Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

וַיִּשְׁמַ֞ע יִתְר֨וֹ כֹהֵ֤ן מִדְיָן֙ חֹתֵ֣ן מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֵת֩ כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר עָשָׂ֤ה אֱלֹקִים֙ לְמֹשֶׁ֔ה וּֽלְיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל עַמּ֑וֹ כִּֽי־הוֹצִ֧יא ה’ אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מִמִּצְרָֽיִם
Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard what God had done for Moses and for Israel His people, how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. (Exodus 18:1)
The sidra of the week, named after Moses’ father-in-law Jethro (Yitro), opens with this brief explanation why he visited the Israelite camp. The verse speaks in general terms, but as usual, the rabbis go into more detail. The rabbis wish to know what particular aspect of Israel’s journey out of Egypt inspired and motivated Jethro to the extent that he felt compelled to visit his son-in-law.
The Talmud cites three opinions:
מה שמועה שמע ובא? רבי יהושע אומר: מלחמת עמלק שמע ובא… רבי אלעזר המודעי אומר: מתן תורה שמע ובא. רבי אליעזר אומר: קריעת ים סוף שמע ובא.
What precisely did Jethro hear that moved him to journey to the Israelite camp? Rabbi Joshua suggested that he’d heard about the Israelite’s victory over the Amalekites; Rabbi Eleazar HaModai offered a different answer, Jethro had heard about God’s Revelation at Mt Sinai; while Rabbi Eliezer proposed a third option – that Jethro was stirred into action after being told how the Israelites had, in miraculous fashion, crossed through the Red Sea. (Zevachim 116a)
It appears that these three answers represent three different approaches or attitudes towards Jews. The first can be described as the Politics of Hate. It is the unending and perverse nature of Jew-hatred or the enigma of anti-Semitism. Think about what had just happened to the Israelites. Following centuries of persecution and bondage, the Israelite slaves were finally released and began to make their way through a barren wilderness on their journey towards a Promised Land. Yet, unprovoked and seemingly unthreatened, a warlike tribe known as the Amalekites attacked the Bnei Yisrael provoking a full-scale war between the two peoples. Joshua led the Israelites to victory.
This perspective suggests that Jethro, an astute observer of the world, recognized that a people who evoke such baseless hatred must possess either something uniquely holy and divine, or something uniquely evil. Either way, that was enough to convince him to visit the Israelite camp to find out for himself the nature of this people.
A second idea is brought by Rabbi Eleazar HaModai. He proposed that Jethro was motivated by the news of the upcoming revelation at Mt Sinai. In fact according to many commentators the Biblical chronology should be reversed and they argue that Jethro’s visit actually took place after Matan Torah. Whichever is the case, this answer by Rabbi Eleazar HaModai signifies non-Jewish admiration and respect for the greatest gift the Jews have given the world – namely the Biblical text and its accompanying moral and legal code that still fortifies the Judeo-Christian world.
A third opinion, brought by Rabbi Eliezer, states that Jethro was encouraged to visit Moshe on hearing about the miracles involved in the Exodus from Egypt, and in particular the splitting of the Red Sea. Perhaps Jethro was motivated by pity for a people whose suffering seemed on-going or perhaps he imagined something grander that transpired from such suffering. In an article on the topic, Rabbi YY Jacobson explained Jethro’s rationale as follows:
The splitting of the sea demonstrated to Jethro another component of the Jewish story. The people of Israel transcended the laws of nature and the deterministic patterns of history. The largest seas, mightiest oceans, and fiercest tsunamis would not drown them. They would confront many overwhelming seas throughout their history, they would encounter impossible odds, and yet they would cross every sea and come out on the other side, stronger, more vibrant, more alive, and determined. A nation that endured crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, massacres, gas chambers, crematoriums, and suicide bombings—and yet inexplicably emerged, pulsating with a love for life and a zest for peace, this is a people whose narrative transcends the formulas of natural history.
Jethro understood what the famous Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy articulated in a 1908 article: “The Jew is the emblem of eternity: he, who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy; he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. Such a nation cannot be destroyed.”
It is fascinating how, in today’s world, these three stereotypical attitudes towards Jews prevail.
For the best part of the last 80 years, Jews have been the recipient of non-Jewish admiration, non-Jewish support and non-Jewish sensitivity. Just as Yitro heard about the Israelites’ salvation from Egypt (according to Rabbi Eliezer) and marvelled at their resilience – so non-Jews, post 1945, saw the שְׁאֵרִית הַפְּלֵטָה – the survivors of the Shoah – fight for their independence and build a new country out of pure grit with a unique spirit to survive.
Non-Jews in the West were astonished at this new found Jewish strength and determination, and consequently decided to support the newly founded State of Israel in every way possible.
