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