(This entry is a part of an ongoing series, and I am posting it precisely as such, calendar-wise.)
The Jews are a unique nation, which fact is well known to us all, both from the past and present historical and everyday practical experience and from the Bible itself. In a certain sense I might call them the first totalitarian nation in history, which may shock quite a few readers, although some may agree with it for a wrong reason, and only those who are already familiar with my treatment of totalitarianism, will be able to understand, fully or partly (depending on how well I have been able to develop this delicate theme), what I actually mean.
Yom Kippur is perhaps the most powerful expression of Jewish totalitarianism, giving the phrase “All for one and one for all!” (belonging to Dumas-père, it sounds more like a perennial wisdom of the millennia) an all-new significance.
“By myself have I sworn, saith HaShem (to Abraham), because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son (Isaac): that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast hearkened to My voice.” (Bereshit [Genesis] 22:16-18.) In this blessing, all are blessed because of one. (Ironically, long before there were any Jews on the face of the earth, God had used the same "all for one" formula on Adam and Eve, but in that instance it had not exactly been a blessing, but a... freedom-bestowing curse.)
While the above was an example of the all-for-one formula, the reverse, one-for-all formula is used in the Christian tradition, which, although religiously unacceptable to the Jews, is still distinctly and authentically Jewish in its origin:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16.)
And here, of course, is the famous response of the Jews to Pontius Pilate, concerning Jesus, which yet again returns the formula to its all-for-one value: “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Matthew 27:24-25.) Once again, religiously unacceptable to the Jews, and historically marked as one of the principal causes of generic anti-Semitism, this is still an authentic expression of the distinctive Jewish sense of collective responsibility, which can be perhaps justly seen as reflective of that “superpower chauvinism” that marks a divinely chosen nation…
In post-Biblical and modern times the all for one-one for all formula becomes overwhelming. Every major Jewish prayer addresses Adonai Eloheinu in plural supplication, that is on behalf of kol Yisroel, all Israel. The most important of all Jewish prayers, Shema Yisroel, or, simply, Shema, based on the Biblical passage in Devarim [Deuteronomy] 6:4-9, combines the usual plural (Adonai Eloheinu) with the singular, when God talks to all Israel as one person.
Thus, Yom Kippur, becomes the Day of Atonement of every Jew for the collective burden of guilt of all the people of Israel, those who came before, those who live contemporaneously, and those yet to be born. It is a moving tribute to the collective Jewish body, underscored by the beautiful prayer Avinu Malkeinu…
It is important to distinguish this type of nationalist collectivism from, say, Christian collectivism, such as in Pater Noster, Our Father, where the inhabiting sense of collective identity is purely religious/supranational, and by itself it has little, if any, bearing on the individual nation’s sense of collective connectedness to God. Even the Russians, despite their sense of Third Rome superpower destiny, do not invest the Lord’s Prayer, Otche Nash, with a nationalistic content.
It is only in the unique Jewish experience that religion and the nationalist self-awareness go hand in hand, to such an extent that even secular, ostensibly non-religious Jews feel empowered by this connection, and they are all moved, with virtually no exception, to recite the quintessential religious prayer Shema Yisroel as they find themselves at the point of death, a glorious and heroic tradition!
But there is a price to pay for such collectivity, and there is also a shockingly dark underside to the Jewish acceptance of the “collective sin.” By assuming responsibility for all Israel, each Jew becomes accountable for the crimes and other transgressions of every Jew who ever sinned. This collective accountability adds a ghastly twist to the question of anti-Semitism. I have previously, and in other places, indicated that what is commonly called “anti-Semitism” can often be reduced to the historical antagonism of the poor towards the rich, and the last German Holocaust of the Jews may not have started as a particular exception. There was a terrible resentment, well documented in contemporary literature, on the part of ordinary Germans brought to a state of total misery in the aftermath of World War One, for the prosperous German Jews, who seemed to have been untouched by the national catastrophe, but, on the contrary, somehow to have profited from it.
