The Passover Sacrifice, Soviet Refuseniks, and the Promise of a National Future

Jan. 14 2016

In this week’s Torah reading (Exodus 10:1–13:16), the Israelites are still enslaved in Egypt, waiting for the tenth and final plague to strike Pharaoh and his people. But before God smites the Egyptian firstborn, Moses instructs the Jews about the paschal sacrifice and commands them to place its blood on their doorposts lest they, too, become victims of the plague. Recalling the experience of Soviet refuseniks who, when finally allowed to emigrate, were first forced to make a public display of their officially disloyal intentions, Natan Sharansky and Rachel Sharansky Danziger write:

In these commandments, God offered the Israelites something better than comfort. As they prepared to defy their masters, God offered them the promise of a national future, complete with a land, children, and the memory of the Exodus. Not only will you survive this night, His orders implied: you will thrive. Your defiance will mean more than a moment of personal bravery. It will be the cornerstone of your national future, something for your descendants to look back on with pride.

By smearing their defiance on their doors, then, the Israelites transcended both their personal concerns and their particular historical moment. The act that declared their inner freedom from Egyptian tyranny was also the act that bound them together as a nation with a noble past and a hopeful future.

The Soviet Jews saw the same promise before them. The Six-Day War had altered them. It changed the way they were perceived by their Gentile neighbors and thus also the way they saw themselves. Suddenly, due to Israel’s victory, they were no longer seen as “these weak dirty Jews” but rather as a force to be reckoned with. And they realized that somewhere out there, there was a state whose fate was tied with theirs. After being almost completely assimilated, they now belonged to a nation with a glorious history, forging its way to a promising future. . . .

Today’s young generation doesn’t have a Pharaoh to defy. They are the children from God’s promise to the Israelites, the children who will remember the past from the relative comfort of their own land. But the very normalcy of their lives creates a new kind of challenge: will the ease of freedom and the comfort of normalcy lure them away from the national bond?

Read more at Tablet

More about: Exodus, Refuseniks, Religion & Holidays, Soviet Jewry, Torah

Iranian Escalation May Work to Israel’s Benefit, but Its Strategic Dilemma Remains

Oct. 10 2024

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.

Read more at Quillette

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hizballah, Iran, Israeli Security