In the Trenches: Reasons for hope? New Year's thoughts

Amidst the daily dose of depressing news, let's step back in this holiday season and reflect on how far we've come. 

Looking at the larger historical picture gives perspective, offers hope and provides inspiration. And these days, with all of the gloom and doom, it should be obvious that we need mega-doses of all three.
 
To think back over the postwar years is to realize how much has been achieved.
 
First, imagine what it must have been like to be a surviving Jew in the days and weeks after the war's end. It would have been easy enough, I suppose, to call it quits, to conclude that the price of maintaining a Jewish identity was just too high, as the Holocaust - and the world's largely indifferent reaction - seemed to demonstrate.
 
Yet Jews regained their footing, faith and fortitude, and a remarkable chapter in Jewish life ensued. Most striking of all was the breathless journey in just three short years from the lowest point in Jewish history to its highest, the establishment of modern Israel.
 
Second, not only was Israel created, but it survived. And not only did it survive, but it thrived - against all the odds and predictions.
 
Never in modern history has a state been subjected to such an unremitting campaign to delegitimize, demoralize and ultimately destroy it. Yet Israel's enemies have never succeeded in vanquishing its spirit, much less its army. Israel has stood tall and strong, whether in the Six-Day War, in the raids on Entebbe and Osirak, or in the face of the ongoing terror threat. Its population continues to grow. Its science and industry enrich the world. Its medicine and agriculture extend life.
 
Think about this as a contemporary metaphor for Israel's success: Its open society draws Darfuri refugees fleeing their bloodthirsty Muslim brethren in Sudan.
 
Sure, Israel is not without its problems, big problems, but they shouldn’t be allowed to overshadow its successes - and those successes are breathtaking in the span of six short decades and against the backdrop of the immense challenges faced every step of the way.
 
Third, look at American Jewry. This is the same community that, in 1939, couldn't do a thing to persuade the Roosevelt administration to open America's doors to the European Jewish refugees on the passenger ship St. Louis. And this is the same community that was the object of a memorable 1964 front-page article in the popular weekly magazine Look entitled "The Vanishing American Jew." Ironically, as American Jewry blossomed in the years afterward, Look withered on the vine and, yes, vanished.

Now the very same community that couldn't muster any influence or political clout a few short decades ago, and was slated for cultural assimilation in America's melting-pot, is accused by the likes of Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of wielding inordinate power in Washington.
 
Fourth, after beginning as outsiders looking in - as targets of restrictive immigration quotas, executive suite discrimination, and numerus clausus policies at elite universities - American Jews began playing an increasingly prominent role in every facet of the nation's life and culture. Never before in Diaspora history has a Jewish community experienced such full acceptance, and reciprocated with such robust contributions to the receiving society.
 
Fifth, equally striking, American Jews developed an extraordinary communal infrastructure. That includes a growing number of Jewish day schools (though still not as broadly popular as those in such countries as Australia, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa), the revitalization of Jewish centers on university campuses, and the widespread acceptance of Jewish studies programs as an integral part of higher education for both Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.
 
To be sure, American Jewry faces enormous difficulties of assimilation, Judaic illiteracy and indifference, but its achievements should not be overlooked or, for that matter, minimized.
 
Sixth, the rescue of Jews in danger became one of the great achievements of Israel and world Jewry, at times joined by sympathetic nations, institutions and individuals. In the postwar years, it could be said that no Jew was alone, even if, tragically, not every effort proved successful.
 
The stories of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews tower in Jewish history. The courage of those who would not quietly yield to oppression and second-class status, but rather determined to take fate into their own hands, whatever the risks, should be taught as an example to every generation. The help they received to achieve their seemingly unreachable goals speaks powerfully to the collective responsibility and intertwined destinies of all Jews around the world.
 
And, perhaps most astonishing of all, it's little known how many non-Jewish Soviet and Ethiopian citizens tried to pass themselves off as Jews during the years of rescue. They understood that to be a Jew could mean a ticket to a better life, while few seemed to care about their fate as non-Jews in tyrannical societies. Imagine. Just three decades after the Second World War, it was no longer Jews trying to survive by seeking non-Jewish identities, but the opposite. That reversal spoke volumes about how far the Jewish people have come.
 
Seventh, the remnant Jewish communities of Western Europe reconstituted themselves after the war and rebuilt Jewish life - not just its institutions, important as they are, but even more its soul, its spirit, its pride. And though in every country where the Nazis set foot, Jewish numbers were severely depleted and the scars never fully healed - how could they? - it didn't stop the dreamers from looking to the future and planning for it.
 
Eighth, this was even truer in the case of Eastern Europe. After all, those Jewish communities, devastated by the Nazi onslaught, then suffered another four decades of repression under communism. With few exceptions, their past as Jews was denied them, their present was bleak and their future was a black hole of fear and uncertainty.
 
To travel throughout the region today, twenty years after the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, is to witness a veritable renaissance of Jewish life. True, the numbers are tiny compared to what they should have been, and the ghosts of yesteryear are ever present, but the reality is no less inspiring.
 
What the Nazis could not finish, the communists, in their own way, set out to do - extinguish any last vestige of Jewish life. The Jews today in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia and elsewhere are eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of those with eliminationist fantasies.
 
Ninth, new possibilities for Israeli diplomacy have been created. Whereas at one time Israel was largely dependent on its ties with the United States, much of Western Europe and Latin America, and some African and Asian countries, since 1989, Israel has found extraordinary opportunities in once-hostile countries behind the former Iron Curtain.
 
During the Cold War, could anyone imagine an Israeli prime minister sneaking off to Moscow for meetings with Russian leaders on Middle East issues? The very idea would have been ludicrous. Could anyone have conceived of an Israeli president traveling to Azerbaijan, a one-time Soviet republic and largely Shi'ite country bordering Iran, to underscore growing bilateral ties? And could anyone have ever visualized Israeli and Polish leaders speaking of the "strategic partnership" between their two countries?
 
And last but by no means least, peace is possible. The treaties with Egypt and Jordan prove it. They are far from perfect, I fully realize. There's a long way to go before these relationships resemble US-Canada ties, to say the least. But these treaties have held, through thick and thin, for thirty years in the case of Egypt and fifteen in the case of Jordan.
 
Whether further peace treaties lie just around the corner remains to be seen. Personally, I have my doubts.

But even as Israel remains ever resolute and vigilant in the defense of its borders, so, too, must it remain resolute and vigilant in scanning the distant skies for new possibilities of peace. And when those possibilities emerge, they will be embraced.

After all, the quest for peace, lasting peace, has been at the heart of the Jewish journey for over 3000 years.

Shana Tova. May the year 5770 bring with it new reasons for tikva, for hope.