By Alex Gordon in Haifa, Israel
Wikipedia has this to say about the Jewish question: “’The Jewish question’ refers to the debate that arose in European society between the 18th and 20th centuries about the place, role, and legal status of the Jewish minority. It covered issues of civil equality, integration, assimilation, or, conversely, restrictions on the rights of Jews. In the 19th century, it was a debate about equal rights, but by the 20th century, especially in Nazi Germany, the term became a cover for antisemitic racial policies.”
The Jewish question remained unresolved for a long time. After World War II, it seemed that an answer to the Jewish question had been found: the creation of the State of Israel and the positive attitude of Western civilization towards the Jewish people in its diaspora.
Once, Nobel Prize winner in physics, American Jew Isidor Rabi, was asked during an interview: “Why did you become a scientist?” “My mother made me a scientist without even knowing it,” he replied. “The mothers of my classmates asked them after school, ‘What did you learn today?’ But my mother was interested in whether I had asked my teacher at least one interesting question during the day. That’s how I became a scientist — thanks to my ability to ask good questions.”
In this remark, Rabi conveyed one of the traits of the Jewish national character: self-emancipation through education. The thirst for knowledge was a by-product of the Jewish religion and a response to centuries of deprivation of legal rights. Young Jews learned to think abstractly, ask critical questions, and reflect on various possibilities. They honed their intellect by reading books, discussing and interpreting the Holy Scriptures together. Practicing their religion was a form of mental exercise.
In Judaism, asking questions is not only encouraged, but considered a sacred act. The entire Jewish tradition is based on questions, dialogue, interpretation, and the belief that learning is a lifelong endeavor. From the four questions at Passover to the rabbinical debates in the Talmud, Jewish life flourishes when we explore, challenge, and question. Curiosity is not a sign of ignorance, but a sign of engagement in the process of acquiring knowledge.
Albert Einstein expressed the Jewish thirst for knowledge in the same vein: “The important thing is not to stop questioning. […] Never lose your sacred curiosity.“ Irish historian William Lecky (1838–1903) describes these intellectual qualities of the Jews in the Middle Ages: ”While all around them crawled on all fours in the darkness of stupefying ignorance, […] while the Christian intellect, enslaved by countless superstitions, fell into a deadly apathy, where the thirst for knowledge and the search for truth were forbidden, the Jews walked the path of knowledge, developing with the same consistency they had already shown in their faith. They were the most capable financiers, skilled doctors, and profound philosophers.”
The events of October 7, 2023, in Israel and their consequences in the diaspora dealt an unexpected heavy blow to the Jewish people: the Jewish question had returned. It had reemerged, flashing with a bloody glare. Jews considered it dead, consigned to history, existing only in books and archives. They believed that there was already an answer to this cursed question. It was either the State of Israel or a peaceful, prosperous life in the diaspora. Everything seemed clear and did not require any questions.
But what happened on October 7, 2023, in Israel and subsequently in the diaspora showed that antisemitism is alive, well, and strong, and that the old Jewish question has arisen again before the Jews, but perhaps it stands before them in a new way, regardless of the existence of Israel and Western civilization. This sense of history suddenly overwhelmed Israelis and Jews in the diaspora: starting on October 7, those who until that day had considered themselves only Israelis, Americans, Australians, British, French, etc., suddenly felt acutely Jewish.
The massacre of October 7, 2023, was not only a political and military failure, but also the result of an unsuccessful attempt to prove that the Jewish history of pogroms had ended, that Israel’s refuge for the Jewish people precluded the massacre of Jews. But it turned out that Jewish history is not a finished book ending with the triumph of Zionism. Israelis, who proudly proclaimed their belonging to a new, free, and unburdened diaspora people, realized that they were still Jews and that antisemitism was still a relevant phenomenon for them.
The Israelis divided the history of the Jewish people into two parts: before and after the Holocaust, after which even a miniature Holocaust cannot happen. This attitude of the Israelis towards their own history is reminiscent of the concept of Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History. In Fukuyama’s view, the end of history is the end of the era of ideological confrontation, global revolutions, and wars, and the complete victory of liberal democracy over all other ideologies.
By analogy with Fukuyama’s idea of the end of world history, the concept of the end of Jewish history emerged in Israel, successfully culminating in the complete victory of Zionism. But the Israelis did not fully consider the well-known warning of the history of the Jewish people, in each generation of which, as stated in the Passover story of the exodus from Egypt, a foreign people must appear who will seek to destroy the Jewish people. Such an attempt did not happen on Passover, but on the joyous holiday of the Torah.
It turned out that Israel did not save Jews from the Jewish question and that Western civilization was infected with powerful antisemitism. Antisemitism turned out to be not an insubstantial ghost, but a broad worldwide movement on five continents. And Jews again began to ask numerous questions about the Jewish question.
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Alex Gordon is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Haifa and at Oranim, the Academic College of Education, and the author of 12 books.