The lesson of the Jews

In the story of the Jewish people, there are five most profound life lessons for everyone:

The first, is from the human psychology and the spiritual truths, and these two oppose and merge

One could ask a simple question: why the suffering?

There must be a spiritual lesson God was teaching the Jewish people

The answer is simple

We humans have a very bad habit, like the guy who needed a parking space in Jerusalem, to attend an important meeting, so he called out “God if you are there and you find me a parking space, I’ll give half the profits of the meeting to charity” as he finished his desperate plea for help, a man pulled out in front of him, so he turned to God and says “Don’t worry God, I found one already.”

When we are in a pickle, we remember our father, when we are not, we conveniently forget.

The question of course is why?

The answer is simple

A person by nature desires to be free from obligation

If we are obligated, well we are not free from obligations

So the Jewish story is one in which – paralleled I think in all of humanity – men learn, that true freedom, for today we truly are freed from the onerous beliefs, societal norms, all which were cast aside by our parents or their parents generation, hence, we’ve learned, that freedom from responsibility, doesn’t equate to happiness; true freedom is precisely in having positive obligations!

Lesson number two, is an equally profound lesson, for never was there a noble more charitable and honorable group than the Jews, nor was there ever a more vilified, singled out for extermination group either.

What’s up with that?

The reason behind that is like someone – an old congregant of mine bitterly and innocently lambasted Desmond Tutu who finds the time to disparage the Israelis, yet can’t seem to find his tongue with the genuine atrocities going on all over Africa.

In other words, those who hate the Jews are not moral people, for they certainly have a single group they vilify, and somehow it’s the best, not the worst!

Those who vilify the Jews do so because they are jealous.

Jealousy is the great hidden sin, for all other sins based on passion, we recognize as such, and can repent; but s/he who is jealous, will never admit to themselves that they hate out of jealousy, for the very fact that they are jealous – arrogance, for the truly humble person doesn’t think they deserve the good fortune of another – hence, it is the same arrogance that causes the hatred, that conceals the cause of it.

Hence jealousy causes a man to find fault where there is none, or even if there possibly is, to create the lie that that fault somehow equates with the justification to annihilate or God-forbid torture those people.

So we must learn this lesson, we should never condone our own hatred, if we ever find ourselves hating, it is out of jealousy, not out of love nor out of justice – particularly to a group of people who have caused us no personal harm.

The next most important lesson of the Jews, is of course belief in God.

Many have thought morality and God are not interdependent.

Germany is a prime example of this folly:

For as the Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches, while the Germans were literally gassing Jewish children and many others to death, they were simultaneously putting their own in jail for being cruel to animals.

Human stupidity as Einstein said and as we demonstrated in the last lesson (namely our ability to rationalize our desires) is infinite.

It’s only when we are following a higher authority making up what’s right and wrong, that we can have a prayer, hope and a good chance at being so.

The fourth lesson is indeed very profound as well:

When I was the Rabbi in a resort town, a gentile told me about a Jewish girl – a family friend – and asked if I could find her a place to stay, he said “I know you Jews look after one another, more than us.”

In fact, we see tremendous amount of charity, love and hospitality between Jews.

The cause ironically was the very sense of identification, from mutual history and destiny, which formed a family-like feeling between them often borne ironically from the suffering.

In other words, we must learn that God is not malicious.

As Einstein said about God, he is subtle hence subtly, even our downs have silver linings, things if we could only understood the profound benefit, life Josef we would claim “though the people involved in the oppression meant malice, God had a higher plan.”

And perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from the Jews, is the benefit of faith.

For what could possibly keep a people oppressed, beaten, demonized and often targeted for annihilation God-forbid strong in their faith – if there are Jews alive today, it’s because their ancestors never swayed from Judaism for three thousand years – and the answer is, a promise from God, that one day the Messiah will come and bring a world that would resolve all inhumanity, restore the Holy Temple, bring peace to Israel and the world – in short the power of hope based on faith!