Similarly, following the view of Rabbi Eleazar HaModai – for the first time since the advent of Christianity during the time of the Romans – the Western World was prepared to acknowledge the spiritual gifts that Judaism had bestowed upon humanity. If Yitro was moved to join the Israelites because they had received the Torah at Mt Sinai – so non-Jews in the 20th century were also prepared to recognize the singular contribution of Jews and Judaism in matters of morality, faith, science, medicine, literature, the arts and commerce; all exemplified by the title of Thomas Cahill’s famous 1998 book – The Gifts of The Jews.
These became good years for Jews around the world. In the post-war era, with fascism defeated and anti-Semitism as good as outlawed, Jews in the West viewed the future with great confidence. Christianity also came to the party – seeking to right the injustices and prejudices of the past. The Church offered atonement for past wrongdoings and began a whole period of soul-searching, developing inter-faith programs and teaching their adherents that Jews and Judaism were not inherently evil and should no longer be blamed for the death of Jesus. So it was that Jews in the post-war period, particularly in the Diaspora, were able to look forward to a time of unparalleled security, equality and affluence. The existence of Israel and its emergence as a strong and successful nation in the Middle East reinforced Jewish self-assurance world-wide. Jews had never felt safer or more valued – but then everything changed rather suddenly.
Just as Yitro went running to the Israelite camp, according to Rabbi Joshua to try and understand what motivated the Amalekites to attack Israel, so we too need to investigate how the oldest hatred, illogical and irrational as it is, continues to surface and plague society. The reality is that the majority of Jews alive today have never known a world without the State of Israel. It is almost impossible for Jews in Chutz La’aretz to visualize a Jewish world without the protective embrace of a Jewish State, offering haven, itself protected by a nuclear deterrent and a citizen army that with great courage and absolute integrity defends its nation, its population, and to an extent the wider Jewish world.
Before 1948, Jews existed and depended entirely on the favours of monarchs, autocratic leaders, sympathetic (or more often – unsympathetic) governments – themselves influenced by clerics (Christian and Muslim) who were diametrically opposed to Judaism and at best wished to convert Jews to their religion or at worst sought to punish them for retaining their Jewish faith. Jews in Arab lands understood immediately in 1948 that there was little future for Jews in countries that wished Israel would just ‘go away’. Jews left Arab lands, or were banished and thousands of years of Jewish achievement in Iraq, Iran and North Africa came to an end.
So what does a post-October 2023 world look like for the Jews of Europe, North America and Oceania? It was Rabbi Sacks in Future Tense who spoke of the mutation of anti-Semitism. If you haven’t read Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ Future Tense, let me paraphrase – he writes about anti-Semitism in its various forms – initially hostility to Jews was simply because we were different.
For example, in the Greco-Roman world we were accused of being idle because we chose not to work one day a week, we were accused of disloyalty to the Emperor because we refused to worship him as a God. But all this changed with the birth and growth of Christianity. Sacks described the changes in anti-Jewish rhetoric which led to a first mutation of anti-Semitism. Jews were complicit in the death of the messiah, even worse they failed to recognise Jesus as the messiah. The second mutation dated roughly 1096, arrived more or less with the Crusades. Jews were worse than renegades, they began to be demonised. It was not only their crime against Christendom that had to be avenged – but it was Jews against society – it was Jews who poisoned the wells, it was Jews who spread the Black Death, it was Jews who took pleasure in ritually killing young Christian children for their blood. This mutation reduced the Jew to a sub-human – it was the beginning of what one historian called ‘a persecuting society’.
The third mutation was born at the height of enlightened Europe in the mid-19th century. Jews were hated not because of their beliefs but because of their ethnicity. They were an alien race, polluting the bloodstream of Europe. In the 3rd mutation racial anti-Semitism was born. By the time this philosophy had run its course more than half the Jews of Europe had been murdered – there was only silence where once European Jewry had lived.
So we arrived in the post war era and in 1948 Israel was born and with it came a fourth mutation of this age-old sickness. Some call it anti-Zionism – but it is a new name for an ancient disease. In this incarnation of anti-Semitism, Jews are not entitled to a nation state of their own; a denial in other words of the right of Jews to be like any other people. Think about it for one moment – in the 1930’s anti-Semites in Europe held up placards saying Jews to Palestine, by the 1970’s anti-Zionists were holding up virtually the same placards, only now they read – Jews out of Palestine – slightly different words, but identical sentiment. Jews don’t belong, anywhere!
The second element of this new Jew hatred, wrote Sacks, included a simple but significant change in language. Anti-Semitism insinuated that all of the world’s ills had been caused by Jews; anti-Zionism, by contrast, projected the idea that all of the world’s problems were brought about by the existence of a Jewish State. If only Israel did not exist, the West would have no conflict with Radical Islam; the West would be at peace with Islamic fundamentalism – there would be cheap oil, there would be no terrorism, no 9/11, no Bali. The West would be living in paradise if only Israel would disappear.
Part of this 4th mutation – is the bridge from political anti-Zionism to overt anti-Semitism. It is widely believed and most probably true, that the overwhelming majority of Jews are Zionists. If this is the case, then all Jews, wherever they live are equally responsible for Israel’s wrongdoings, be it the genocide, apartheid or ethnic cleansing that the anti-Israel activists falsely accuse Israel of perpetrating. In their eyes all Jews are culpable and hence legitimate targets for hatred, contempt or worse.
