AUGUST 17 • 2023 | 9

A History of Persistence and 
Hope Carried by Unity
I

n the history of the Jewish 
people, Jews have experi-
enced many horrific crises 
and tragedies; some of the 
biggest ones include the exile 
from Ancient 
Israel way back 
in the age of 
the Temple, and 
more recent-
ly, the terrible 
Holocaust by 
the Nazis led by 
Adolf Hitler. 
 Yet, after facing enemy 
after enemy, the Jews have 
somehow prevailed and sur-
vived, while their rivals have 
shrunk and disintegrated. For 
example, both the Babylonians 
and Romans dismantled after 
having strong empires, and 
the Nazis experienced military 
and economic collapses that 
destroyed their party. 
 Furthermore, Jews were 
even able to establish their 
own independent state of 
Israel in 1948, while holding 
off neighboring Arab enemies 
of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria 
and Lebanon and maintaining 
independence. 
Given all this information, 
many wonder, how have the 
Jewish People survived? There 
are multiple different opinions 
and answers to this question. 
However, there is one that 
stands above all, as it shows 
how interconnected Jews are 
and how much they care about 
protecting Israel and Judaism. 
To start, some people believe 
that Jews simply survived 
because the grace of luck was 
on their side. However, this 
answer offers a very undetailed 
and even lazy reason as to how 
the Jews survived, using no 

logic; surely, after hundreds 
of years of facing enemies and 
overcoming them, luck cannot 
be the explanation as to why 
the Jews were able to with-
stand the crises they were put 
through. 
Other people believe that 
Jews have survived because 
God was on their side. This 
answer offers extreme hope 
for the future of the Jewish 
people, as it assumes that God 
will always be there for them, 
ready to protect them, as God 
is on their side. The problem 
with this answer is the fact that 
it is very religious-based, using 
no logic to support it. While 
it is something very nice for 
an everyday Jew to believe, it 
cannot be the conclusion uti-
lized as to how the Jews have 
survived. 
Rather, a more plausible 
explanation as to why the 
Jewish People have survived, 
overcome their enemies and 
have their own country in 
Israel, is not due to the grace of 
luck, God, or any such spirit or 
entity. It is because the Jewish 
nation, as a whole, never lost 
hope in themselves and per-
sisted through their struggles. 

Throughout the entirety 
of all the crises the Jews have 
been through, the Jews have 
never lost hope in surviving 
and have always fought back 
whatever they were facing, in 
some way, shape or form. 
To demonstrate, when 
the Jews were exiled by the 
Babylonians and Romans from 
their land, they did not lose 
hope in surviving and being 
given back freedom, which 
allowed for the Jews to over-
come these empires. 
During the Holocaust, when 
it seemed as though the Jews 
would be all but extinct in the 
coming years, many Jews, such 
as David Ben-Gurion, the first 
prime minister of Israel, car-
ried on the hope of establish-
ing a Jewish state in Palestine 
and continued the duties of the 
Zionist Congress, which would 
eventually lead to the State of 
Israel just three years after the 
Holocaust ended in 1945. 
Shortly after Israel declared 
independence, when many 
neighboring Arab states 
declared war on Israel, some-
how, even though they were 
relentless, Israel emerged 
victorious because they never 

lost hope in maintaining a 
Jewish state in Israel, the land 
to which they are most spiritu-
ally connected. In this way, the 
history of the Jewish people is 
actually a history of persistence 
and hope. 
So, how did the Jewish 
nation survive as a People? 
Sure, while they may have 
had some luck, and perhaps 
God was on their side, the real 
and most concrete answer to 
this question is because Jews 
never stopped fighting for 
themselves and never lost hope 
in the Jewish nation. They 
always maintained unity and 
were always committed to the 
Jewish People as a whole. 
Still, to this day, Jews all 
across the globe, in Israel or 
in the diaspora, are incredibly 
bonded and united. Recently, 
two sisters and a mother in the 
Dee family, who live in Efrat, 
Israel, were shot and murdered 
in a terrorist attack. The father 
of the two sisters and husband 
of the mother requested that 
Jews around the world make 
a specific brownie recipe that 
one of the sisters deeply loved 
and made (very frequently) 
in honor of the family. Jews, 
all over the world, bonded 
over a brownie, showing how 
interconnected Jews are. 
The unity that bonds Jews 
together enables their strong 
hope and persistence in 
surviving and maintaining 
a nation, which is what has 
allowed the Jewish nation, as a 
People, despite all the enemies 
and crises they faced, to 
survive and remain strong. 

Zeev Maine is a student at Frankel 

Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield.

Zeev Maine 

