A fter reading the title of this piece you’re probably thinking “Did I miss something? Was there a terrorist attack or train wreck I didn’t hear about?” But no I didn’t mean that sort of tragedy although the one I’m talking about is no less a disaster.
And it’s happening even as you read these words. I’m talking about the 50000 Israelis who’ve emigrated toLondonand lost all connection to the fact that they are Jews. Nothing is left of their tradition but the Ivrit they still sometimes use on social networking media. Their assimilation rate is close to 100 percent and even Yom Kippur is just another ordinary weekday when they go to work and send their children to their non-Jewish schools as usual. In a group discussion on a social network only one Israeli woman in the chat said that she does fast on Yom Kippur although on other days of the year she freely eats davar acher — a sad fulfillment of the grim prediction made in the 1950s by Professor Yosef Klausner (himself a secular Israeli). Klausner warned the public that the State of Israel in its present form would produce “Hebrew-speaking goyim.”
You probably breathed a sigh of relief as you realized we weren’t talking about a terrorist attack that spilled the blood of many Jews but only about the loss of 50000 Jews in this silent Holocaust of assimilation. But I cannot share in that relief. Indeed part of the tragedy is the prevalent apathy and inaction. Is anyone trying to reverse this scourge or at least to stop its spread?
Yom Kippur has always been a sign however tenuous of holding on to one’s connection with the Jewish People and its tradition. There is a well-known story from the days of the Baal Shem Tov: An assimilated Jew was traveling in his carriage and as he passed through a town he noticed that many shops were closed. He asked why and was told “Don’t you know it’s Yom Kippur today?” The apostate opened his eyes wide in surprise and ordered the driver to stop and buy some fish. Why fish? Because on Christian fast days the custom is to refrain from meat and eat fish instead. That is how estranged this Jew was from Jewish life. Yet when the Baal Shem Tov heard this story he remarked that this Jew still retained a link to his people for he responded to the news that it was Yom Kippur by purchasing fish for his dinner his way of identifying with a fast. He felt the need to do something.
