Rabbi Freedman’s Shabbat Message

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

These well-known lines form part of Tennyson’s famous ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’.  The poem describes the military action undertaken by British light cavalry against Russian forces at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War (October 1854).  The charge resulted in a large number of British casualties due in large part to the fact that the Russians had placed their guns on the hills to the left and right of what Tennyson dubbed ‘The Valley of Death’.

Facing a single adversary, determined and well-prepared is bad enough but to face multiple fronts is potentially a recipe for disaster.  So we see in the special Maftir today for Parashat Hachodesh that the Israelites were able to escape from Egypt because they faced a single foe and with the correct strategy and with help from Heaven the odds were evenly balanced.  Even when the Egyptians caught up with them at Yam Suf (known popularly as the Red Sea) – Moses was able to escape from their clutches by leading his people to a safe area on the other side of the water.  Had an ally of the Egyptians been waiting for the Israelites as they stepped out of the Red Sea into the Sinai Peninsula, Jewish history might have taken quite a different direction.

 Looking back a couple of weeks to the Purim story, the contrast is clear and one is able to see immediately how events can change radically when two parties form an alliance to commit evil.  The Book of Esther describes the moment:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר הָמָן֙ לַמֶּ֣לֶךְ אֲחַשְׁוֵר֔וֹשׁ יֶשְׁנ֣וֹ עַם־אֶחָ֗ד מְפֻזָּ֤ר וּמְפֹרָד֙ בֵּ֣ין הָֽעַמִּ֔ים בְּכֹ֖ל מְדִינ֣וֹת מַלְכוּתֶ֑ךָ וְדָתֵיהֶ֞ם שֹׁנ֣וֹת מִכָּל־עָ֗ם וְאֶת־דָּתֵ֤י הַמֶּ֨לֶךְ֙ אֵינָ֣ם עֹשִׂ֔ים וְלַמֶּ֥לֶךְ אֵין־שׁוֶֹ֖ה לְהַנִּיחָֽם:  אִם־עַל־הַמֶּ֣לֶךְ ט֔וֹב יִכָּתֵ֖ב לְאַבְּדָ֑ם וַֽעֲשֶׂ֨רֶת אֲלָפִ֜ים כִּכַּר־כֶּ֗סֶף אֶשְׁקוֹל֙ עַל־יְדֵי֙ עֹשֵׂ֣י הַמְּלָאכָ֔ה לְהָבִ֖יא אֶל־גִּנְזֵ֥י הַמֶּֽלֶךְ: וַיָּ֧סַר הַמֶּ֛לֶךְ אֶת־טַבַּעְתּ֖וֹ מֵעַ֣ל יָד֑וֹ וַֽיִּתְּנָ֗הּ לְהָמָ֧ן בֶּֽן־הַמְּדָ֛תָא הָֽאֲגָגִ֖י צֹרֵ֥ר הַיְּהוּדִֽים: וַיֹּ֤אמֶר הַמֶּ֨לֶךְ֙ לְהָמָ֔ן הַכֶּ֖סֶף נָת֣וּן לָ֑ךְ וְהָעָ֕ם לַֽעֲשׂ֥וֹת בּ֖וֹ כַּטּ֥וֹב בְּעֵינֶֽיךָ:

Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus , “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate.  Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.  If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will give ten thousand talents of silver to the king’s administrators for the royal treasury.”  However, the king took his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews and said “Keep the money, and do with the people as you please.”  (Esther 3: 8-11)

Sometimes we seem to skip over this short piece in the Megillah and ignore the role of the king.  Traditionally we teach that Haman is the arch enemy of the Jews, a forerunner to many other anti-Semites in history – and yet, if one reads this passage carefully King Ahasuerus stands accused of being an accessory to Haman’s ghastly plan to destroy the Jewish people.

The king is approached by Haman, who obviously feels a bribe of immense proportions is required to gain the king’s acquiescence: far from it – before Haman has even drawn breath, the king turns down the offer of money and rather enthusiastically signs off on the idea ending with the words – “Keep your money and do your worst!”

