On Sunday, Nov. 17, the organization Aseret, in cooperation with the Israeli American Consulate, screened the new documentary, “Tragic Awakening.” This was a premiere for an online audience with people watching all around the world.
The film is based on the research by Rabbi Raphael Shore for his book, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jew?” There have been over 30 live screenings in North America and in Israel. The film addresses the question: Why do people hate the Jews?
Rawan Osman, a Syrian-Lebanese Arab who is advocating for peace with Israel, is the central figure in the film. She introduces herself as a recovered antisemite, an Arab Zionist. “Growing up in Lebanon, I was always taught that the Jews are evil,” she said. “The media and the news sent the message that the Jews are our enemies. I was taught that the Holocaust was a lie.”
Osman shared that when she was in her 20s she moved to France and revisited the narrative that she had been taught her whole life. As Osman studied and learned about the Jewish people, she realized that they are not the enemy. She understood the Arab media was spreading lies and she wanted to set the record straight. She started a social media channel called “Arabs Ask,” designed to explain Judaism and Israel to Arab speakers.
“Oct. 7 tore the world apart,” Osman continued. “Right after the attacks it seemed as if the world’s compassion was aroused. But that passed very quickly.” Clips from the news showed that within days, local protests erupted against Israel, spiraling into a global movement of Israel hate. “People joined forces to justify what Hamas had done,” recalled Osman. “I could not believe my eyes and my ears. Witnessing highly educated people justify what happened scared me. Liberal, progressive minds, feminists, homosexuals sided with Hamas. On which planet is rape justifiable?” Many clips from social media were shared, showing people claiming there were no beheadings or rapes or that Israel was killing its own people.
“It felt like the world was getting crazier every day. I needed to come to Israel — to see what happened. When I did, it reminded me of what I had seen of the Nazi concentration camps. This didn’t look like ‘Never Again’ to me. The Jews were blamed for everything — for all the ills of the world. Why? I found myself on a quest to understand antisemitism. I met with different rabbis, politicians and scholars. I had to ask: ‘Where does this hatred come from?’”
One of the first people Osman met with was Shore, a rabbi, filmmaker and author who was writing a book about antisemitism. “What’s unique about antisemitism,” said Shore, “is that it’s universal, it has longevity like no other hatred, and it has an intensity. It’s not a simple ‘I don’t like Jews,’ but it’s a hatred that leads to attempts of genocide and pogroms and crusades. All the way back in history, we see attempts to destroy the Jewish people completely.”
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l was shown in the film, saying: “Antisemitism takes different forms in different ages. In the middle ages, the Jews were hated for their religion. In the 19th and early 20th century they were hated because of their race.” Yossi Klein Halevi, author and senior fellow at the Hartman Institute in Israel, said “Antisemitism turns the Jews into the symbols of whatever it is that a given civilization defines as its most loathsome quality. So for Christianity before the Holocaust the Jew was the symbol of the killer of Christ. Under communism, the Jew was the capitalist. Under Nazism, the Jew was the ultimate low race.”
“In the world today, human rights is the greatest value of civilization,” Shore said, “and the Jews are being accused of being the greatest violators of human rights — committing genocide against the Palestinians. Today you can’t hate anyone for their race, so the Jews are hated for their nation-state. Antisemitism has morphed into a hatred of Israel. And therefore antisemitism was given a new and legitimate face.”
Osman asked Shore, “What is it about the Jews?” Shore said that Hitler believed that the Jewish people were the biggest threat — not a physical threat, but a spiritual and moral threat. The destruction of the Jews wasn’t secondary to the war; it was core to his mission.
Rabbi Shalom Schwartz, Aseret’s global director and a producer of the documentary, shared, “The rabbis of the Talmud and Adolf Hitler actually agree on the root cause of antisemitism: Sinai. It says in the Talmud that at Sinai, hatred came into the world. Why? God says: ‘At Sinai you accept a mission to bring ethical monotheism and light into the world and you will be hated for it. It will influence the world over time and the world will be elevated through these ideas but it will be a rough road.”
The film explained that the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. Clips showed protests in the past year of people burning American flags and Muslims saying that America is the enemy. A clip of Rabbi Sacks shared, “The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the early symptom of a disease and the breakdown of that society.”
The film then shows that despite all this antisemitism, the Jewish people are resilient. After the Holocaust they built their Jewish state. They came to Israel, not only as a safe haven from antisemitism but with a purpose. Rabbi Schwartz explained, “They wanted to create something here! We had a vision as Jewish people to bring peace to humanity. We came back because we have a mission. We are a light unto the nations.”
Antisemitism is a wakeup call to the Jews and ultimately to the world, shedding light on the meaning and identity of Judaism. As the film concluded, Rabbi Schwartz reflected, “Israeli society is shining a certain light right now because of the trauma. It was an awakening to the most important things in life. The spontaneous response of every single person in the country was to support every soldier. The unity on the streets of Israel was unbelievable. The outpouring of care, not only in Israel, but from all around the world, showed our common sense of destiny: We are one nation, one family, one heart.”
