Rav Haim Lifshitz
Racism
Anti-Semitism

Essays and Articles:

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 Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan

l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai

      THE BOUNDARIES OF HUMAN REALITY ARE THREE-DIMENSIONAL - INCLUDING ALSO THE DIMENSION OF HEIGHT.

      Anti-Semitism, racism, and all other bestial, vicious phenomena that have accompanied the human race from the moment it appeared on the stage of existence, cause man to plummet downward from his lofty position in the dimension of height. This realm, this lofty human position is where values lie, and ideals, and the ability to distinguish good from evil, sacred from profane, and pure from defiled.

      This dimension of height is what frees man from dependency on the laws of physical existence, which are the stimuli that activate him from the outside. The laws of value-driven existence, drawn from the dimension of height, are what bring forth and actualize the potential, the dormant quality concealed in the innermost space of the human personality. This quality does not belong to the laws of material existence.  It is wholly and entirely an expression of the qualitative, uniquely original values and capabilities of each human being as an individual. This quality originates in the dimension of spiritual/Godly height, and it is from there that it draws its meaningful content.

      Within this qualitative reality, man rules – controlling through choice and through creativity. It is in human hands to decide whether to ruin or to repair, whether to activate good forces or evil ones. To the extent that man takes the initiative and chooses to activate his uniquely original quality, so he activates the spiritual forces that belong to the dimension of height, thereby managing to bypass the material pitfalls of the material world.

      Thus in Mishlei, the wisest of all men points to spiritual forces as overpowering physical forces: “A man’s spirit will sustain his disease, and who can bear a crippled spirit?” (Proverbs 18:14)

      But when he hits the ground of material reality, he finds himself caught in the jaws of bi-dimensionality. Good and evil are relative. They lack roots and they lack a summit. They pass randomly through the current of time, never considering the human condition, never attempting to fit themselves to human needs. A sensation of detachment, of existential anxiety and suspicion, a lack of belonging to anything and yet an utter absence of personal freedom – these are the characteristics of the bi-dimensional existential sensation.

      Phenomena such as cruelty, aggression and racial hatred are the stereotypical characteristics of this survival system.

      The Jew personifies a three-dimensional spiritual existence, which affects his experience of existence and liberates him from enslavement to the systems of self-preservation. The grim essentials of existential life and death stimuli become rounded and softened, losing their fatalistic significance, and absorbing instead a value-driven significance. Such significance bestows the value of eternal life upon death, the value of love and positive purpose upon life’s perils and upon the sufferings that are the hurtful byproduct of existence. “An ignorant man would not know it, and a fool would not comprehend such a thing.” The more someone is coarse and insensitive, and sunk into an existence that lacks a dimension of height, the more difficult it is for him to comprehend and to appreciate and to accept an approach that is value-driven, that bestows value-driven significance upon the tangible world. Instead he will suspect his spiritual colleague of being pretentious and hypocritical, and view him as a foe plotting a dangerous conspiracy against him.

      This is the root of anti-Semitism. “Rabi Shimon bar Yochai said: ‘It is a well-known law that Esav bears hatred to Yaakov.’” Esav, who readily yielded up the birthright of the dimension of height, would hate the one who views it as the basis and the ultimate purpose of existence. With the loss of the dimension of height, Esav’s shallow perception of things caused him to lose the view of the relativity of events: He sees reality as nothing more than a chain of opportunities to save his own existence.

      Such a view of things turns into a system of stereotypes that simply exist. They do not attach or relate to any need to consider the facts, or to address the human side of an issue. Anti-Semitism for example is a stereotype that arranges for the dehumanization of the Jew.

      The anti-Semite views the Jew as a vile element, an insect, devoid of sensitivity to pain, devoid of emotional needs – a bloodsucking parasite that sucks its life force out of the ruin of human beings. It is permissible and even virtuous to torture the Jew, and to kill him, both because he is harmful and because he has no feeling, and is impervious the evils and sufferings of persecution.

      This explains the puzzling phenomenon of anti-Semitism as the lot and heritage of highly educated people, who supposedly cherish universal values, artists, thinkers, writers and poets whose creative works reveal a deep human insight into anyone created in God’s image – unless he is a Jew.

      It seems to me that Shakespeare is articulating this puzzlement in his play about Shylock, the Merchant of Venice, a play that on the surface seethes with incomparable anti-Semitic venom – of the type that characterizes all things ugly in the superficial stereotype that is devoid of even the most elementary dimension of humanness. Yet lo and behold, Shakespeare manages, by his ingenious analysis, to rise above the narrow and ugly track of the anti-Semitic stereotype, even in this most problematic of plays. The purpose of this play is to force the anti-Semite to confront a human view of things, which must struggle against the conspiracy to strip the Jew of the human/value-based dimension that characterizes him – in Shakespeare’s view of things – at least as much as it characterizes any other human creature.