Israel's cycle of crisis and renewal: The five stages of Jewish history - opinion

The hotel’s new employee was puzzled when he passed the glass cabinet labeled “Use Only in Times of Emergency.” Day after day the fire ax meant to be there was missing. Finally, he asked his supervisor why the cabinet was always empty. “Simple, we are in a perpetual state of emergency,” he replied.

There were so many times in history when it seemed we were doomed to extinction, such as in 1945, when the Shoah had finished and the world assumed we would never pick up the broken pieces and regenerate.

Or just three years later, in 1948, when all the experts predicted that we would never survive the onslaught of the seven Arab nations determined to end us aborning. Yet survive we did, flourishing even, against all odds.

While I dare not prognosticate as to what the future will bring – or when – I do believe that our history presents a pattern that repeats itself time and time again.

There are five stages, I suggest, to this pattern. They begin, let us propose as a starting point, with the ascension of the Jews within the society in which we live.

Take Egypt, for starters. We were privileged citizens there, treated with kid gloves by Pharaoh. As relatives of the exalted Joseph, savior of the empire, we enjoyed a cushy existence in Goshen, allowed to continue – tax-free! – our unique way of life. We thrived, we multiplied, the land “grabbed us,” as the Torah records.

The same was true in Persia of old. We were honored members of society, even invited to the royal banquet of banquets, where we were feted with glatt kosher fare and were seemingly free to pursue our own way of life.

Even in Germany, millennia later, we prospered for a long period of time, leading cultural and social lives of the highest order.

But Stage Two was lurking in the shadows. This would be the delegitimization of the Jews, the casting of our national identity as a foreign, threatening force that undermined the host.

Pharaoh arose and proclaimed to his people, “Am Yisrael rav v’atzum mimenu,” “the nation of Israel is great and powerful from us!” The insinuation of an “us versus them” scenario drove the Egyptians to hate us.

So too, Haman would convince King Ahasuerus that we were a disloyal fifth column that had to be expunged. “If a fly falls in their cup of wine,” Haman told the king, “the Jews simply remove the fly and drink the wine. But if the king so much as touches the cup, they throw the whole thing away.”

Hitler, of course, was the vile expert at convincing his public that we were the ultimate enemy, or “virus,” which was sickening German society. “Die Juden sind unser ungluck!” – “the Jews are our misfortune” – was the hypnotic motto screamed by the masses and scrawled on Jewish shops.

A Third Stage employed the clever device of turning Jews against one another. Pharaoh appointed Jewish taskmasters to oppress their own kinsmen, just as the Nazis utilized Jewish kapos to assure that the killing machines in the camps ran smoothly. In Persia, too, the society was divided between those who heeded Mordecai’s advice and those who bitterly condemned him for making the situation worse.

And then, of course, Stage Four was quick to follow. Words morphed into action, as the Jews were systematically excepted, excluded, and then killed. Pharaoh would do it slowly, via slave labor, Haman by national decree, Hitler by industrialized mass murder.

And what are we seeing in today’s world? Are these same stages not being played out on a global scale?

It begins with acknowledging that, by and large, we have led charmed lives for three-quarters of a century. In virtually every country where we reside, we have achieved the highest levels of prosperity and influence. We have taken the cultures of a hundred different nations and brought them to unprecedented heights.

But then, the lofty expressions of acceptance turn to condemnation and contempt. We Jews are, of course, the cause of violence, incessant wars, high gas prices, and terrible acts of inhumanity upon the less fortunate, culminating in genocide.

No crime – even training Israeli dogs to rape – is too fantastical to imagine where Israelis (read: Jews) are concerned. There is a frenzy to strip the Jewish communities of every virtue and value they have exemplified.

And Jews, let us sadly admit, are at each other’s throats. Is there a single pro-Palestinian support group that does not have Jews in prominent positions? Do we not see Jews flocking to vote into office Zionist-hating candidates – many of them Jewish themselves? And what of the street wars being waged in Israel by selfish, non-serving Jews who slander our national institutions and rob the national treasury, even as a failing government shields its eyes?

Is it beyond expectation that, God forbid, Jews will soon be physically set upon in increasing acts of violence?

By now, you may be truly discouraged, perhaps even resigned to our impending demise. But I began by saying that there are five stages, not just four. And the Fifth Stage is the cosmic, hard-to-imagine, appearing out of nowhere, truly miraculous stage. This is where the God factor enters, and – against all odds, in seeming opposition to the natural course of human events – we miraculously not only survive but flourish.

This is the stage when liberation from bondage, receipt of the Torah, and conquest of our own land followed the slavery in Egypt. When turning the tables on Haman’s plot to annihilate us resulted in the rebuilding of the Temple. And when release from Hitler’s plot to exterminate us quickly morphed into our reclamation of Israel and the building of a spectacular nation whose rapid progress is the envy of every other nation.

But we believe. We have faith. While we acknowledge King David’s warning, in Psalm 146, “Do not rely on human princes, who are not our salvation,” at the same time we proclaim, “Harbei shluhim la’Makom,” God has many messengers at His disposal to carry out His will.

We anguish, yet we adjust. We are in pain, yet we persevere. We cry, we complain, we question our fate, yet we carry on in the faith that we are an eternal people whose story will have a good – no, a glorious – ending.