Robin Goldwyn Blumenthal
Writer and editor and baal teshuvah in training
What is the secret of Jewish survival? As Jews celebrate the festival of Chanukah, where a small band of rebels successfully fought off the powerful Greek army and its desire to make the Jewish people “forget” the Torah, and as Israel battles for its very existence, it is no small matter to understand how the Jewish people have managed to not only come through thousands of years of persecution and challenges by forces ostensibly much greater and stronger than ourselves, but to prevail over them and even to thrive.
The answer lies in the Torah itself, and its eternal values, which Jews believe was transmitted directly to Moses on Mount Sinai by the Creator of the Universe. Indeed, it was the Greeks’ desire to leave G-d out of the Torah that led to the Maccabees’ revolt.
The belief in the divine origin of the Torah seems to have been lost in the shuffle of modernity. Yet it is one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith espoused by one of the greatest Jewish thinkers, Moses Maimonides, also known as the Rambam. But in our post-modern world, it has simply become unfashionable to be a believer. Unless you happen to be of another faith. It has become, sad to say, fashionable to be a jihadist. Just look at our college campuses, where the unspeakable savagery—the pogroms of the 21st century–that has been committed against the Jewish people has not only been applauded but is celebrated.
How are we to make sense of all of this? A foundational belief of Judaism is that the Torah is our instruction guide for living an optimal life, according to the Author of both the manual for living, and of mankind itself.
There is certainly no earthly explanation for the ability of the Jewish people, who have encountered every kind of oppression and bigotry over thousands of years, to have remained standing. Our survival is not predicated on the strength of the enemy, or on world opinion, or on anything that would be deemed an ordinary determinant. According to the laws of Darwin, we should have disappeared long ago.
Our survival is, in a word, supernatural. This fact has been obscured by modern life, by assimilation, by secular humanism, by Jewish people wandering away from our roots.
Paradoxically, Jews are being reminded of the greatness of our tradition not from inside our ranks, but by those like Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who has been captivated by Jewish thought.
Milei, the iconoclastic economist who won in a landslide last year, was inspired to look further into the Torah by a book that captures essential Jewish concepts from a mystical perspective—Toward a Meaningful Life by Rabbi Simon Jacobson. In the book, Rabbi Jacobson, a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and one of a team of rabbis who memorized and recorded thousands of hours of the Rebbe’s deep and transformational discourses, succinctly encapsulates the Jewish perspective on all aspects of life, both material and spiritual, tinged with the mystical secrets that began to be transmitted to common people nearly 300 years ago by the founder of the Chassidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov. This knowledge has been handed down and expounded on by successive Chassidic Rebbes. According to the fifth Chabad Rebbe, the basis of this approach is “for the mind, which naturally rules over the heart, to enlist the heart in the service of G-d through abstraction, understanding, and a deepening awareness of the greatness of G-d.”
I understand Milei’s excitement. Nearly 30 years ago, I had a similar reaction to the book—only I am a Jew by birth who, though proud of my heritage and familiar with its traditions, had no real Jewish education. When I read the book, I was frankly astonished and delighted to learn that the religion of my birth contained such relatable and transcendental values—ones that I in my spiritual quest had been searching for everywhere but in my own tradition. Although I was well educated in secular subjects, I took Judaism for granted. I simply did not know the framework of Jewish thought and belief.
I have spent the past 30 years catching up on my Jewish studies, and trying my best to live in accordance with the values of the Torah. Rabbi Jacobson has since become my mentor and teacher, along with the many Chabad rabbis and thinkers who are transmitting this vital information.
Putting this philosophy into practice has given me the spiritual sustenance to face life’s many challenges, including the ones Jews are pointedly facing in the current environment.
Today, we Jews, the longtime champions of the underdog—indeed, the perennial other–are once again beset by the angry mob, wondering in disbelief what in the world we did this time to deserve such unkindness, such reprobation, simply for wanting to exist, when most other minorities are afforded, at the very least, the benefit of the doubt.
The reason is that we are charged with fighting a spiritual battle, as much as we are fighting an existential one. That’s because our existence is predicated on our spiritual underpinnings, on our belief system. We have been chosen to be the light unto the nations, but we don’t seem to have fully accepted that mantle. At least not yet.
Our latest challenges, however, are serving as a wake-up call for us, to delve into and promulgate the concepts and the teachings of our holy tradition. To cling to what is good and true, to the values that underlie all of Western democratic society, regardless of what the world may think.
Jewish thought teaches that when G-d created the world, He looked into the Torah, which contains His deepest, innermost desire and thought. It is time for the People of the Book to do the same. Our very survival depends on it.
