Is God an antisemite? - opinion

Traveling in Normandy for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, I chanced upon many Israelis in Paris who saw my yarmulke and walked over to say hello.

Not a single one wore a kippah but baseball caps. “Europa malei b’antishemim – Europe is filled with antisemites.” So what? I asked. The one thing no one would call Israelis are cowards. “You guys are brave enough to fight Hamas but you’re too scared to go to the Louvre with a yarmulke?”

“For 2,000 years, Jews have been murdered in Europe. They’re all antisemites.” 

For all the courage that Israelis exhibit – and there is no braver nation on earth – they still live in a Jewish bubble in the Middle East and when they venture out to a continent that they are convinced detests Jews, they want to avoid confrontation.

But what proves that Europe is antisemitic? Why, they have been murdering Jews for 2,000 years, right?

By the same token, might we say, God forbid, that the Creator is none too fond of Jews as well? After all, isn’t He the one who allowed Jews to be murdered for two millennia?

Let me be clear. I do not believe in God. Rather, I am certain there is a God. I am certain that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, Master of the Universe, and Controller of all history. Maimonides said there is no commandment to believe in God but to know that God exists.

Questioning not our faith, but if our God likes us

I do know. It is a mathematical certainty. And October 7 did not shake my faith in God even one iota. But what it did do is make me question whether God likes Jews.

What does God want from us Jews? Why is it that He has seemingly broken so many promises to us? He says He loves us. Yet he allows us to be gang-raped, beheaded, disemboweled, slaughtered, and cremated. Might the Europeans not make the same argument? We love you to death!

Yes, He promised an ingathering of the exiles, and while the Messiah has not yet come, with the miraculous State of Israel, that has largely occurred. But October 7 shattered the founding principle of a Jewish state, namely, that once Jews are in their land, protected by their army, there would never again be mass murder of Jews or anything resembling a holocaust.

We waited for Israel for 2,000 years. Did God have to shatter the promise of security in our land so decisively?

Many argue that God has a plan and good things are going to emerge from October 7. Nissim Louk, the father of martyred Shani, said in our public discussion in New York, where I dedicated a Torah to my mother and his daughter’s sacred memory, that “Shani” means change, and “great and positive change will result from this massacre.” Nissim is a man of great faith. But whatever good may come of that horrible day, did it have to arise only as a consequence of his daughter being publicly defiled by monsters?

I cannot tell you how many thousands of people have told me that God had a great plan for the Holocaust.

Seriously? You mean, in some celestial sphere, far beyond our limited understanding, the gassing of one million children is somehow a good thing?

Did Israel get what it deserved?

Others say Israel deserved what it got on October 7 because of the irrational hatred Israelis harbor for one another. But Americans hate each other just as much, but women in Manhattan were not punished, God forbid, with gang-rape at a Central Park concert.

And to those who say that we Jews are sinful and don’t keep the Torah, give me a break. There is no nation on earth so faithful as the Jews. Even after Auschwitz, we continue to put on tefillin, eat kosher, and send our kids to Jewish day schools. No nation on earth has even approximated the loyalty of the Jews to God even when it seems He does not reciprocate.

Which brings me back to my original question. Is God an antisemite? Since there is no good reason not to like us, is God’s disfavor toward the Jews something akin to the United Nations or the European Union, which just despise us irrationally?

And while I understand the amorality of the UN and the laughingstock it has become with countries like North Korea and Russia on its Human Rights Council, the same cannot be said of God, who is the source of all morality. Must He Himself not act morally?

Abraham said to God, “Will the Judge of the whole earth not Himself practice justice?” Moses went even further, threatening God to abandon the Torah completely if God exterminated the Jews. “If You annihilate them, I beseech You, remove my name from the book You have written.”

I have no idea what God is up to with the global resurgence of antisemitism. Yes, humanity has freedom of choice, and those who choose to hate the Jews – like the maggot mullahs of Iran – are culpable for their hatred. But if God did not will it, even amid their attempts at murdering Jews, they would not be able to harm a hair on a baby in Nir Oz or Sderot.

Why has God allowed all this garbage to come back? Were six million Jewish martyrs not enough?

Next week is the 30th anniversary of the death of the Rebbe. In one of his last public addresses, the Rebbe spoke of the rape and murder of a young mother in Crown Heights. He looked up at the heavens and sparred with God before a global audience of listeners. “Zechutz korbanos?” “Lord, do you need more sacrifices? “Ad matai?” Will it ever be enough?

In Deuteronomy, Moses famously says, “the hidden things are for God. But the revealed things are for us and our children.” After October 7, I have no idea what God is up to. With two sons at war in Israel, I shake and shudder, mourn and grieve for every murdered IDF hero. Must another few thousand 20-year-old Jewish boys die before God’s thirst is quenched?

But none of that is my business. My job is to protest God’s seeming inaction, demand that He show himself in history – as He did on the day that four hostages were rescued and when the demonic president of Iran was roasted in a helicopter crash – and finally protect his people.

Is God an antisemite? My role is not to answer that question but to pray to him defiantly that He ceases giving any party even a hint that this may be so.

I don’t understand why the world hates Jews. But my job is not to understand but to fight, to explain, to debate, and to win. My job is to be an Israelite, “he who wrestles with God.” My role is to keep the Sabbath whenever God seemingly allows it to be violated, as on October 7. My job is to honor my wife and respect women even when God seemingly allows monsters to violate women. My six daughters’ mission is to light the Sabbath candles and dispel the darkness even when God seemingly extinguishes hope as He did on October 7. And my job is to fight for Israel and support the IDF even when God seemingly allows their lives to slip through His fingers.

No, God is not an antisemite. The very fact that the Jewish people still exist proves it. But it’s high time that he started showing His love rather than just talking about it.

The writer is the international best-selling author of the newly published guide to fighting back for Israel, The Israel Warrior. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.