Our Impact

John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote:

The Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations… They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.

A century later, Mark Twain observed:

The Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous, dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of and has always been heard of… His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. (“Concerning the Jews,” p. 249)

Even today after the Holocaust, when we make up less than a quarter of a percentage point of the world’s population — less than a small statistical error in the Chinese census — we continue to stand out. The percentage of Jewish recipients of the Nobel Prize reflects this phenomenon. Between the years 1901 and 2005, Jews constituted at least 22% of all recipients and 37% of U.S. recipients. In the scientific research fields of chemistry, economics, medicine and physics, the corresponding world and U.S. percentages were 26% and 39%, respectively.

Ernest van den Haag pointed out: “If we were asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx, and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish” (“The Jewish Mystique,” p.. 13).

He then asked, “In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture?”

Our Secret

The Torah gives us the answer. Hashem promised Avraham that his descendants would be like the stars of the sky (Ber. 15:5). The Netziv and Rav Hirsch both explain that Jews are like stars in that so many of us shine brightly — we impact beyond our numbers.

Seeking to shine and impact others is part of Jewish nature and nurture. Rav Yechezkel Weinfeld explains that this is why we count Jews by having each contribute a half-shekel coin: “We don’t count people; rather, we count the coins they contribute. It’s clear that what’s counted is not a person as he is, but rather his contribution.”

Hashem’s promise to Avraham, embedded in our upbringing, ensures that we continue to impact the world more (proportionally) than any other people.

Antisemitism

Antisemitism is another unique aspect of Jewish history. Jews have been hated for millennia in countries around the world — even in those we have never lived. We are hated by people we have not offended in any way, and we are hated for every possible reason — and its opposite.

Professor Michael Curtis of Rutgers University, one of the hotbeds of contemporary academic Jew-hatred, highlighted this strange phenomenon:

The uniqueness of antisemitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality; at the same time, they are the people of the book. They are accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity. (“Contemporary World,” Ch.. 1)

Antisemitism has also shown a unique ability to mutate over the centuries. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks compares it to “a virus that has survived over time by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were persecuted because of their religion; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they were reviled because of their race; and today, Jews are attacked because of the existence of their nation-state — Israel.”

Rabbi Sacks adds that not only has the reason for antisemitism changed, but its legitimization has as well. “Each time, as the persecution descended into barbarity, the persecutors reached for the highest form of justification available. In the Middle Ages, it was religion; in post-Enlightenment Europe, it was science — the so-called ‘scientific study of race.’ Today, it is human rights.”

Though many minorities have been demonized by majorities around the world over the course of human history, Jews always seem to be included on all the hate lists. Rabbi Sacks points out that “it wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler, it wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin, and it isn’t Jews alone who suffer under the radical Islamists.” That having been said, the Jews were and are attacked by each of them and many others.

Why is this so? Why are Jews always hated? The navi Yechezkel (20:32-33) explained that Hashem uses antisemitism to keep the Jews from assimilating. It reminds us that we are different — that our people have a higher calling, a mission to be a light unto the nations, to uphold justice, righteousness,and Godliness in the world.

Anne Frank reached this conclusion as well. She wrote:

The persecution reminds us that we are not like the rest of the nations of the world — we have a higher purpose.Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up until now? It is God who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, Who will raise us up again. Who knows, it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and only that reason do we suffer. (“Diary of a Young Girl,” April 11, 1944)

Antisemitism can be depressing and cause us to doubt ourselves and our national identity. Ironically, appreciating antisemitism’s miraculous nature can reinforce our belief in Hashem and our own importance. This appreciation, coupled with a recognition of our impressive impact, should help strengthen our faith in Hashem and ourselves.

Rav Reuven Taragin is the dean of overseas students at Yeshivat Hakotel and the educational director of World Mizrachi and the RZA. His new book, Essentials of Judaism, can be purchased at rabbireuventaragin.com.