Safeguarding Our National Honor

by Rav Zalman Melamed, yeshiva.co, translated by Hillel Fendel

- from a speech relating to Jewish participation in secular New Year celebrations, delivered just after Israel deported 415 Hamas terrorists to Lebanon in late 1992

Israel's national honor is ours to safeguard. True, our Sages advised that one must "run away from honor" (Tr. Eruvin 13b) – but this is referring to one's personal honor. Regarding our communal status, however, and Israel's "national honor" – this is something that must be preserved and maintained. Here we must be sensitive, we must not allow others to harm our national honor, and all the more so must we be sensitive ourselves not to act in a way that makes light of our national pride.

The fact is that this entire matter of "the honor of Israel," Jewish national pride, is something that we must rebuild – not only vis-à-vis others, but for ourselves as well. During the many generations of our Exile, we became accustomed to being trampled. We got used to humiliation, insults, and worse. As we say in our Tachanun prayer, "G-d, see the lowliness of our honor among the nations, they have vilified us like impurity…" For close to 2,000 years, the Nation of Israel was demeaned and slandered. We had no choice but to swallow our pride, to stoop down, to give in. Every attempt of ours to fight for our honor was doomed to failure, and every effort to engage in struggle endangered us even further. It began to be our second nature to accept this degradation, and we became less and less sensitive to the concept of "pride of Israel." Some even made it into an ideology, insisting that Jewish national honor is not that important, that it is an external trapping, and that we would get along much better in the world if we didn't worry about it.

Relatively recently in terms of world history, we attained national independence – clearly a major national change. Still, it takes time to rehabilitate our honor, not only in the eyes of the Gentiles, but also in our own eyes. This process is certainly underway. Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the atmosphere of exile has been loosening its hold upon us. No longer can we be easily harmed without reaction. The Nation of Israel is increasingly occupying its rightful position among the nations, but the road is long. Our independence is not complete. Malicious, contemptuous anti-Semitism exists in the world and teems in the hearts of peoples. There is great criticism of the Jewish People, and they examine us with a magnifying glass. The fact is that we have not yet been released from exile. Even today, the general anti-Jewish atmosphere has its effect upon some Jews, who look to escape the humiliation and isolation.

As a result, many think in their hearts that we need not stand out or attract attention, and that there is no reason to emphasize our uniqueness. They believe that we should adopt the modes of behavior of other peoples and be like them, and that this could free us from their hostility.  There are even some who are convinced by the nations' arrogant attitude that they are indeed better than us and should be admired and imitated. Much too many negative attitudes and customs have we taken from America!

Neither does our economic and political dependence upon other countries help in this regard. It affects our spirit and harms our spiritual independence. All these factors continue to impede our ability to stand up as the Jewish Nation, tall and proud.

However, we are truly on our way, as a nation, to standing upright; we are constantly advancing. The day is not far off when we will stop imitating others and invalidating ourselves before them. Very soon we will return to ourselves, to our true way of life, to our holidays and our joys, to our Hebrew calendar, to our New Year – not theirs. The day is close when we will no longer denigrate ourselves by participating in others' celebrations, which are contrary to our healthy, Jewish, independent spirit.

And then, when we return to ourselves, other peoples will realize that they must come to learn from us, as written: "Many people will go and say, 'Let us go up to the mountain of G-d, to the house of the G-d of Yaakov, and He will teach us His ways and we will walk in His paths… for the word of G-d will go out from Jerusalem." (Yeshayahu 2,3).