The Talmud (TB Megillah 13b) compares this arrangement to the following parable:

אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּא: מָשָׁל דַּאֲחַשְׁוֵרוֹשׁ וְהָמָן לָמָּה הַדָּבָר דּוֹמֶה? לִשְׁנֵי בְּנֵי אָדָם, לְאֶחָד הָיָה לוֹ תֵּל בְּתוֹךְ שָׂדֵהוּ וּלְאֶחָד הָיָה לוֹ חָרִיץ בְּתוֹךְ שָׂדֵהוּ. בַּעַל חָרִיץ אָמַר: מִי יִתֵּן לִי תֵּל זֶה בְּדָמִים! בַּעַל הַתֵּל אָמַר: מִי יִתֵּן לִי חָרִיץ זֶה בְּדָמִים! לְיָמִים נִזְדַּוְּוגוּ זֶה אֵצֶל זֶה. אָמַר לוֹ בַּעַל חָרִיץ לְבַעַל הַתֵּל: מְכוֹר לִי תִּילְּךָ! אָמַר לוֹ: טוֹל אוֹתוֹ בְּחִנָּם, וְהַלְוַאי!

Rabbi Abba said: The actions of Ahasuerus and Haman may be compared to a parable.  There were two men, one of whom had a mound of earth in the middle of his field and the other, a ditch in the middle of his field, each one suffering from his own predicament.

 The owner of the ditch noticed the other’s mound of dirt and said to himself: ‘Would that he might give me this mound of dirt to fill my ditch; I would even be willing to pay money for it.’  The other man, the owner of the mound, noticed the other’s ditch and said to himself: ‘Would that he might offer me his ditch so that I may use it to get rid of all the surplus earth on my property.’

At a later point they happened to meet.  The owner of the ditch said to the owner of the mound: “Sell me your mound so that I can fill my ditch.”  The mound’s owner, anxious to rid himself of the excess dirt on his property, said to him: “Take it for nothing, if only you had done so sooner.”

Similarly, Ahasuerus wished to destroy the Jews.  Delighted that Haman had similar aspirations, he demanded no payment from his chief minister.

It seems obvious therefore, that the king must have also harboured ill-will towards the Jews.  In fact one could argue that the two conspirators, Haman and King Ahasuerus, were doing each other a great favour.  In fact the sages asserted that the king hated the Jews even more than his Prime Minister.

The rabbis taught that Ahasuerus hated the Jews even more than Haman.  The way of the world is that the buyer typically gives collateral to the seller; here, however, the seller gave the collateral, for it says: ‘The king took off his ring and handed it to Haman.’  (Midrash Esther Rabbah 7:23)

Had that alliance remained intact, the Purim story might not have ended so happily – but fortunately for the Jewish population of Persia, Queen Esther’s intervention resulted in a change of mind on the part of the king and with his assistance the forces of evil were eventually defeated.

This concept that a two-pronged attack upon the Jews can create the perfect storm when it comes to antisemitism is taken up by Daniel Goldhagen in his book, A Moral Reckoning – the Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust.  He criticises the Church for attempting to deny any responsibility for Nazi antisemitism.

In his words, suppressing this question of the Catholic Church’s view of the Jews and of their persecution towards them was just one component employed by the Church to exonerate itself.  So they erected an iron curtain between the Church’s own virulent antisemitism and the poisonous antisemitism that led Germans, and those who helped them, persecute and then slaughter Jews.  In one of the most glaring public historical falsehoods of recent times, the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews declared in “We Remember.  A Reflection on the Shoah” that the Nazis’ antisemitism had its roots outside of Christianity.

As Goldhagen explained further on in his book, Christian antisemitism throughout Europe invented a hatred of Jews so vast and abysmal, so intense, that it leaves one gasping for comprehension.  There was no doubt in his mind that the early Medieval forms of Jew hatred, some of which led to proto-genocidal violence, did not dissipate with the Enlightenment and modernity, but continued to be spread systematically by the Church at exactly the same time that a new, derivative form of antisemitism, racist in character, began to flourish by its side.

This occurred primarily in Germany where Christianity’s litany of anti-Jewish charges was reinforced with new pseudoscientific theories on race and then augmented with a new set of accusations appropriate to the age – accusations that were adopted by Christian anti-Semites and racist anti-Semites alike.  So it was that a perfect storm developed as Christianity bequeathed to modern racist anti-Semites a powerful demonology, a fierce antipathy towards Jews and an image of the Jew as the sinister ‘other’ perpetually seeking to destroy everything good and decent in their world.  This became an alliance, more destructive than any that had preceded it, which when unleashed upon the Jews was just as Tennyson wrote – cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them as these twin forces led the Jews into the jaws of death, the mouth of hell, into the gates of Auschwitz.

