It’s Our Problem

“French Jews have largely abandoned public schools. Some 70 percent of all school-age Jews, among the highest proportion in Europe, now attend religious schools. Sports programs are also increasingly Jewish-only matches, as are cultural events.”

So writes journalist Judith Miller in a piece in City Journal on the precarious situation of French Jews amid the upsurge in anti-Semitism there. Although she rues about the ill effects of anti-Semitism in France as a new, sad reality, the cultural and educational separation she cites as anti-Semitism has actually been a cause for celebration from earliest times.

In Ms. Miller’s description, too, there springs to life what countless gedolei Yisrael have written to decipher the enigma of Jew-hatred. The great Volozhiner roshei yeshivah, the Beis HaLevi and the Netziv, each wrote in detail about the beginnings of our enslavement in Mitzrayim as an early, paradigmatic episode of Jew-hatred (albeit not the first, as the Haggadah’s reference to Lavan’s attempt to obliterate us makes clear).

In the midst of recounting the Divine kindnesses to the Jewish People in Egypt, Dovid Hamelech says (Tehillim 105:25) “Hafach libam lisno amo — He turned the Egyptians’ hearts to hate His nation.” So it was Hashem Who stood behind the hatred of the Jews. But why would He do that, and what sort of kindness is that?