DECEMBER 23 • 2021 | 39

Spanish expulsion came the mystic circle 
of Tzefat: Lurianic Kabbalah and all it 
inspired by way of poetry and prayer. 
From East European persecution and 
poverty came the Chasidic movement 
and its revival of grassroots Judaism 
through a seemingly endless flow of story 
and song. And from the worst tragedy 
of all in human terms, the Holocaust, 
came the rebirth of the state of Israel, the 
greatest collective Jewish affirmation of 
life in more than 2,000 years.

TURNING WEAKNESS 
INTO STRENGTH
It is well known that the Chinese 
ideogram for “crisis” also means 
“opportunity.” Any civilization that can 
see the blessing within the curse, the 
fragment of light within the heart of 
darkness, has within it the capacity to 
endure. Hebrew goes one better. The 
word for crisis, mashber, also means 
“a childbirth chair.” Written into the 
semantics of Jewish consciousness is 
the idea that the pain of hard times is 
a collective form of the contractions of 
a woman giving birth. Something new 
is being born. That is the mindset of a 
people of whom it can be said that “the 
more they were oppressed, the more they 
increased and the more they spread.”
Where did it come from, this Jewish 
ability to turn weakness into strength, 
adversity into advantage, darkness into 
light? It goes back to the moment in 
which our people received its name, 
Israel. It was then, as Jacob wrestled 
alone at night with an angel, that as dawn 
broke his adversary begged him to let 
him go. “I will not let you go until you 
bless me,” said Jacob. That is the source 
of our peculiar, distinctive obstinacy. 
We may have fought all night. We may 
be tired and on the brink of exhaustion. 
We may find ourselves limping, as did 
Jacob. Yet we will not let our adversary 
go until we have extracted a blessing 
from the encounter. This turned out 
to be not a minor and temporary 
concession. It became the basis of his 
new name and our identity. Israel, the 
people who “wrestled with God and 
man and prevailed,” is the nation that 

grows stronger with each conflict and 
catastrophe.
I was reminded of this unusual 
national characteristic by an article that 
appeared in the British press in October 
2015. Israel, at the time, was suffering 
from a wave of terrorist attacks that saw 
Palestinians murdering innocent civilians 
in streets and bus stations throughout 
the country. It began with these words: 
“Israel is an astonishing country, buzzing 
with energy and confidence, a magnet 
for talent and investment — a cauldron 
of innovation.” It spoke of its world-
class excellence in aerospace, clean-tech, 
irrigation systems, software, cyber-
security, pharmaceuticals and defense 
systems. 
“All this,” the writer went on to say, 
“derives from brainpower, for Israel has 
no natural resources and is surrounded 
by hostile neighbors.” The country is 
living proof of “the power of technical 
education, immigration and the benefits 
of the right sort of military service.” 
Yet this cannot be all, since Jews have 
consistently overachieved, wherever they 
were and whenever they were given the 
chance. He goes through the various 
suggested explanations: the strength 
of Jewish families, their passion for 
education, a desire for self-employment, 
risk-taking as a way of life and even 
ancient history. The Levant was home 
to the world’s first agricultural societies 
and earliest traders. Perhaps, then, the 
disposition to enterprise was written, 
thousands of years ago, into Jewish 
DNA. Ultimately, though, he concludes 
that it has to do with “culture and 
communities.”

RESPONSE TO CRISIS
A key element of that culture has to do 
with the Jewish response to crisis. To 
every adverse circumstance, those who 
have inherited Jacob’s sensibilities insist: 
“I will not let you go until you bless 
me.” That is how Jews, encountering 
the Negev, found ways of making the 
desert bloom. Seeing a barren, neglected 
landscape elsewhere, they planted trees 
and forests. Faced with hostile armies 
on all their borders, they developed 

military technologies they then turned 
to peaceful use. War and terror forced 
them to develop medical expertise and 
world-leading skills in dealing with the 
aftermath of trauma. They found ways of 
turning every curse into a blessing. 
The historian Paul Johnson, as always, 
put it eloquently: “Over 4,000 years, the 
Jews proved themselves not only great 
survivors but extraordinarily skillful in 
adapting to the societies among which 
fate had thrust them, and in gathering 
whatever human comforts they had to 
offer. No people has been more fertile in 
enriching poverty or humanizing wealth, 
or in turning misfortune to creative 
account.”
There is something profoundly 
spiritual as well as robustly practical 
about this ability to transform the bad 
moments of life into a spur to creativity. 
It is as if, deep within us, was a voice 
saying, “You are in this situation, bad 
though it is, because there is a task to 
perform, a skill to acquire, a strength 
to develop, a lesson to learn, an evil to 
redeem, a shard of light to be rescued, 
a blessing to be uncovered, for I 
have chosen you to give testimony to 
humankind that out of suffering can 
come great blessings if you wrestle with 
it for long enough and with unshakeable 
faith.”
In an age in which people of violence 
are committing acts of brutality in 
the name of the God of compassion, 
the people of Israel are proving daily 
that this is not the way of the God 
of Abraham, the God of life and the 
sanctity of life. And whenever we who 
are a part of that people lose heart, and 
wonder when it will ever end, we should 
recall the words: “The more they were 
oppressed, the more they increased and 
the more they spread.” A people of whom 
that can be said can be injured but can 
never be defeated. God’s way is the way 
of life. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This 

essay was written in 2015.

