L'AcademyOfLife.Org & KabbalahWisdom.org

Many, as last week’s headline blared, are wondering if antisemitism, is a new norm?

As Eli Wiesel says, “I thought hate died in the fires of Auschwitz, it seems like the Haters are still alive..”

The Lubavitcher Rebbe who was foremost in getting Russia to release her Jews, and become pro-Jewish said, “to solve a problem – one must get to its root.”

In order to get to the root of antisemitism – something that Jews have grappled with, for literally thousands of years – three questions must be asked:

A. Who are the anti-Semites?

b. Why?

C. What can be done?

The common denominator between all anitisemites, be it a large percentage of Arabs (who created three wars to God-forbid annihilate all Jews) be they from the far right or left, always has the same refrain “We are victims, they are aggressors – we must annihilate (or a sanitized description of this) them.” Of course currently – particularly after the holocaust, a new breed of antisemitism – as its heinous diabolical evil was so openly obvious, that apart from the Arabs, no self-respecting individual or nation could claim simply to be anti-Jew – that “miraculously” somehow the only country with a Jewish majority population was termed “Zionist” – so now the pontificators of neo-antisemitism, from Iran, the far (or not so far) left etc. say – “of-course we are not anti-Jew, only anti the Jews of Israel (the refrain of course “Palestinians are victims, they are aggressors, so therefore we must annihilate..”

Now such a claim need not cause concern, if the ability to annihilate God forbid is not there, however as today, as we saw this Yom Kippur, a single individual usually has enough ability.

I have made a website nevereveragain.org focusing on the danger of a nuclear armed Jihadist country.

So why have, and are, so many so obsessed?

Concomitantly it must be mentioned that the vast majority of humanity are really pro-Jewish / Israel 70% (Pew Polls) India 70% (that’s practically 1,000,000,000 people) China (the only other culture Chinese respect, as it’s an ancient culture, are the Jews) and the list of Pro-Israel and Jews, has reached unprecedented heights.

But the question to why some people can be so irrational, remains to most Jews perplexing.

The answer is actually very simple.

Jealousy

To understand jealousy we must unravel the human psyche.

The Kabbalah teaches, there are three Motivators (masters) The Mind, The Heart (Emotions/feelings/ desires) and The Ego (the need for pride, and conversely its corollary, the need to not feel shame. – Now this is critical, for jealousy, is when we are feeling shame, but simultaneously we believe that the shame is unwarranted, hence we not only feel shame, we also feel resentment / anger, and this state of shame + resentment / anger, creates jealousy.)

The classic story of “antisemitism” or jealousy, is in fact “Snow-White” – the wicked queen who believed (not, that she was also beautiful, but) the MOST beautiful, hence felt, that Snow White’s beauty detracted from her “status” – in other words, as she was jealous, this caused her to try to annihilate.

In simple psychological terms, when we are feeling angry (usually from feeling shunned, (which is exactly what bullies do – namely degrade, shun, and make people feel unlovable (a fundamental human nee))) then as we also have  jealousy (as the Talmud states, “we are jealous of everyone and everything, but our student or child”) the jealousy causes us to desire to annihilate all whom we feel jealous toward.

It’s as simple as jealousy = hate (interestingly, the Hebrew word for hate, is Sina, and the Hebrew word for Jealousy is Kina, and in contradistinction to the Hebrew word for Love which is Ahavah and within it, the word “Hav” to give – jealousy and hate in Hebrew contain the word an/aan (though this may just be my mind) which has a root of the word annihilate.)

Another classic example, is the famous story in which two children were born one night to two mothers – tragically the next day, one discovered, that accidently she smothered her child in her sleep, and she stole the other’s baby – now how did King Solomon know, that by ordering “the baby cut in half,” to be fairly divided – the real mother (filled with love) would give the baby life – while the jealous woman, would want the baby dead?! – For such is the tyranny of jealousy.

Jealousy (as the Rebbe Rashab writes in Heichaltzu – worth reading…) causes the mind to produce rationalizations, why the other’s evil is so BAD, that “they must be annihilated.”

In summary, antisemitism is a natural phenomena – I know you may find this upsetting, however suffice it to say, few of us (if any) are as smart as John Van-Nuemen (the Jewish inventor of the computer, of algorithms, of game theory and more) and he said (don’t recall exact words) “there is no reason to be upset by bad people, it’s how things are.”

In fact, when they asked Freud for the psychological reason for antisemitism he said, “miserable bastards” (in fact this is the psychological reason for bullies – again we are born with the desire to love and be loved..)

More (much more) can be written, however the simple truth is jealousy = anti-semitism (in fact, when they asked a closed society, namely the Japanese, “if you had to hate someone, who would it be?” they answered “the Jews.” – You see another factor (the precursor to jealousy) is arrogance – someone who is humble doesn’t expect, hence doesn’t resent – having lived in Africa, I noticed this firsthand, for while the average black is not an anti-semite (in fact, I don’t believe historically black nations ever persecuted Jews, nonetheless, when they get power (as we see, say, in South Africa) they certainly start to become neo-antisemites.)

Of-course, if one has an irrational desire to annihilate, like Hitler – whose jealousy was maniacal (in fact, Britain sent a spy to observe this new Chancellor, and his report was his energy/drive was all based on hate) he needed an army of idiots (as Hitler said “Lucky for leaders that people don’t think”) so he used the media. (Which is why, one must be supremely judicial in discerning; as Reb Menachem Mendel of Kotzk said: “What’s the difference between a lover of truth and hater of falsehood? – The former finds truth, the latter, falsehood.” – Those demigods who preach what is wrong with others!, are driven not by love. – And sadly, our media has become a virulent negative cesspool.)

So a critical question, we must ask ourselves (remember, there were Jews who voted – in fact, critical votes, for Hitler) “Am I following a group / movement, who induces negativity?”

Finally, ultimately, there are only two ways to counteract jealousy – the first is add in your Positivity! (and decrease all negative influence, such as the media.)
The second (though not always practical, but quite revealing…) there was a Rabbi, who was getting hate mail from the head of his city’s KKK – his wife, a sweet Jewish lady said, “It must be, he lacks love;” – so he called him up and said, “I heard you are blind, is there anything I can do for you?” – at first the man was perplexed, but said “No… thanks;” Eventually he ended up moving in the Rabbi’s home, and converted!

I personally have used this – I was once in a Teffilin booth (where we offer people to put on Teffilin) in a market-place, and while some Muslims came to schmooze, one individual (I fairly quickly saw) was interested in demeaning; so to end a pointless conversation, I said to him, “Tell me, do you love me, or do you hate me? – he replied, “You know… the Palestinians..” 
“I just want you to know” I replied, “I love you;” and he put his head down, and walked away.

PS This was written in response to the Heinous Yom Kippur attack (in which a German attempted to shoot up a Synagogue but being foiled (as he didn’t have entry) he shot an innocent street walker and someone eating at a restaurant.)