Q&A: Hatred of Jews
Hatred of Jews
Question
An additional question.
Not long ago I asked the Rabbi a question in which I assumed the Rabbi would agree that there is no spiritual necessity for Jews to be hated in the world. That was my instinctive assumption, because I tend to bring mystical forces into reality only when I have to. But since then I’ve remembered and reflected several times on the strange dimensions of the hatred and persecution that the Jewish people have experienced almost nonstop for thousands of years. My father also told me that this is actually written in several sources (not philosophical ones) — I don’t remember where. Over the years I’ve heard quite a few natural explanations, but they’re all convoluted and usually don’t apply to all the cases of persecution and expressions of hatred.
The big problem is the famous question about the punishment of Egypt (in the story of the Exodus from Egypt) — how can you force humanity as a collective to choose something specific, when if you break it down that requires intervening in the choices of specific individuals? One of the famous answers is that every individual can choose the good, but as a collective the Holy One, blessed be He, caused it… which of course is strange as a popular answer (I don’t remember whose it is), since it’s obviously illogical, because as I said, looking at the collective may be confusing for a moment, but it is made up of many individuals, and in order to change the statistics for the sake of the big picture you have to deal with the individuals. Though maybe it’s possible to plant annoying genes in us or something.
What is your opinion on the matter? Is there or isn’t there mysticism involved? Can the Holy One, blessed be He, cause a collective to choose something?
Answer
I don’t know what “spiritual necessity” means. In practice, there is hatred. One can offer various psychological explanations for it, or mystical explanations.
The Holy One, blessed be He, certainly can cause a collective to act in a certain way without changing the behavior of any individual. I’ve discussed this at length in several places. For example, in the series on statistics and doubt. Here you can see it, for example, in columns 76 and 539.
Discussion on Answer
As much as possible*
I do not see any necessity to assume mystical involvement, though it cannot be ruled out. There are long and deep historical-psychological residues.
There is antisemitic hatred of Jews even among peoples who never had any connection at all to Jews, and some of them have never in their lives even seen a living Jew. I’m very far from mysticism in general, but I don’t see any other explanation in this case.
Thank you very much.
I meant mystical necessity.
Do you tend to think there is such a thing?
Of course no one really knows, but I’ve always felt that you tend, as much as possible, to rule out mystical interventions in reality. Here too, would you prefer to rule it out, or does the strangeness make you seriously suspicious?