Rosh Hashanah: Victims No More

VICTIMS NO MORE

©2018 by Rabbi Baruch Binyamin Hakohen Melman.  Published with permission of the author.

Civil Discourse and the polite exchange of differing viewpoints has largely died out on college campuses and universities in 5778. And by the looks of things 5779 doesn’t look like it will be much better any time soon! After a week of eulogizing Senator McCain, we all came to agree that what set him apart was his willingness to reach out across the aisle to  work together across the political divide for the sake of the common weal. But no sooner was  his body freshly interred but already the Kavanaugh hearings had became a scene of chaos and mayhem. How do we expect the students to behave when the adults are such poor role models?

Antisemitism is still strong and is increasing in strength year by year. Hatred of the Jew has now morphed into hatred for the State of Israel, the state of the Jews. But after the Holocaust, we refuse to be the victims. The premise of Zionism was that Jews would no longer play powerless victim to the whims of others. When your enemies are not fighting for land, as they pretend, but rather for your death and extinction, how then does one compromise? Israel is condemned by the left precisely because she refuses to play victim and give in to those who would destroy her. She, the representative of the Jewish People, no longer fits the victim narrative. Rather, her enemies now flip history on its head and claim the role of victim. Thus they have become the reigning superstars of the campus and of the politics of intersectionality. The Arab world lost war after war in its attempt to annihilate the nascent state of Israel. Having lost time after time, they came to learn that in claiming victimhood they will win global sympathy.

America lost a true role model with the passing of Charles Krauthammer this past summer. While the politics of discord thrive on a perceived sense of victimhood and injustice, as if to justify every act of outrage, there was a corner of America at the address of Charles Krauthammer where victimhood was not welcome. If anyone would be permitted to feel victimized by cruel fate it would be him, having suffered a tragic accident while at medical school while diving in a pool. The two books he had brought poolside to read were The Fate of Man and a textbook on the spinal cord. Ironic indeed!

But he refused to see himself as a victim! He completed medical school and then pursued a passion in politics and writing. Winning honor after honor, he soon became one of the most highly respected thinkers and writers of our generation. Many who had seen him for years on TV were shocked upon meeting him in person, to discover him in a wheelchair, having preferred to not let his paraplegic status come to define him. He would succeed in spite of his injury, on his own terms. He defined himself by his mind, not by his gender or race or handicap.

And yet he reveled in his Jewishness. Not so much that he was a man of faith and belief, but rather that the philosophical underpinnings of Judaism demanded that we, humanity, take full responsibility for our actions and our fate. He didn’t blame the universe for his spinal injury. He blamed his own decision to dive in the pool, and the physics that put the full weight of his plunge on that particular vertebra on his injury. His decision. His fate. His freedom of choice. His responsibility. He recognized the beauty and maturity of Judaism that recognizes the centrality of the idea of personal responsibility, bechirat chafsheet, as a central hallmark of its philosophical foundation.  Yes, the temptation to blame others is very strong. But in the end it comes down to us – what paths we choose and what decisions we make.