FROM THE ARCHIVES: BUT I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR :

The Search: We Leave Egypt Tonight (Paul Greenberg, March 26, 2002, TownHall.com)

It is not history that gives Passover its warrant. Quite the opposite: What makes tonight so full of promise and burden, like freedom itself, is that it breaks through history. It disrupts the everydayness. Why is this night different from all other nights? Not because we are set free, but because we may realize we are set free.

Nor is it the celebration of freedom that fills this night with awe but what follows: the plunge into the Wilderness. That is, the search. And tonight it begins anew.

Larry Johnson, former head of Counterterrorism at the State Department, was on NPR the other day talking about how Islamic terrorists groups in the Middle East are apparently cooperating with white separatists in America and Marxist terror groups in Europe. What could create this improbable shadow axis of evil? : simple, hatred of Jews. He said he was in Argentina recently and had separate middle-class Argentines tell him that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion reveal the Jewish plan for world domination.

It seems that for the first time since WWII, we now have a revival of virulent, exterminationist anti-Semitism and this time it's a global phenomenon. Meanwhile, people who should know better now turn their eyes toward the Middle East and wonder if all our lives wouldn't be easier if only Israel would give in, even if it means signing its own death warrant. This is, therefore, a particularly dangerous moment for Judaism and for those who care to see it, and the Jewish people, survive.

As we head into the Passover holiday it seems like an especially opportune moment to reflect on the debt that we all owe to Judaism. Happily, there's a book that does a great job of exploring the unique contributions of Judaism to Western Civilization : The Gifts of the Jews : How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (1998) (Thomas Cahill) (Grade: A-). Among the points he makes is one similar to that which Mr. Greenberg makes, that it was Jews who broke us free from the cyclical view of history, the fatalism that held that life ever repeated itself, and thereby set us off on the journey of discovery and progress that has brought us to this point in history. Both Mr. Greenberg's column and Mr. Cahill's book are highly recommended.

[originally posted: March 26, 2002] Posted by Orrin Judd at April 7, 2007 8:02 PM