In Parashat Ki Tavo we read the difficult chapter of the national curses known as the Tochecha (Admonition). In the last verse of this dreadful chapter Moshe warns the children of Israel that “Hashem will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as slaves and maidservants but there will be no buyer.” Commentators point out that this last statement deals with the sad reality of assimilation.
The great rabbi of Dvinsk, Latvia, Rabbi Meir Simcha Hakohen, sensing the desire for assimilation by many Jews of the late nineteenth century, warned that when the Jew abandons his faith for the sake of social integration, society reminds the Jew of his unique task, in the form of Anti-Semitism. Not only Jewish thinkers make reference to this idea.
The great French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote a short book entitled, “Anti Semite and Jew”. Sartre alleged that the Jew always is attempting to prove himself more French than the Frenchman. Sartre labelled the Jew who tries to flee Jewish reality, an inauthentic Jew. Yet as much as the Jew tries to escape his reality, the anti-Semite makes him a Jew in spite of himself.
This is what the Torah is telling us at the end of the admonition. Even if we try to “sell ourselves”, the nations of the world will not buy it. Anti-Semitism cannot be purged by rejecting Jewish tradition and identity, but rather by strengthening it.
Shabbat Shalom