Thus, I insist, the initial phase of German national aversion toward the Jews had a political-economic basis. Having been subjected to the political propaganda blaming Germany’s Jewish “communist” radicals for the country’s precipitous and seemingly otherwise unexplainable defeat in the war, followed by an equally hard to explain otherwise, rise of Jewish economic prosperity against the backdrop of a national impoverishment, the level of German animosity had been reaching a highly dangerous level and burst out in an extreme case of national anti-Semitism, when not only the affluent German Jews, but also the economically destitute, such as the innocent Poilische Yidden, became targets of indiscriminate anti-Jewish hatred.
…However, anti-Semitism as such is a complex phenomenon, with a mixture of strong political, economic, and religious undertones, in which the mystical component, introducing itself into the mix under the shadow of collective accountability, can by no means be discounted, as it makes any Jew, and all Jews collectively, responsible for the actions of any other Jew, namely, the worst of them… I shall return to this somber, and unfortunately inescapable, subject in my later entries in this section.
As for the shocking dark underside of the notion of collective accountability, it could also be suggested that there may be a terrible tendency in the collective Jewish mind, observed and passionately condemned by the great Jewish Prophets, to trivialize, and even discount, the general immorality of sin, as its punishing burden becomes inevitable precisely as a result of such collective responsibility (so that even the holiest Tzaddik is not exempt from condemnation, hence, why bother to be a Tzaddik?!), but at the same time such collective sharing of accountability is surely bound to dilute the gravity of sin and make one prone to commit immorality on the logical grounds that a minor immorality, stopping short of the worst offenses, would not add much to the collective guilt, but, on the contrary, may tilt the average offense more toward the lesser one. (To be fair, the Christian sinner is hardly any better, and to some extent even much worse, in his or her cavalier attitude toward sin as something man is born with, and thus an inclination to commit sin, in the knowledge that Jesus will wash it away anyway.)
…Yom Kippur is a solemn Day of Atonement with beautiful music and moving atmospherics. But at the core of this Jewish atonement there lies a puzzle, a charade, a mystery, which still remains to be comprehended, but will probably never be.
The Jews are a unique nation, which fact is well known to us all, both from the past and present historical and everyday practical experience and from the Bible itself. In a certain sense I might call them the first totalitarian nation in history, which may shock quite a few readers, although some may agree with it for a wrong reason, and only those who are already familiar with my treatment of totalitarianism, will be able to understand, fully or partly (depending on how well I have been able to develop this delicate theme), what I actually mean.
Yom Kippur is perhaps the most powerful expression of Jewish totalitarianism, giving the phrase “All for one and one for all!” (belonging to Dumas-père, it sounds more like a perennial wisdom of the millennia) an all-new significance.
“By myself have I sworn, saith HaShem (to Abraham), because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son (Isaac): that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast hearkened to My voice.” (Bereshit [Genesis] 22:16-18.) In this blessing, all are blessed because of one. (Ironically, long before there were any Jews on the face of the earth, God had used the same "all for one" formula on Adam and Eve, but in that instance it had not exactly been a blessing, but a... freedom-bestowing curse.)
While the above was an example of the all-for-one formula, the reverse, one-for-all formula is used in the Christian tradition, which, although religiously unacceptable to the Jews, is still distinctly and authentically Jewish in its origin:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16.)
And here, of course, is the famous response of the Jews to Pontius Pilate, concerning Jesus, which yet again returns the formula to its all-for-one value: “When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” (Matthew 27:24-25.) Once again, religiously unacceptable to the Jews, and historically marked as one of the principal causes of generic anti-Semitism, this is still an authentic expression of the distinctive Jewish sense of collective responsibility, which can be perhaps justly seen as reflective of that “superpower chauvinism” that marks a divinely chosen nation…
In post-Biblical and modern times the all for one-one for all formula becomes overwhelming. Every major Jewish prayer addresses Adonai Eloheinu in plural supplication, that is on behalf of kol Yisroel, all Israel. The most important of all Jewish prayers, Shema Yisroel, or, simply, Shema, based on the Biblical passage in Devarim [Deuteronomy] 6:4-9, combines the usual plural (Adonai Eloheinu) with the singular, when God talks to all Israel as one person.
