Weekly Letter from Rabbi Kupperman

Torah Portion Vayeitzei

Dear friends

The 2014 book of an American political scholar and author, Joshua Muravchik, Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned against Israel, should be compulsory reading for anyone who cares for Israel. Muravchik, a scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, produced a rigorous and well-researched book that explains why so many in the West no longer view Israel as the plucky democratic underdog surrounded by hostile Arab autocracies, but as a despicable colonising power, morally equivalent to South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Muravchik explains how the 1967 Six Days War became the turning point in the West’s attitude towards Israel: “Israel would never again enjoy the degree of sympathy it experienced in 1967 [before the Six Days War]. The simplest reason was that Israel would never again seem so endangered. The devastating prowess demonstrated by Israel’s fighting forces gave it an aura of invulnerability. The implications of this new image were compounded by another transformation resulting from the war. Until 1967, Israel was pitted against the Arabs, who held an advantage in terms of population of roughly fifty to one, and in terms of territory of more than five hundred to one, as well as larger armies and more wealth and natural resources. The Six-Day War, however, set in motion a redefinition of the conflict. No longer was it Israel versus the Arabs. Now it was Israel versus the homeless Palestinians. David had become Goliath.”

In the concluding lines of his book, Muravchik delivers a stark and rather blood-chilling warning: For all its might, Israel remains a David, struggling against the odds to secure its small foothold in a violent and hostile region. The relentless campaign to recast it instead as a malevolent Goliath places it in grave peril… Should Israel’s enemies succeed, the result would be a second Holocaust. This would be a tragedy of unspeakable proportions for the Jews, but not only for them. The world would have lost one of its most creative countries, and the devastation of the Jewish people would cause incalculable harm to the spiritual life of the West and perhaps beyond

Today, ten years after its publication, Making David into Goliath is more relevant than ever. The entire Western world, including traditional Israel’s allies, doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand that Israel’s battle is not just a battle against Hamas or Hezbollah, but a battle for its survival against one of the biggest regional powers namely Iran. If G-d forbid one of Iran’s proxies will have the upper hand it will trigger a chain of events that will end in complete destruction of Israel. 

A few people in the world understand the gravity of Israel’s situation. One of them is John Bolton, the former national security adviser to President Trump. In an article in the political insider magazine The Hill, he writes; “When Hamas launched its blitzkrieg from Gaza on Oct. 7, it did not mark the onset of yet another Arab-Israeli war. Nor was it a war of Palestinians against Israel. Instead, the barbaric onslaught marked the beginning of an Iranian war against Israel, carried out by Tehran’s terrorist proxies. The war’s future course and duration are murky, but the ayatollahs’ underlying strategy is clear: close their long-envisioned “ring of fire” around Israel, permanently weakening or even paralyzing the Jewish State.”

Even graver assessment of Israel’s situation was written by Nicholas Rostow, a Research Professor at the National Defense University and a Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Law School, in May this year, in an article titled – Israel under Fire – Israel’s Survival: Little Room to Manoeuvre. This is his summary of Israel’s situation – “Israel’s strategic challenge thus is simple to state: because Israel’s enemies want to destroy the State of Israel, survival has always been Israel’s strategy. In all its battles, the State of Israel has known that to lose is to die: Israel’s enemies do not want to see its borders changed; they want to see the State of Israel disappear”. 

In the modern world, the State of Israel is more than any other country, unfortunately, has to be preoccupied with its survival. There is no other country in the world whose existence is under constant threat. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, there was not a single moment when its defence forces could loosen up their hypervigilance. In addition to the national threat to the existence of the state, the citizens of Israel live under constant personal threat due to terror. The nation as a whole and each individual personally are preoccupied with survival issues.  

Naturally, preoccupation with survival leaves little room for growth and development. As the science, technology, and culture writer David DiSalvo writes in his bestseller What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite: “That’s the challenge of being human; having a big brain capable of greatness with hardwiring evolved for survival”.

Imagine a computer with a super fast processor and huge memory, but because of some fault in the operating system it always runs on ‘safe mode’. This would be a very sad waste of computing power because while in ‘safe mode’ the computer can run only the most basic tasks and features.

A similar waste of computing power happens in our brain; our brain is capable of greatness but because for most of human history we had to be preoccupied with survival, our brain works, most of the time, in ‘safe mode’ thinking about things that essential for survival such as food, procreation and social acceptance, rather than with essentials of greatness; curiosity, exploration and engagement with our environment. 

This happens not only to individuals but on a national level too; persecuted people, who had to spend much time thinking about survival, usually failed to produce great cultural or scientific achievements. Think about all the great discoveries and cultural developments throughout history and you will find that most of them came from the prosperous parts of the world. 

Jews are the exception to the rule. Somehow, Jews managed to provide remarkable cultural and scientific achievements even in times of persecution. The preoccupation with survival didn’t stop them from achieving greatness. The drive for education, literacy and achievement remains the major factor in Jewish history throughout the ages, regardless of whether or not they have been persecuted.

It would be expected that being all the time in ‘safe mode’ the Jewish state will do very little in terms of greatness. However, as we know, Israel is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of economy, education, technological, scientific and medical developments. I know that I am repeating here known truths which became a bit of a cliché, but I want to emphasise this fact here in the context general incompatibility of combining preoccupation with survival with a drive for greatness. If, as DiSalvo says, our challenge as humans is to use our brain’s capacity for greatness in spite of being hardwired for survival, the state and the people of Israel passed this test with flying colours.

In this week’s Torah portion we learn that a combination of thinking about both greatness and survival at the same time has been part of the life of the first person who actually was called Israel- our forefather Jacob. 

At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Jacob sees his famous dream of “Ladder to Heaven”. In his dream he sees, “Ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God are ascending and descending on it”. 

He also sees how “The Lord stands above him and says “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.”

In terms of greatness, you cannot imagine anything that surpasses this revelation. However, Jacob’s reaction is somehow incongruent with this message of greatness. Jacob says; “If God will be with me; if He will protect me on the journey that I am taking, if He gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return in peace to my father’s house, then I will dedicate myself totally to G-d.”

It is strange that after being promised such great things as “you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south”, Jacob asks for such basics as “bread to eat and clothing to wear, and returning in peace to my father’s house”.

Jacob is the first Jew who is facing the challenge of combining survival with drive greatness. Yes, G-d promised him great things, but still, he is a refugee who is running from his brother who wants to kill him and he is facing an uncertain future with his uncle Laban who is known for his greed and deceptiveness. Jacob is painfully aware of the duality of his situation. Therefore, even after receiving G-d’s assurance about the future greatness, he is still asking G-d to secure his survival.

At some point in life, each one of us has to face the challenge of not forgetting our passion for greatness while being busy with concerns for survival. We had good teachers on this subject since the beginning of our history. We should be able to show our capacity to continue in their tradition.  

Wishing you a wonderful Shabbat

Rabbi Shalom Kupperman