80 | SEPTEMBER 14 • 2023 

T 

he year 2014 was the 
year when it became 
dangerous to be a Jew. 
Israel, subject to sustained 
missile attack, discovered how 
hard it is to fight 
an asymmetric 
war against a 
terrorist group 
ruthless enough 
to place rocket 
launchers 
beside schools, 
hospitals and 
mosques. It found itself 
condemned by large sections 
of the world for performing 
the first duty of any state, 
namely to protect its citizens 
from danger and death.
Antisemitism returned to 
the streets of Europe. Nearly 
120 years after the Dreyfus 
trial, the cry “Death to the 
Jews” was heard again in 
Paris. Seventy years after the 
Holocaust, the call of “Jews 

to the gas” was heard in the 
streets of Germany. There 
were times when it felt as if 
the ghost of a past we thought 
long dead had risen to haunt 
us. More times than was 
comfortable I heard Jews say, 
“For the first time in my life I 
feel afraid.”
Let us stay with those fears 
and confront them directly. 
We are not back in the 1930s. 
To the contrary, for the first 
time in the almost 4,000-years 
of Jewish history, we have 
simultaneously independence 
and sovereignty in the Land 
and State of Israel, and 
freedom and equality in the 
diaspora. Israel is strong, 
extraordinarily so. 
The success of Iron 
Dome was the latest in 
an astonishing line of 
technological advances — 
not just military but also 
agricultural, medical and 

commercial — designed to 
protect, save and enhance life.
Israel has lived with the 
disdain of the world for a 
very long time. Given that it 
is the only fully functioning 
democracy in a Middle 
East where elsewhere entire 
nations are brutally tearing 
themselves apart, that is a 
problem for the world as 
much as for Israel. 
Besides, which we know, 
even the most lukewarm 
among us, that it is infinitely 
preferable to have a State of 
Israel and the condemnation 
of the world than no Israel, 
no Jewish home and have the 
sympathy of the world.
The unity Israel showed 
during the Gaza conflict was 
deeply moving. It reminded us 
that in a profound existential 
sense we remain one people. 
Whether or not we share a 
covenant of faith, we share 

a covenant of fate. That is a 
good state to be in as we face 
the Yamim Noraim, the Days 
of Awe, when we stand before 
God not just as individuals 
but as a people.
As for antisemitism, rarely 
has it been more self-evident 
that the hate that starts 
with Jews never ends with 
Jews. The most significant 
enemies of the Jews today 
are the enemies of freedom 
everywhere. Worldwide, 
we may feel uncomfortable, 
anxious. But there are parts 
of the world where Christians 
are being butchered, 
beheaded, driven from their 
homes and living in terror.
As for Muslims, one 
prominent academic recently 
estimated that of the hundreds 
dying daily, at least 90 percent 
were doing so at the hands of 
their fellow Muslims. Bahai 
are at risk. So are the Yazidis. 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Choosing Life