I would explain Sacks slightly differently. Historically speaking, anti-Semites have condemned Jews by attacking their most significant, distinctive and noble characteristic – the one aspect of their Jewishness that gave them the most strength, hope, courage and self-belief. In Medieval times when religion had enormous power and influence, it was Judaism, the religion of the Jews that became the target for anti-Semites. As the authority of religion weakened with the advent of modernity, so Jews were attacked not for their faith but more for their peoplehood that was beginning to make an impact on the Jewish world in the 18th and 19th centuries. Finally as the State of Israel became the great unifying feature of the Jewish people in the post-Holocaust world – anti-Semites chose to demonise the Jewish state as a way of expressing their aversion to all things Jewish.
In a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Tammy Resnik explained this phenomenon to the Australian public. Quoting first the anti-Israel brigade’s mantras, she went on to explain the motivation behind anti-Zionism.
Israel is a genocidal enterprise.
All Zionists are baby killers.
Israel is the new Nazis.
These are no longer fringe slogans. They have become familiar features of protests, campuses and social media since October 7. They are not critiques of policy. They are accusations designed to confer absolute moral guilt – and, in doing so, to dissolve restraint. This is where anti-Zionism must be named honestly. Anti-Zionism is not simply opposition to a government or a military campaign. It is the latest machination on the antisemitism continuum. Where Jews were once accused as individuals, the accusation is now directed at the collective: the Jewish state. Anti-Zionism does not have an issue with what Israel does, but its very existence. Israel is cast as uniquely evil; those associated with it are no longer merely neighbours or fellow citizens. For many, they have become proxies: legitimate targets of rage and scapegoating.
As the weekly protests ostensibly about the war in Gaza continued, the role played by those who triggered the war i.e. Hamas, was erased. Indeed, for some, Hamas’ actions on October 7 and after were defended, glorified and imbued with moral legitimacy. Chants and rhetoric, including “Globalise the Intifada”, “Death to the IDF” and “There are no good Zionists”, became excused as merely activism. But as the firebombing of synagogues and vandalism directed at buildings linked to Jews – not Israelis – has shown, what begins as rhetoric does not remain rhetorical. Bondi proves that Australia is not immune to this phenomenon. The Bondi gunmen were Islamic State supporters, but their plot did not happen in isolation – it grew in this environment. A video they recorded explaining their actions explicitly condemned “Zionists”.
As a result of such comments I believe that one is entitled to argue that the fate of Jews worldwide has become inextricably linked with that of the State of Israel—historically, culturally, politically, and psychologically. For many Jews, the existence, security, and moral character of Israel are not just matters of geopolitics, but inherently tied to Jewish self-understanding, political fate, communal safety, and ethical reflection. This is not to say that all Jews equate themselves with Israeli government policy— Diaspora Jews, like Israelis, have diverse political views—but that public hostility towards Israel often spills over into hostility towards Jews in everyday life.
This is why I dislike the phrase ‘self-hating Jews’. They do not hate Jews, but they abandon and reject the State of Israel; they proudly and loudly criticise it in the public forum in the futile belief that they will be safer if they announce to their non-Jewish neighbours that Israel is not part of their ethnicity and is unimportant to them. This is a delusion – this is exactly the modern form of Rabbi Akiva’s ancient story about the fish, told by the fox – that if they would only come out of the water, abandon their natural home, then they would be safer from predators. The reverse is true – if Jews are unsafe with Israel – they will be in more danger, not less, if they cut their ties with the Jewish State.
This is also why I am highly critical of Prime Minister Albanese’s so-called apology to the Jews of Australia at the Sydney Opera House. His apology was disingenuous, it spoke of his inactivity to quell anti-Semitism in Australia – but said nothing of his activity in promoting hatred of the State of Israel. As I wrote in a comment published the next day in The Australian newspaper:
The PM apologised but not for changing Australia’s foreign policy towards Israel, e.g. recognising a Palestinian state long before any negotiations between the parties had agreed terms and borders, or accusing Israel of holding on to occupied land that in fact had been won in battle in 1967 and areas that the de facto owners The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan did not want returned. When an Australian government accuses Israel of overreach in attempting to recover the hostages – and speaks relatively negatively of the Jewish state at almost every opportunity – all of this emboldens the violent anti-Semites in our community. His apology I am sure was sincere but the reality is that the fate of the Jews in Australia is intertwined with the attitude of Australians to the State of Israel, led by the government of the day. Criticism of any country is valid, but this criticism since 2023 has been politically motivated and vindictive. A simple apology to the Jews of Sydney that their murdered should have been better protected does not pass the ‘pub test’.
The rabbis asked a question, “What did Jethro hear?” The answers they composed seem more relevant today, than when they wrote them 1500 years ago.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Freedman