Painful Memories
By Berel Wein

(July 13) Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has made a
farewell gesture to Ezer Weizman, our retiring president.
The remnants of the sefer Torah that went into Egyptian
captivity at the outset of the Yom Kippur War, and which
was until now exhibited in the Egyptian War Museum in
Cairo, has been returned to Israel as a goodwill gesture
to Weizman. 

According to the Midrash, every sefer Torah has its own
mazel - fate and fortune. This sefer Torah was a constant
reminder of the failings that led to our narrow escape at
the onset of that bitter war. The fact that it was in the
hands of our hopefully former enemies served as a galling
memory of our near defeat. 

Now that the sefer Torah has been returned to Jewish
hands, perhaps we will have better memories of that war,
though I doubt it. One of the great failings of modern
Jewish life is a complete failure of memory, especially of
painful memory. This stems from an abysmal ignorance of
our history by the masses, coupled with a distorted,
revisionist and basically anti-Jewish view by many of the
professional Jewish historians of the last 150 years. Thus
we have no real sense of memory. The Holocaust and the
establishment of the State of Israel have become the sum
total of Jewish history among most present-day Jews. 

Since these events are remembered without any historical
perspective, their true value is diluted and many times
distorted. The Zionist culture, which denigrated the
accomplishments and story of the Jews in exile, cut off the
Jewish story from its past and removed the frame which
housed the Jewish picture. The socialist Jews and Labor
Zionists decided to begin the Jewish story with Marx, to
our everlasting sadness. Therefore, many of the lessons of
Jewish history have been lost to our current generation. 

And this loss is reflected in everyday life here in Israel, as
well as in all of our social tensions and even in our
regional and international policies. 

JEWISH HISTORY warns us against three failings that
have always weakened the Jewish people. 

One is arrogance. The runup to the Yom Kippur War is
the most expensive example of what arrogance cost the
people and the State of Israel. "The Arabs would not
dare attack us!" was the slogan of the time. Thus our
arrogance almost destroyed us. The return of the
remnants of that captured sefer Torah should somehow
remind us of the folly of arrogance, especially if it's
unwarranted. The words of Solomon that "pride goes
before a fall" are still as true today as they were when he
wrote them millennia ago. 

The State of Israel, its political and social leaders, its
media and its intellectuals, can all stand a strong dose of
humility. We are not a superpower, we cannot afford to
casually alienate large sections of our own population
(haredim for example), nor should we ignore how the rest
of the world sees us. 

Knowledge of our history will make us at one and the
same time proud and humble. But pride is not arrogance -
it is self-worth and self-confidence. 

The second failing that Jewish history highlights for us is
the danger of being too current with the non-Jewish
culture that has always surrounded us. The sexually liberal
society, with all of its breezy philosophy to justify
hedonism, is not a new phenomenon. The Jews faced
promiscuous and homosexual societies in the classical era
of Greece and Rome. The Jewish response - controlled,
legitimate, family-oriented, and striving for sanctity and
not merely pleasurable exploitation of one's partner -
eventually proved to be stronger than the permissiveness
of Greek and Roman society. 

The secular wagon in Israel is not empty. It is filled with
the extremes of Jeffersonian democracy, Marxist history
and economics, and Greek and Roman licentiousness and
violence. We are just too up-to-date. Neither feminist
innovation in Jewish traditional lifestyle and ritual nor
calling non-Jews Jews will guarantee any measure of
continuity or survival. 

Lastly, Jewish history teaches us the folly of internal
warfare. It is obvious that there are great differences
among the Jewish people today. The factions involved
therefore should not seek to needlessly provoke
confrontation. The Jewish people need less issues being
brought before the Supreme Court, a more tolerant
attitude and behavior pattern towards other Jews and
certainly a disdaining of violent words and deeds by Jews
against Jews. Vandalism, violence, public demonstrations
that demonize others, and bitter personal disputes are
nothing new in our history. Jews will not be brought
closer to Torah by Knesset laws or harsh words. Our
country can never be united as long as the press, media
and political parties vilify entire sections of Jewish society
and denigrate their cherished beliefs and way of life. 

All of history has taught us that this open and hostile
disunity is most dangerous. Memories of our past may be
painful. But they are necessary and vital to cleanse us of
our present malaise.