

Key Findings:

This essay offers a comprehensive analysis of the Jewish relationship with power, considering historical contexts, ideological influences, and the establishment of Israel. Two Yiddish jokes that humorously reflect the traditional Jewish tendency to avoid using force are repeatedly used as motifs of Jews' response to challenges and power dynamics.

The author delves into the historical backdrop, emphasizing the struggles Jews faced in defending themselves against persecution, discrimination, and violence throughout history. External political ideologies, particularly Marxism and Communism, had enormous impacts on individual European Jews and de-Judaifying their attitudes toward power and self-defense.

This phenomenon essentially split different Jewish factions in their approaches to power, especially in the pivotal moment of Israel's establishment. In the secular Zionist context, self-defense and national sovereignty in Israel is the natural, necessary and response to thousands of years of Jewish vulnerability and oppression. The others, who prioritized their leftist ideologies in favor of their Jewish ones, rejected the notion of Jewish sovereignty and defense in favor of broader, non-Jewish social justice causes.

Paradoxically, Israel still faces criticism from within the Jewish community, not only on the global stage. This phenomenon is the contemporary shadow of Jewish Communism and Marxism of the 20th century. Certain Jewish leftist groups continue to prioritize external causes over their own community's interests by showing solidarity with anti-Israel movements — thus undermining Israeli security and creating divisions within the broader Jewish community.

No other minority in America is “in sympathy” with the war against its members — not African Americans, Latinos, or Asians, not Native Americans or LGBTQIA+. Only the Jewish Left and their liberal fellow travelers capitulate in the old ways. American Jews owe it not only to the guardians of Israel but also to America, to fight back against the anti-liberal and profoundly anti-American forces that are trying hard to bring their democracies down. 

The question of Jews and power boils down to whether a God-inspired and morally constrained people can hold out until the surrounding nations accept the principle of peaceful coexistence. The creation of Israel was the hopeful answer to that question: Hatikvah, literally, the hope of a people. Neither the war against Israel in the Middle East nor opposition to the Jews’ right to a state will likely fade in the years ahead. Jews must wield the power and moral stamina to keep that hope alive.