But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?” This is why there is nothing obvious about Mark Zuckerberg’s post this week, which, in essence, is a statement of commitment to his Jewish heritage. Well remembered is Tevye’s funny, yet profound monologue with God: “I know, I know. This difficulty was actually recognized long ago by the Jewish sages who praised the Jews of Persia in the time of Ahasuerus (often identified with Xerxes) because they, for the first time in Jewish history, chose freely to submit themselves to the Law of Moses.Ĭhoosing to be a Jew is nothing short of a wonder.
It is almost an axiom that the freer a Jew is, the more likely he or she will be willing to abandon Jewish identity.Īs strange as it may sound, it seems to be more difficult to choose Jewish identity in a free society than it is in an oppressive one. In the one-and-only Jewish state in the world, most Jews are secular, and many complain bitterly over the religious restrictions in our country, such as the lack of entertainment on Yom Kippur (the Day of Attornment).
It is in a land where Jews can live out a full Jewish life without the slightest disturbance that they choose to identify with the “enlightened” culture around them rather than with Judaism. In America, the land of the free, more Jews are assimilating than those who aren’t.
This anomaly can be seen today, perhaps like never before. Mattathias and his followers were a small minority who refused the good life that assimilated Jews had enjoyed for many decades. After years of such sinful behavior, Mattathias in 167 BC ignited the Maccabean revolt by killing a Jew who obeyed Antiochus Epiphanes’ decree to offer sacrifice to the Greek gods. When the Greeks, the enlightened of the time, ruled Israel, Jews were Hellenizing themselves en masse.
The more a given society is tolerant, the more Jews are willing to let go of their heritage. The opposite can be said about Jews living in tolerant societies. It seemed as if the more Jews were persecuted, the more they held on to their heritage “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” Anyone with even a shallow familiarity with Jewish history knows that, in times of great trouble, Jews traditionally preferred suffering and even death over the convenience of conversion, be it to the enlightened culture of the time, Christianity or Islam. Jewish existence is an enigma for more than one reason.