NEW YEAR, JUDGMENT DAY FOR ALL THE WORLD
Once upon a time, an ancient time, the Jews of Judaea, from wherever they happened to be in the great Roman Empire, sent back the shekels which provided for the upkeep of the Temple. Whatever they had to know, such as the^-fight date to observe the New Year festival, or an important opinion about the Law and its observance, and other weighty matters, they asked of the patriarch in Jerusalem in letters, awaiting reply with a steadfast faith which aroused so much admiration among many pagan Romans that they joined the Jewish membership.
However, there were plenty of other Romans who made fun of the joiners and the Jews, and the Romans who approved of the Jewish principles without joining. There were still others who gave in to some good, old-fashioned hatred from deep inside, not for their own people but for the Jews who had the nerve to set themselves up as advocates of bigger and better beliefs. What were they trying to do, anyway? Break up the accustomed way of Roman life and substitute something nonsensical and different just to be diverse and subversive?
The Book of Esther records how Haman, the Hitler of his day, pointed out falsely to King Ahasuerus the prevalence of these "certain people in all the provinces of the Kingdom whose laws were different from those of every people", and who failed to keep the King's laws, so that it was useless to stand for them. To the Jews "the law of the land is the law", and they did keep it. But, where they fell down was in their refusal to accept the emperor as divine, or even semi-divine, and so they were regarded as damaging to unity.
They were not wiped out, though, because they were saved by one of the neatest moves in history. Mordeccri, the Jew, became Prime Minister, and his beautiful niece, Esther, became Queen. Haman was hanged on a scaffold of specified height, and a fine job it was all around, including his sons, as it did.
But, remember: the uniqueness of the Jews; the fact that they were "not as other nations"; their exclusion partly because of their religion, partly for the superficial claim that, whereas the Romans coiflcl eat Jewish food, the Jews could not eat Roman food with them; or tolerate their gods, either, for that matter, an attitude which was construed against good manners; and an assumption of superiority which: was regarded as arrogant.
The Jews were different, they were aloof. They were aloof, they were different. Their Chosen People claim, and their inward obUgc^ohand compulsion to teach about the Living God, rubbed the Romans the wrong way. The Roman writer, Tacitus, called the Jews "the bate of the human race". At the dame time synagogue adherents grew in number through the zecd of Jewish missionaries and their easy successes showed considerable Roman discontent with Roman society which wets riddled with corruption.
Family life wqs falling apart Adultery and murder were not exceptional On die other hand, the Jews were living strictly with
such pride of family and observance of their religious teachings that the Roman writers felt forced to assail their Jewish God who forbade immorality. They dragged down the Jews with slander and rumor that incited the rabble to slaughter, not only then, but ever after, tlien and now, in similar pattern.
The libertines had no intention of reforming and the only way they saw of ridding themselves of critics-by-e^ample was to destroy them. In and out of the centuries, the Jews, far from perfect themselves, still have had something continuing to say to other peoples about an established morality that was divinely ordered long, long ago. Those who wanted to destroy the critic, or the goad, as you like, have gone down in fury. The Jews remain, they survive, they are there, even as a remnant, even in the presence of their own weaknesses and frequent inabilities to live up to the holy law.
In themselves they are not omnipotent but they do point to Omnipotence. The Mestrovic bronze bust of Moses in the Toronto Art Gallery tells you all about it. His head and neck were sculpted to show great physical and spiritual power and drrm and a sharp reminder of fire. One hand rests on a shoulderjple index finger pointing upward to the Source of his inspiration. He will not take no for an answer: Judaism can do nothing less than to rebuke every kind of immorality forever.
This New Year the Jews of the world are faced with the incredible, the unbelievable, staggering fact that, despite the Nazi holocaust of planned torture and murder, in planned gas chambers and prison camps, which is so fresh in the present that witnesses are still being sought all over the world to testify against the perpetrators, a deliberate incitement to a return engagement of horror in new places is in process, and even against some of the heaviest recent sufferers of a terrible Hitler frenzy against the stranger, the newcomer, the unlike, the different.
This drunken search for scapegoat material and its capture is a manifestation of the true Anti-Semitism as differentiated from latent prejudice. This kind produces in full view pillage, pogroms, branding irons, and an inhumanity so shameful and irrational as to brutalize the world into a long period of open barbarianism. Little wonder that the Rpjnan Catholic and Protestant churches fear for their future under such a threat to the foundation of the Christian religion as racial paganism, stirred up with the will to hate and all the dehumanizing crudities of the darkest ages.
This New Year, once again streams of blameless people are moving out and away as uprooted, homeless, displaced refugees, even ixom home sites of antiquity. Tens of thousands, burdened by anxiety and quivering with fear, are faced wfttTthe necessity of remakirig their homes and their lives, they know one thing, however: "All Israel is responsible, one for the other." Rivers of money have helped before and will do that again- How else could It be among Jews? Lie,