Reflecting on the endurance of the Jewish people, Daniel B. Schwartz turns to a 16th-century work of Jewish history called Shevet Yehudah (“The Scepter of Judah”), written by Solomon ibn Verga, a Portuguese converso who returned to Judaism and settled in the Ottoman empire. One section recounts the story of a “Job-like” Jewish exile who finds himself shipwrecked and alone in a remote wilderness, his family dead. The man offers a defiant prayer:
Lord of the universe! Although you are doing much to make me abandon my religion, know for certain that, despite the heavenly hosts, a Jew I am, and a Jew will I remain, and nothing you have brought or will yet bring upon me will help you!
Schwartz concludes:
The steadfastness of this unnamed Spanish Jewish exile is rooted in a blunt facticity. “A Jew I am, and a Jew I will remain.” It is something visceral, instinctive; something that stems not from reason, not even from faith, but from the kishkes. It is as though, for this man, to be a Jew is to survive, and there is no survival if not as a Jew. Perhaps it is this core intuition, a preconceptual understanding that lies beyond the reach of explanation or justification, preceding any talk of flexibility and adaptability, and that ultimately cannot be taught, built, or cultivated — “a Jew I am, and a Jew I will remain” — that brings us nearest to the nucleus of resilience in Jewish history. And those of us who carry this embodied spirit are its atoms.
Read more on Sapir: https://sapirjournal.org/resilience/2024/06/the-mystery-of-jewish-resilience/