The unyielding anchor of the Jewish people in the face of persecution - opinion

The first act any doctor takes upon meeting their patient is to take a history. Our personal health timeline is important and can indicate the weaknesses and strengths of the body we have carried since birth.

So, too, our collective histories.  Our regional foes attempted this week, in a dark effort at psychological warfare, to frighten Israelis into paralysis by intimating that the dreaded attack from Hezbollah and Iran would fall on the Jewish fast day of the 9th of Av.

This date is widely understood as commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem, millennia of periodic defeats of Israel, and the terrible savagery by our enemies aiming to annihilate us through the Holocaust and today. Yet, counter to paralyzing us, allowing this history to be passed on to those who have survived history has inspired the opposite response. 

There was a defiant ‘business as usual’ bustle across the country this week, notwithstanding, or perhaps in defiance of, the constancy of deathly threats. In a satirical clip that has gone viral here, an Israeli man is speaking on the phone to a family member while stirring a pot of chicken soup and asks; where will you be for the attack? A play on the typical benign Jewish line, where will you be for Shabbat or Yom Tov?

When we are called upon to look at our past, we inevitably reconnect with the trials and tribulations our foremothers and forefathers underwent. We are a people who have survived and thrived throughout history. Our ability to withstand today’s oppressive reality may even increase our ability to withstand it further. The scar tissue that regrows after a physical trauma may only be 70% as strong as the original tissue, but psychologically, that which does not kill us may make us stronger. 

In the late 1930s, in the lead-up to World War 2, the British government feared that in the event of a German air raid on the nation’s capital, Londoners would panic and face terrible collective trauma. Churchill predicted that London’s four million citizens would flee to the countryside. And yet, despite a Nazi blitz that lasted more than eight months and claimed the lives of 40,000 Londoners, the experts got it wrong. The British attribute this to the proverbial stiff upper lip of English culture, but a Canadian psychiatrist J. T. MacCurdy, had a different interpretation.

In his book written in 1943, “The Structure of Morale,” MacCurdy suggests that the survivors' reaction determines “the morale of the community.” He notes that while those who survived a near miss might be left traumatized, a remote miss made one feel ‘invincible.’ As MacCurdy explains it, rather than cause fear and panic, these survivors, the majority of the population, experienced the opposite reaction:

“We are… prone to being afraid of being afraid, and conquering fear produces exhilaration.  When we have been worried that we may panic during an air raid and, when it has happened, we have exhibited calm… and we are now safe, the contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the father and mother of courage.[1]”

A campaign to elicit fear and malfunction

Applied to our present situation and the current campaign to elicit fear and malfunction, when we take a grand look at our past and realize we have withstood many forms and mutations of antisemitism over time, we understand ourselves as remote misses of history. Our resilience is strengthened, and our courage is amplified.

Through my work with the Jewish Federations of Canada, I see these same qualities in the history of our ongoing philanthropic relationships in Israel, from Metulla to Eilat.  The Coast-to-Coast communities of Canada have more than twenty years of partnership with the Galilee Panhandle, the most northern and currently geo-strategically vulnerable part of the country. When we ask the region’s citizens what has helped them with their evacuation efforts or, for those who have not had to leave, what allows them to stay, they refer to their personal history and, in the same breath, include the consistency of the thoughtful efforts made by our federations to ensure a deep sense of connection as a community, to their towns and cities and one another. The citizens of Be’er Sheva, Sderot, and Eilat, the historic partnership cities of Montreal and Toronto federations, echo these sentiments.  

A particular case in point occurred this week when the Mevo’ot Hermon Therapeutic-Rehabilitation Centre suffered heavy damage in a UAV attack on the Upper Galilee after an interceptor hit it during a Hezbollah attack.

Benny Ben Muvchar, head of the council and our longstanding partner in the region, was in the center with his son a few moments before the impact. Speaking with our team, Benny, visibly upset, brought history to bear when he told us that the Rehabilitation Centre was his baby and that for more than 20 years, he has been building and nurturing it with pioneering communities across Canada. And, as if strengthened by referencing his own words on the past, he drew a breath and said, “We will build this Centre back better for the future, for the families of the region and the people of Israel.”

The Jewish People have a glorious and painful past, it is one of our greatest treasures and deepest resources in times of persecution. Our history is our anchor.

Israeli poet Dalia Kaveh wrote it best:

Like a Russian matrushka,

One doll inside the other,

There are enfolded in me

My mother and my grandmother

And the mother of her mother

And her grandmother

And all the generations,

A quiet row of women

Like a column of strength.