Processing the Hate

I haven't been following the news closely for the last week or so. The mini break I took to celebrate Thanksgiving and be with my very lovable/wonderful long-distance boyfriend might have had something to do with it. Or maybe it was because I've had it with the crap cable news spit out. Just the other day I remarked that the most depressing job I could think of was being a cable news anchor - all they do is report on the miseries around the world, without stop. At least as a non-reporter one can choose to tune it out once in a while.

However, what happened in Mumbai was hard to ignore...not only because of the overall tragedy, but as a Jew, it plunged me back into yet another reality check of Anti-semitism being alive and well. India is the last country I would expect to hear about Jews being murdered and yet when the photos of the young rabbi and his wife flashed on screen it wasn't much of a surprise. Besides being angered and horrified it reminded me of the Lech Lecha Torah portion from a few weeks ago. Avraham is promised by G-d:

"I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and he who curses you, I will curse; and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth."

Basically G-d tells Abraham that it will protect those who protect Jews and he will punish those who cause harm to the Jews. This is one of the central answers to why the world should care about what happens to Jews and to Israel. Even if you don't believe in G-d, the pure historical evidence is that Jews have been the "canary in the coal mine" to the world. When something happens to the Jews it will eventually happen to the rest of the world, this is why gentiles and Jews should care that these thugs targeted Jews and Israelis. As Dennis Preger notes so well in his column about the Mumbai terrorist:

For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu problem.

Ultimately, the people set to destroy the Jews have been destroyed themselves and those who sheltered Jews have prospered:


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