Four innocent Jewish men gunned down. A Jewish young woman, waiting for a ride, stabbed to death. A beautiful two-year-old girl critically injured by rock-wielding assailants, dead two years later.
These events did not occur in France. They did not occur in Scandinavia, the UK or Belgium.
They happened in Israel.
Yet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have you think that the calculus is black and white: Jews in Europe are in mortal danger; Jews in Israel are perfectly safe.
If only it were that simple.
The tragic reality is that anti-Semitism is a permanent part of the Jewish people’s fabric, woven in from time immemorial. Yes, there are peaks and troughs; yes, there are locations that are more prone and eras that are more hate-filled. It is undeniable that Jews in Europe are living through challenging times.
But Jewish life in Europe isn’t over. And the approach of Netanyahu and like-minded people that European Jews, French ones in particular, leave en masse belittles the importance and vitality of these communities in the rich Jewish tapestry.
Jewish society in France is older, far older, than Jewish life in the modern State of Israel. What would world Jewry look like if this community ceased to exist?
Take a walk through the streets of Seville, through the “Juderia,” a Jewish neighborhood in name only. There are no remnants of the vibrant Jewish life that once filled its Jewish quarter. Even the synagogue is now located elsewhere. The city, like many other former centers of the Golden Age of Spain, tries to recreate these connections to its Jewish past. But it’s gone.
Is this what Netanyahu wants to become of France?
He, and those who support this “simple” solution of aliyah, should stop a moment and consider what is at stake.
Exile and expulsion forced the Jews out from many corners of the globe; Jews are nomadic and resilient, they rebuilt their societies from the ashes, whether from the Crusades, the Inquisitors, the Nazis, the Arab dictators. But the new construction was not the same. It never is. The colorful, majestic communities of the Orient — some of them the oldest Jewish communities in the world — gone. There are pockets of these communities in Europe, Israel and the US, but they are not the same. The dialects are dying out, the uniqueness of some of these Oriental Jewish cultures are disappearing or amalgamating into what we, in modern Jewish society, term “Sephardic culture.”
Really there is no such thing. It’s similar to using the term “Native American,” when no Cherokee, Sioux or Cree would describe himself that way. Analogously, the Jew from Salonica, the Libyan Jew, the Djerba Jew, the Iraqi Jew.
Exile, expulsion and mass murder have elided these nuances.
Or take the example of Eastern Europe’s pre-Holocaust shtetl life. Destroyed institutions and yeshivot have been rebuilt, but does anyone in Lakewood, NJ, home to the yeshiva most associated with this rebuilding, believe that its community holds a candle to the now erased European communities it so greatly and rightly venerates?
When the Jews leave a country, not only does the country have a lot to lose, as France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia recently pointed out, but so too does the global Jewish community. In the case of France, a 2,000-year-old history would be relegated to the books, to memory.
And it’s not only about the past. Belgium is home to uniquely diverse chasidic Jewish communities. Switzerland is home to one of the only truly Yekke (Germanic) congregations in the world that still prays from machzorim and siddurim rarely used elsewhere. France and Germany exemplify the communal concept of a Kehilla, umbrella community centers that house services of all stripes and bring local Jews together for a variety of activities, from religious to cultural to educational.
Many of Europe’s Jewish leaders, Korsia included, have made it clear that they don’t appreciate the Israeli government’s comments urging European Jews to up and leave their homes.
If Israel sees itself as part of world Jewry, it should be offering to help strengthen Europe’s Jewish communities, not write them off.
In the wake of the recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks, a grassroots effort has been launched on social media. It’s titled, quite simply, I Go to Synagogue. It’s Europe’s Jews saying we’re here, and we won’t be scared away.
If European Jews decide to immigrate to Israel, they should be welcomed. But as long as European Jews remain committed to Jewish life in Europe, it is the responsibility of world Jewry to support them and help ensure that Jewish life continues to thrive.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
