At Highland Park, the Murderer Went for Jews

Four of the seven victims of the Highland Park mass shooting were Jewish, and probably many of the dozens who were injured. According to a JTA report, “Although local authorities have not yet said whether they believe the shooter’s motivation was antisemitic, [a] Highland Park rabbi reported that the suspect, whom authorities said had pre-planned his attack for weeks, had previously visited a synagogue: his own.” Moreover, “Yosef Schanowitz, the rabbi of the Highland Park Chabad, told the Orthodox news site Anash that he recognized the alleged shooter, who ... had been turned away from Chabad by its armed security guard during a Passover Seder this year.” About half of Highland Park’s residents are Jewish; this mass murder did not aim at random victims; the murderer went for Jews.

I have said it more times than I can count, but no one seems to listen: The Jews in the US are in danger, mortal danger. The danger is only increasing, and at some point, these warning signs will explode, as has always happened to the Jews throughout the bloody history of our people.

I have said it more times than I can count, but no one seems to listen: The Jews in the US are in danger, mortal danger. The danger is only increasing, and at some point, these warning signs will explode, as has always happened to the Jews throughout the bloody history of our people.

Nothing will change that trajectory unless American Jews do what they must. They will suffer such excruciating torments that will force them to change their ways. Currently, if you speak with American Jews, they still feel on the top of the world. They feel entitled and superior. It is bound to hurt them; pride is the bane that has always hurt the Jews, in the end.

If American Jewry wants to avoid appearing in Simon Rawidowicz’s next edition of Israel—The Ever-Dying People, they must reevaluate everything. First and foremost, they must realign themselves with the basic Jewish tenets of unity and solidarity.

By unity, I am not referring to sympathy with Israel’s enemies, thereby displaying their aversion toward the State of Israel. What I mean is placing unity among Jews above all other values and establishing it among all factions, views, denominations, and opinions in our nation.

Jewish unity is the cure for antisemitism and the road to safety not because it makes Jews strong, but because it is the calling of our people to show the world that it is possible to unite without encroaching on people who think or feel differently, but simply by placing the value of unity above all other values. This is what the world expects from all Jews, whether or not it articulates it in explicit words.

Jewish unity is the cure for antisemitism and the road to safety not because it makes Jews strong, but because it is the calling of our people to show the world that it is possible to unite without encroaching on people who think or feel differently, but simply by placing the value of unity above all other values. This is what the world expects from all Jews, whether or not it articulates it in explicit words.

Our nation was born when our ancestors gave up their pride and united “as one man with one heart.” Since then, it has been our duty to repeat our ancestors’ feat in every generation. When we succeed, we thrive. When we fail, we suffer.

Currently, American Jews are failing miserably in the test of unity. Admittedly, Israelis are failing, too, but in this piece, I am referring to the situation in America.

Either way, both communities will pay heavily for their division, and will have to choose between unity and success or division and destruction. This, in fact, has been our choice throughout the generations.*

* For more on the link between Jewish unity and antisemitism, read my publications The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism, Historical facts on anti-Semitism as a reflection of Jewish social discord, and Like a Bundle of Reeds: Why unity and mutual guarantee are today’s call of the hour.

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The Curse of Reelections

“As long as the laws of society are not satisfactory to each and every individual in the state, and ‎leave a minority that is dissatisfied with the government of the state, that minority conspires ‎under the government of the state and seeks to overthrow it,” wrote Baal HaSulam back in the 1930s in his essay, “Peace in the World.” To this he added that if the power of the losing faction “is not sufficient to fight the government of the state face to face, it will seek to ‎overthrow it indirectly, such as by inciting countries against each other and bringing them to ‎war, for it is natural that at wartime there will be many more dissatisfied people with whom they ‎will have hope to achieve the critical mass to overthrow the government of the state and ‎establish a new leadership that is convenient for them.”

Without a common goal and a collectively adopted constitution, we will never have a stable government and a solid Jewish state. Our common law should be the law that was the basis of Jewish peoplehood: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Even when the people of Israel could not practice it, they always strove for it. If they do not, they are not regarded as Israel.

It seems as though these words were written yesterday, not ninety years ago. What is worse, the pertinence of Baal HaSulam’s words proves that we have not learned much.

We established the Jewish state based on laws we borrowed from the British Mandate that ruled here before us, with some leftovers from the rules of the Ottoman Empire that ruled here before the British. These are not the laws of the Israeli nation, but laws of the nations of the world. This incongruity wore down the legitimacy of the judicial structure to such an extent that lawmakers and laypeople alike are leaning increasingly toward following their own interpretations of the law.

Without a common goal and a collectively adopted constitution, we will never have a stable government and a solid Jewish state. Our common law should be the law that was the basis of Jewish peoplehood: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Even when the people of Israel could not practice it, they always strove for it. If they do not, they are not regarded as Israel.

Currently, because no effort, or even aspiration to unite exists within the people of Israel living in the State of Israel, we are not Israel. What are we then? We are a collective of persecuted migrants and refugees, many of whom feel that the country they live in does not belong to them and dream of the moment they can return to the country from which they or their parents were chased away.

Herzl’s vision of forming a safe haven for Jews is not enough. If this is the only reason for our gathering here, we will not be able to form a cohesive and stable society. The obstinate, opinionated nature of our people will soon take over, and division and hostility will develop. This is what is happening to Israel today. As a result, the political parties have splintered and become fragmented, and a succession of elections ensued.

If we want to stabilize the Israeli society and prevent its disintegration, we need to fall in line behind a single goal that we value more than our own opinion. Also, the goal of our country should not be to save the Jews, but to save the world from division and conflict.

The reason Israel is always at the center of attention, especially in times of conflict, is that the world looks to Israel for example. Since the inception of our people, we have been tasked with serving as a model of unity. Our ancestors assembled from numerous tribes, clans, and countries, and pledged to love each other more than themselves. This is unheard of by today’s ostensibly civilized standards. In the ancient world, this was utterly inconceivable.

If we want to stabilize the Israeli society and prevent its disintegration, we need to fall in line behind a single goal that we value more than our own opinion. Also, the goal of our country should not be to save the Jews, but to save the world from division and conflict.

Nevertheless, our ancestors attempted it and succeeded. Moreover, they proved that when they unite, they triumph and overpower any nation that challenges them. They proved that military and economic success depend, in the case of the people of Israel, solely on their unity.

Alternatively, when they became divided and hostile toward each other, they demonstrated weakness, and foreign nations overpowered them and exiled them. Our unique nation, therefore, became the first nation that could choose its own fate. When it chose unity, it succeeded; when it chose division, it failed. In a sense, our nation was a proof of concept, a “pilot,” as historian Paul Johnson called us. We proved that foreigners can bond in peace and love if they value unity more than their own culture and tradition.

The modern-day curse of endless elections reflects a decline in the level of the unity of our people in the State of Israel. Instead of lining up around the tenet of unity above all other considerations, each party promotes its own agenda and claims that it will lead Israel to success. Yet, they are all wrong because if their ideas do not require national unity as a precondition, it makes no difference what agenda they support; it is condemned to failure.

Only when we realize our unity, above all differences, will the curse of perpetual elections be removed. Moreover, only when we realize this will the danger of another cataclysm to the Jewish people be averted, as Israel becomes what Israel is meant to be: “a light [of unity] to the nations.”