This is not an historical survey per se but rather a big picture view of the failure of Jewish leadership over the ages in securing and protecting Jewish lives and livelihood. We read each year of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people via the literature of destruction that goes from Biblical times until today. The surivving religious poems – the “kinot” and “pitutim” in the daily and holiday prayer books – especially that for the 9th of Av in which the Jewish people commemorate tragedies from the destruction of the two Temples to the burning of the Talmud in Paris, from the 10 sages who died sanctifying God’s name to those murdered in the Holocaust to the Seventh of October.
Tradition has assigned official blame for many of these tragedies, the most famous being the blame of idol worship for the destruction of the First Temple and the internal hatred that caused the destruction of the Second Temple. God is rarely blamed although many of the kinot and piyyutim don’t let God off the hook. One group of people that have not been blamed – or that I have not seen – are Jewish leaders. Yet, time and again we are told to respect, honor and follow our leaders, religious and lay, even though they have led us to these tragedies in every age. On the seder night we famously say that “in every generation they have come to destroy us and God saves us from their hands”. As the seder night is about God and His exclusive role in our redemption, we don’t stop to ask, what led us to the abyss in every generation.
We like to take time to try to understand anti-Semitism – they hate us because we are capitalists or communists. They hate us because we are wanderers or we all live in one place. We are cosmopolitan or separatists. But we fail to ask the one question we have control over – what have our leaders done that led us to these points where we face destruction time and time again?
We don’t examine the failure of leadership of the Jewish people which put us, time and again, at the abyss. We have had many prophets over the ages who have warned us and the people are always blamed for not following their wisdom. But what of the leaders? Where were the kings and military leaders in the First Temple period to give the people a reason to fight and not to worship foreign gods? Where were the lay and Rabbinic leaders in the Second Temple period to unite the people? The famous story that the leading rabbi of the generation, Rabbi Yochanan ben-Zakai, when asked what he wanted while the Temple was burning said – “Yavne and its sages”. Yavne then was the intellectual center of Judaism and we take this story as the transition from a Temple based Judaism to a praxis-based religion but what made the leading rabbis and scholars of that generation abandon Jerusalem at so crucial a period and trade it and the people fighting and dying for that holy city for their own lives?
After the exile and a life centered in Babylonia there was still a sizable Jewish population in Israel. The Babylonian Talmud gives lip service to the Torah learned in the Land of Israel but the Jerusalem Talmud was quickly abandoned for the Talmud written in Babylonia. Where were the leaders who ought to have led the people to another return? Praying for “next year in Jerusalem” while building up lives in the comfort of Babylonia is not a leadership that cares about the security of its people and therefore the Jews spread to Iberia and north Africa, to Italy, to France and Germany to create businesses, communities and scholarship without giving one thought to the long term physical security of the people they and the Torah were meant to serve.
As we move to the 19th and 20th century the leaders of Zionism were the few and the anti Zionist Jewish leaders from the Rabbis to the Bundists and Socialists to the European assimilationists were the many. There were only 450,000 Jews living in the Land of Israel in 1939 – true, the British White Paper didn’t help – but Jewish leadership was at fault for not turning Zionism into a mass movement. Even the move to America was condemned by Rabbinic leadership fearful of allowing the people out of their control.
Yes, in 1948 we had Ben-Gruion who, against the advice of all the “friends of the Jews” in the world, declared a Jewish state. We had Begin who, against the experience of all other liberation movements of the time, refused the temptation for a civil war after the crime of the Altalina. We have had civil and military leaders since but none who motivated the people – rather, the people motivated the leaders.
Which brings us to October 7, 2023 – Simchat Torah 5784- and the total breakdown of Jewish leadership in Israel and abroad where the people responded to the call of destruction and not the call of its leaders. The leaders – government, opposition, military, security, legal, academic… we can go on and on – failed utterly in the leadup to that tragic day and on that day itself. When the time came to put aside all personal and ideological claims and unite to lead the people, they failed yet again. While soldiers and officers from all parts of the country came together to fight for their country and their families, the “leaders” were planning their next victory. Netanyahu made sure to keep his coalition intact no matter the new circumstances. Opposition leaders were willing to join a “national unity government” but only on conditions that X and Y not be part of the unity. Those who did join left quickly. The Ehud Barak’s were already planning on using the hostages and their families to topple the government – by any means necessary. Saddest of all – the leaders of the IDF and the Shaback clung to their seats and some continue to do so – dishonoring themselves, their country and the organizations they claim to lead.
A new leadership needs to recognize the new situation and recognize the greatness of the people it wishes to serve. Jews have survived for 3,000 years in spite of their leaders. Israel has survived and, in many ways thrived for nearly 80 years in spite of its leaders.
Yom Hashoah is a time for reflection and thought and remembrance. But it also has to be a time to think about what has failed the Jewish people and what has constantly put them in a position to face the abyss, forcing God to save them. In the Bible, God wanted to destroy the people and form a new nation based on Moses. Moses talked God out of it as he loved the people even as they angered him.
Today, our would be Moses’s try to talk God into destroying that part of the people they don’t like – for their own good. We deserve better that what we have had over the last few millennia. I know that the cliché says that a people gets the leaders they deserve. Jewish history and especially October 7 proves otherwise.
I'm reminded of this:
Napoleon Bonaparte once taunted Cardinal Ercole Consalvi by threatening: “Your Eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” To which the cardinal quipped:
"For 1,800 years, the rest of us have been trying to do it, and we haven't succeeded.”
"But what of the leaders? Where were the kings and military leaders in the First Temple period to give the people a reason to fight and not to worship foreign gods?"
The prophet Jeremiah stated that God himself was against Jerusalem and Judah and would destroy the kingdom by the Babylonians, instruments of his wrath, and that no human efforts against this would succeed.
Naturally, this message did not go over well. Some wanted Jeremiah killed, but he was thrown in prison instead.
Nevertheless, in spite of their best efforts, the will of God prevailed and Jerusalem was destroyed because of the overt wickedness and disobedience of the nation, according to the Tanakh's version of events.
Ancient myth? Or authentic truth inspired by God?
If it is only ancient myth, then the Jewish people and the state of Israel are grounded in mythology.