Tonight Jews all over the world will sit down to the Seder with family and friends and tell the story of Passover, a story handed down from generation to generation. For the religious, it is the story of G-d's deliverance of the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt. For the more secular Jew, it is the story of the struggle of the Jewish people for freedom and our perseverance in the face of those who, "in every generation", rise up to destroy the Jewish people. For the religious and secular alike, the story of Passover is a celebration of freedom, physical, political, and national, as well as spiritual, personal and religious.
Our story starts with the words, "We were slaves." Jews, indeed humanity's, arduous struggle for freedom must be faced by every generation and the shape of the battle for freedom and the outcome, are never certain.
Two years ago, Passover occurred close in time to the anniversary of another struggle for freedom, a doomed struggle by the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. At that time, I noticed what seemed to be a peculiar coincidence, but which I now think is a reflection of the very human tendency to not recognize a novel danger until the beats is upon us. Last year I added to my original post, and will repeat and build on that today.
20%: On Action and Passivity Revisited
Last year due to the vagaries of the Hebrew calendar, Passover took place on the 62nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. In my reading about the events involved I was struck by a statistic that was cited in both the story of the Exodus from Egypt and in the Warsaw Ghetto; fully 80% of the Jews remained passive in the face of doom.
I am re-posting my April 30, 2005 post and will add some comments at the end, as well:
20%: On Action and Passivity
The Passover Holiday, celebrated by Jews around the world, has just ended. This Holiday represents a central myth of the Jewish people, that "we were slaves in Egypt and God brought us out" to freedom. Furthermore, we are instructed:
In each and every generation, a person is obligated to regard himself as though he actually left Egypt. As it says: "You shall tell your son on that day, 'It is because of this that God took me out of Egypt.'" (Exodus 13:8)
It is a powerful myth of a persecuted people being freed by the intercession of their God. In my research into the meaning of Passover, how it might still be relevant today, and what gives it the emotional resonance it still has, I came across a comment I had never seen before. This comes from Rabbi Stephen Baars, writing on Assimilation Then and Now:
The Talmud records that in actuality, only 20 percent of the Jewish people left Egypt. The other 80 percent did not identify strongly enough with the Jewish people's role and goal. They were too assimilated and immersed in Egyptian society. So they stayed behind.
Passover this year fell on the 62nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a doomed rebellion carried out by the 60,000 Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who remained of the original 300,000. For a painful, very human description of the day to day evolution of the uprising, take a look at "The Ghetto Fights," by Marek Edelman, published in a pamphlet called "The Warsaw Ghetto: The 45th Anniversary of the Uprising". (Hat tip to Horsefeathers).
I was struck by the same 20% occurring in the Exodus story and in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Rabbi Baars suggests that those who stayed behind were assimilated and thus unable to imagine a life of freedom; further, in this case freedom meant the unknown. He added:
The Haggadah is focusing us on the fact that our ancestors were among the group that had the courage and foresight to leave.
It is always difficult to make changes. We may feel that freedom is too elusive, that we don't have the drive, stamina and determination to make bold decisions. The Haggadah reminds us that we are part of the group that left. It is in our blood. We have the ability to make dramatic changes. If we so desire.
I do not think this explanation does justice to those forces which tend to always support the status quo. I wrote in an early post that all living creatures tend toward conservatism (ie, they resist change). This is the nature of Homeostasis and Conservatism. Why would 80% of the Hebrews remain in Egypt? Even after being warned that more terrible plagues were on the way, they remained. How could it be that three and a half millennia later, 80% of the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto were shipped out to concentration camps, even in the face of rumors and stories of horrors (most of which people couldn't allow themselves to believe) before the remaining 20% fought back?
It is all too human to refuse to see the danger right in front of us. Few of us can look into the face of evil and not be terrified. Perhaps we should not wonder so much about the intellectual gymnastics of those who invent paranoid fantasies to blame us for our problems (take a look at Dr. Sanity's post and this Daily Standard article by Paul Mirengoff of Powerline ), better we should marvel that a majority of Americans were able, after the horrors of 9/11 and with the promise of worse still to come, to stand up and face the evil. More than 50% of us voted to re-elect the President who would have us continue the struggle rather than try to pull the covers over our heads and hope the monsters would go away and leave us alone.
My old post remains timely. I am near the end of Bruce Bawer's informative and distressing account of the slow motion fall of Europe to the forces of intolerant Islam, While Europe Slept. Bawer, a Gay American who moved to Europe to revel in their progressive culture, including wide spread acceptance of Gay marriage, learned all too quickly that there was a deadly accommodation to the most intolerant and totalitarian forms of Islam and the reality denying Political Correctness of the elites which was destroying Europe's future. Yesterday Wretchard described how Europe's elites (and Europe is an Elitist Oligarchy, not a Democracy) still either does not recognize what is happening, or more likely is too frightened to think about it, or has already decided that the future of Europe is with Islam. He is concerned:
If challenging Islamic extremism intellectually is a necessity then the enterprise has gotten off to a bad start.
In fact, there nothing remotely approaching a consensus in Western politics on the need to fight totalitarian Islamism physically or intellectually. Even in America Iraq has become the "unnecessary war"; Guantanamo Bay the unnecessary prison. Wiretapping Al-Qaeda, worrying about the Iranian nuclear weapons program, even building a border fence are all unnecessary acts. And they are superfluous precisely because the notion of opposing radical Islamism is itself an unnecessary idea, inexpressible even as a cartoon. The problem with opening a Third Front in Europe is that the cart may have come before the horse. The truth may set you free, but first you must have truth.
Dr. Sanity has started a three part series on Denial, in all its myriad forms. She posted Part I: The Many Faces of Denial yesterday and it should be read by all who are interested in understanding how so many people can look at what is happening in Europe and not see.
The Jews in Europe are already facing their 20%/80% choice and I hope that more than 20% will see and leave. I suspect that within 5-10 years we will be facing a tremendous influx of native Europeans seeking to escape the chaos that the Continent will be facing.
Another year has passed and the tension between our freedoms and our fears remain. A large number of Americans believe that we can return to the halcyon days of the pre-9/11 world. They eagerly grasp the path of least resistance: Get American troops out of harm's way ASAP, focus on the policing aspects of the war on Islamic fascism, work hard to minimize the offense the West gives the Muslim World, even at the cost of an erosion of freedoms we have always held dear (speech, religion especially), and give minimal thought to how our passive behaviors affect the will of the millions of Muslims around the world who interpret retreat and conciliation as defeat and weakness. I do not know if this group constitutes 80% of the population of the West, but I would be surprised if it were much lower in Europe.
When freedom is valued less than short term security, one ends up with neither short term security nor freedom. When fear of the unknown outweighs the discomfort of the known, one has already made the decision to remain a slave.
The Passover Seder ends with the line, "Next year in Jerusalem." Our Jerusalem exists geographically in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world; more importantly, it exists in our minds, as a beacon of Freedom, toward which we forever turn.
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