Anger, History and Love
SCHULWEIS, HAROLD
ANGER, HISTORY AND LOVE HAROLD SCHULWDS "Anger deprives a sage of his wisdom and a prophet of his vision." Talmud Pesachim 66b The world has heard a rage blowing from high places. Not the...
...That anger, shouted through clenched teeth, embarrasses some of us...
...Dreams are a-his-torical...
...1982 is 1932...
...Let the diplomats figure it out, speculate about motives, timing, concessions, Poland, Yamit, Argentina...
...All depends on the ability to distinguish Jeremiah from Josephus, and the prophet from Titus...
...Josephus spoke from the tent of the Roman general...
...Damn the statistics and the police reports...
...Unclever, unstatesmanlike, time, Harold Schulweis, a moment contributing editor, is rabbi of Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California...
...To what end...
...Anti-Semitism will die only with the last non-Jew...
...Respected because it is honest...
...Fantasy A fever of rage gives birth to fantasy: the reversal of time...
...and inwards, converting friends into foes...
...We are resolved that this time it will be different...
...He who opposes Israel shoots arrows into the eye of God...
...Leviticus 19:17) Differentiations are in order...
...We can stop the camera, break in on history, protest, fast, bomb the crematoria, save the children...
...Feared because it is a blind rage that may lead us down perilous ways...
...Not the whinings of old men and women complaining about their cremated ashes, but the cumulative resentments that have welled up within our psyches...
...Feared because it cannot see the whole truth...
...Today is Kristallnacht...
...We shed our skins and erase the memory of our victimization...
...It is, however, no policy with which to conduct the life affairs of a people...
...It need not have any design at all, no weighed consequences, no anticipatory wisdom...
...But rage in its blind impotence cannot distinguish destruction from dissent...
...It has turned into a mindset, a way not only of interpreting the past but of soothsaying the future...
...History is reversible...
...If 1982 is 1932, there is no point in drawing distinctions between the cast of characters then and now or the conditions then and now...
...This one turns the clock back 50 years...
...Against the Divine Promiser of the Promised Land...
...Rage has its place and its time...
...A desperate dream in which the past is played a second time...
...We know now what we could never suspect then...
...To remember one part of the past so powerfully that it eclipses all else is to condemn oneself to live as a perpetual victim of its eternal recurrence...
...If 1982 is 1932, and everything is the same except us, then we can expiate for our gnawing guilt that we did not know or do enough or die enough...
...Nothing has changed, only our awareness of the outcome...
...It is protestation, declaration, release, prayer...
...It is as if they have waited all these centuries to explode...
...The great Jewish historian, Heinrich Graetz, asked why Jeremiah, who had chastised the leaders and prophesied the destruction of the First Temple, was accepted as a true prophet, while Josephus, who quoted one of Jeremiah's speeches while standing among the Roman legions, was regarded as a traitor...
...But this one has frozen into a solid state, inflexible, obdurate...
...It must be respected nevertheless as we respect the defiance of the impotent who shake their fists against their own condition as much as against anything else...
...His visions and chastisements of love make up a third of our Torah...
...place and target inappropriate, the rage expresses the remaining dignity of those who have tasted the betrayal of the promise...
...We defy you to censure us, punish us, isolate us...
...The enemy is one without and within, the terrorist planting bombs and the critic identified with his people...
...We are not sheep but lions...
...A self-destroying madness cannot tell the two apart...
...tomorrow is Auschwitz...
...That rage must be respected and feared...
...More than United States policy is meant...
...It is impatient with differentiation...
...Graetz responded, "Jeremiah spoke from within...
...In the verse preceding the imperative to love thy neighbor as thyself, we are mandated "not to hate thy brother in thy heart...
...But the philosopher who declared that forgetting the past condemns one to its repetition was only half-right...
...Anger is a genuine and important emotion...
...If the rebuke stems from hatred, the chastisement is only a concealed vengeance...
...A generalized rage directed against no one in particular, against everyone in general, has taken hold...
...The prophet who criticized out of love remains the glory of our people, the distinctive moral hero of our civilization...
...Weinberger, Mitterand, Schmidt, Reagan—why now, and why against these who are not our mortal enemies...
...It is more than a sporadic outburst, a momentary release...
...It is not temper with which we are dealing but its solidification into character...
...It is an understandable but dangerous fantasy to live today as if it were yesterday, to superimpose upon today's cast of characters yesterday's masks...
...The spectrum of anti-Semitism is deep and wide, ranging from whispered anecdotes to physical annihilation...
...thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him...
...In our fantasy we control the instant replay...
...It is a long repressed cry against fate, or destiny, or the irony of a providence that has granted us such ambitious dreams and left us with pillows of stone...
...If it stems from love, it is a blessing to thy neighbor and thy God...
...The boundaries of time and place and circumstances have collapsed...
...Respected because it bears so much of our people's anguish and desire to be reborn...
...What was, is again...
...We fear no one though we know we are alone...
...Those posturing neo-Nazis threatening to march on Skokie, that swastika graffiti on the synagogue wall, that overturned tombstone in a Jewish cemetery are not incidents...
...The rage must be respected, not for its wisdom or propriety, for it may prove harmful and misdirected...
...We who have been sycophants so long, mendicants soliciting the favors of others, trembling children holding on to Esau's heel for our dear life, hiding behind Rebecca's skirt, we declare our contempt for all of you descendants of crusaders, inquisitors and SS men...
...For what purpose this outburst...
...Against whom shall they shout...
...Only this time it will end differently...
...If 1982 is 1932, then Schmidt and Mitterand and Carter and Reagan are only reincarnations of their counterparts a half century ago...
...What is to be gained by violent rhetoric, by flailing accusation, by the expression of resentment dredged up from before the Inquisition, flaunted in the face of friends...
...Dissent The fantasy of rage turns backwards, seeking to reverse history...
...the intent is the same...
...Deep and terrible holocaustal memories can never leave us...
...You have inscribed upon our phylactery arms indelible numbers...
...An embittered rage built on the belief that it is all the same—the enemy and the ally, our protectors and destroyers, bombing or not bombing...
...The whole damnable history reeks of betrayal...
...Rage blinds one from asking whether this adversary is the same as yesterday's enemy, whether this circumstance is really a repeat of yesterday's...
Vol. 7 • June 1982 • No. 6