Thus, Yom Kippur, becomes the Day of Atonement of every Jew for the collective burden of guilt of all the people of Israel, those who came before, those who live contemporaneously, and those yet to be born. It is a moving tribute to the collective Jewish body, underscored by the beautiful prayer Avinu Malkeinu…
It is important to distinguish this type of nationalist collectivism from, say, Christian collectivism, such as in Pater Noster, Our Father, where the inhabiting sense of collective identity is purely religious/supranational, and by itself it has little, if any, bearing on the individual nation’s sense of collective connectedness to God. Even the Russians, despite their sense of Third Rome superpower destiny, do not invest the Lord’s Prayer, Otche Nash, with a nationalistic content.
It is only in the unique Jewish experience that religion and the nationalist self-awareness go hand in hand, to such an extent that even secular, ostensibly non-religious Jews feel empowered by this connection, and they are all moved, with virtually no exception, to recite the quintessential religious prayer Shema Yisroel as they find themselves at the point of death, a glorious and heroic tradition!
But there is a price to pay for such collectivity, and there is also a shockingly dark underside to the Jewish acceptance of the “collective sin.” By assuming responsibility for all Israel, each Jew becomes accountable for the crimes and other transgressions of every Jew who ever sinned. This collective accountability adds a ghastly twist to the question of anti-Semitism. I have previously, and in other places, indicated that what is commonly called “anti-Semitism” can often be reduced to the historical antagonism of the poor towards the rich, and the last German Holocaust of the Jews may not have started as a particular exception. There was a terrible resentment, well documented in contemporary literature, on the part of ordinary Germans brought to a state of total misery in the aftermath of World War One, for the prosperous German Jews, who seemed to have been untouched by the national catastrophe, but, on the contrary, somehow to have profited from it.
Thus, I insist, the initial phase of German national aversion toward the Jews had a political-economic basis. Having been subjected to the political propaganda blaming Germany’s Jewish “communist” radicals for the country’s precipitous and seemingly otherwise unexplainable defeat in the war, followed by an equally hard to explain otherwise, rise of Jewish economic prosperity against the backdrop of a national impoverishment, the level of German animosity had been reaching a highly dangerous level and burst out in an extreme case of national anti-Semitism, when not only the affluent German Jews, but also the economically destitute, such as the innocent Poilische Yidden, became targets of indiscriminate anti-Jewish hatred.
…However, anti-Semitism as such is a complex phenomenon, with a mixture of strong political, economic, and religious undertones, in which the mystical component, introducing itself into the mix under the shadow of collective accountability, can by no means be discounted, as it makes any Jew, and all Jews collectively, responsible for the actions of any other Jew, namely, the worst of them… I shall return to this somber, and unfortunately inescapable, subject in my later entries in this section.
As for the shocking dark underside of the notion of collective accountability, it could also be suggested that there may be a terrible tendency in the collective Jewish mind, observed and passionately condemned by the great Jewish Prophets, to trivialize, and even discount, the general immorality of sin, as its punishing burden becomes inevitable precisely as a result of such collective responsibility (so that even the holiest Tzaddik is not exempt from condemnation, hence, why bother to be a Tzaddik?!), but at the same time such collective sharing of accountability is surely bound to dilute the gravity of sin and make one prone to commit immorality on the logical grounds that a minor immorality, stopping short of the worst offenses, would not add much to the collective guilt, but, on the contrary, may tilt the average offense more toward the lesser one. (To be fair, the Christian sinner is hardly any better, and to some extent even much worse, in his or her cavalier attitude toward sin as something man is born with, and thus an inclination to commit sin, in the knowledge that Jesus will wash it away anyway.)
…Yom Kippur is a solemn Day of Atonement with beautiful music and moving atmospherics. But at the core of this Jewish atonement there lies a puzzle, a charade, a mystery, which still remains to be comprehended, but will probably never be.
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