I use the term ‘Perfect Storm’ advisedly – according to most definitions a perfect storm is a potentially catastrophic weather event created by a powerful concurrence of meteorological factors.  Following the release of the film The Perfect Storm in 2000, a movie based on the 1997 book of the same name by Sebastian Junger, this expression entered into popular culture.  Since then the phrase has grown to mean any event where a situation is aggravated drastically by an exceptionally rare combination of circumstances.

It seems we are well into the making of yet another perfect storm in current times. Antisemitism traditionally came from the far right – and it still does – but nowadays it is also a characteristic of the far left and to add insult to injury of many Muslims in the Western world.  This combination is particularly difficult and dangerous for the Jewish community in countries like Australia.

Jews have, generally speaking, been liberal in their attitudes and sensitive to many of the issues that the Left holds as important – this is why it is especially problematical for the Jewish community when those who they would otherwise consider their natural allies turn against them and seek to harm Jews and in so doing attempt to undermine the very values that the Jews have given the world.

The most recent and obvious case that has made international news is that of Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested in the USA with a view to his deportation.  The truth is that Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian who acted as spokesman for the Columbia protesters deserves to be deported, along with many others who have devoted themselves to making American college campuses – and American cities more broadly – hell on earth for Jews.

Nevertheless the left-wing press and liberal elite accuse the Trump administration of preying on an innocent student who is simply exercising his right to free speech and political liberty.  These are ideals that Jews also believe in – but now they are used by the Left in alliance with traditional anti-Semites on the Right in order to attack, insult and delegitimise Jews and the Jewish State.

So how should we respond – do we support Israel and abandon ‘free speech’ or do we support ‘free speech’ and abandon Israel?  This is seemingly the dilemma facing Jews today as they face attacks from the Left and Right.

This was the predicament addressed by British journalist, Zoe Strimpel when she wrote that there is a world of difference between free speech and persecuting Jews.  In her words, deporting people like Mahmoud Khalil is not just about sending a message that violent antisemitism, under the guise of anti-Zionism is not welcome; it is much more than that.  According to Strimpel, it is an absolutely essential policy if the Enlightenment values and ideas upon which America and the free world were built are to be saved.

The protesters make themselves quite clear.  Khalil acted as spokesperson for the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the organisation behind the Columbia protests, which has stated on Instagram that it is fighting for the total eradication of Western civilisation.

As Richard Landes argues in his book Can the Whole World Be Wrong – Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad, the interminable terror and slaughter of Jews by Islamic terrorists makes Israel a major battlefield in the global war between medieval forces of darkness and Western (Enlightened) democratic civilisation.  So let us make no mistake, writes Zoe Strimpel, last year’s widespread whipping up of hatred against Jews on campuses was a clear example of that global war.  Deporting those architects of it who can be deported is a very important measure.  There is a clear difference between free speech and persecution.

She concludes with the following thought, that the deportation of all the green-card holders who foment pro-Hamas activity could easily cost millions of dollars in legal fees, but, she says, it would be money well spent.  We have to hope that America can be saved from its terror-endorsing lovers of murder and mayhem, one by one.  The alternative is too terrible to imagine, for it would enable our enemies to unleash their arsenal of enmity and racism from both sides of the political spectrum, creating a Perfect Storm, or as Tennyson put it – a Valley of Death, with cannons to the right and left.

Whatever occurs, we have no reason to abandon our centrist policies of compassion, of social democracy, of libertarian ideals and of benevolent capitalism.  Those to the left have abrogated their responsibility by adopting fundamentalist views which have no place in our political system and are now simply another version of right-wing ideology.  We do not fear their two-pronged attack because in essence they are one and the same – uneducated, ill-informed bigots.

We know who they are, we know where they stand and we know that we can defeat them and in doing so uphold the values of a Judeo-Christian world that created a modern and enlightened society where respect for the other became the most significant of traits.  We may be the historic other of society – but we strongly defend our right to exist, practice our faith and dwell in our land – just as others have the same entitlements.

Much the same was said by Robert George, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University.  “In virtue of our being made in the divine image, we are bearers of profound, inherent, and equal dignity.  Even the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the physically or cognitively disabled, the unloved, indeed the despised, the ‘defective,’ the ‘useless,’ the self-debased, the sinner, the dying, are of immeasurable value.  Each is and, as a matter of strict moral obligation, must be regarded and treated as, in Immanuel Kant’s words, an end and never as a means only.”

Jews know full well their duty which is why Tennyson’s final words could well describe our people too as they continue to combat the forces of evil:

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

 Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi David Freedman