On the Loneliness of the Jews

A shorter version of this article appeared in the Forward.

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A Jewish man walks through Jerusalem’s Old City. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

“Outside the rain begins and it may never end.” So opens the Boz Scaggs hit of 1976, later recorded by Rita Coolidge and Frankie Valli. It concluded with the mournful refrain, “We’re all alone, we’re all alone.”

I was reminded of those words, incongruously, while getting a haircut. My barber, a recent immigrant from France, confided that the worst aspect of this war was not the anguish of the hostages’ families, the plight of the displaced, or even the near-daily deaths of our soldiers. Rather, the most trying part for him was the loneliness. “Nobody in the world understands us, supports us, or even sympathizes with us,” he lamented between scissor-clips. “Everyone condemns us, and not Hamas, of committing genocide.” Behind the hairdryer’s wail, I heard him sigh, “We’re all alone.”

Jewish loneliness is of course hardly new. “A people that dwells alone,” was how the pagan prophet Bilaam described us in the Book of Numbers (23:9). Whether his pronouncement was a blessing or a curse has been debated by Jewish scholars from Rashi to Rabbi Sacks ever since. What remained incontestable, though, was the loneliness itself. Whether voluntarily, as in the case of Abraham, or imposed in ghettos, mellahs, and the Pale of Settlement, the Jews have dwelt apart.

Loneliness, it might be argued, is an appropriate state for a people who believed in a lone God, a people who, in Brooklyn and Bnai Barak, wear the distinctive garb designed by medieval Christendom to distinguish them. And each time the Jews sought to end their loneliness—in Hellenistic Judea before the Maccabean revolt or in Weimar Germany—gentile society ruthlessly reinstated it.

Zionism was a response to loneliness. Still suffering from it despite their efforts to assimilate, the early Zionists sought to leave Europe and recreate their ancient state in the Land of Israel. Such a state, they believed would be welcomed as a normal member of the international community. Loneliness as the Jewish national condition would end.

And for a while it seemed to work. Cherished by a West still guilt-ridden over the Holocaust, secular, Socialist, and victorious in battle against Goliath-like foes, Israel was revered, even by most of the Left. But memories of the Final Solution gradually faded while Israel became more religious, affluent, and militarily ineffectual even against weaker adversaries. The Israel initially perceived as brave and liberated, as cool, was soon seen as oppressive and reactionary, the polar opposite of cool. Originally embraced, Israel became, once again, lonely.

A similar trajectory was traced by Diaspora Jews, especially in the United States. From the pre-war families who, like my parents’, cowered behind locked doors while Father Coughlin ranted against them on the radio.

But Jews entered the second half of the 20th century punching. On elite campuses and in previously restricted industries, in politics and the arts, Jews thrived. The image of a heroic Israel, home to an entire nation of Ari Ben Canaans as portrayed by Paul Newman in the movie Exodus, only reinforced the American Jews’ sense of acceptance. Their humor became American humor, their novels American literature, and bagels as American as apple pie.

Then — déjà vu — loneliness.

Just as the early triumphs of Israel contributed to American Jewish success, so, too, did the tarnishing of its image start to erode it. The Gaza war greatly accelerated that process by exposing, and even legitimizing, latent antisemitism in America.

For most American Jews, the protestors hailing Hamas-style genocide definitively answered the question of whether anti-Zionism was antisemitic. Yet, even those Jews who continue to insist that it wasn’t, and still strive to distance themselves from Israel, will soon find out that the antisemites make no distinction between pro and anti-Israel Jews. Ultimately, they, too, will be lonely.

Antisemitism in America of course arises from far more than an abhorrence of Israel. It stems, on the Left, from anti-racism, anti-meritocracy, and intersectionality, and on the Right, from claims of Jewish power and conspiracies. Either way, the result is isolation. The result is a campus that Jewish students worked slavishly to get accepted to only find themselves unwelcome, feminist demonstrations that bar the Star of David, and social media in which anti-Jewish memes intermingle with those of adorable kittens.

Loneliness in the United States, deepened by the pandemic and the internet, has become a countrywide scourge. According to one report, loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 26% and is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. In America, people increasingly conform to Joseph Conrad’s dictum by living, and dreaming, alone.

But that loneliness is individual, not communal, not national. It does not define the forsakenness felt by Jews living both within and outside the State of Israel. That personal loneliness is not reinforced by hatred and the threat of large-scale violence.

Is there an answer and, if so, what forms might it take? Should Jews simply embrace separateness as so often in the past and praise it as the blessing behind Bilaam’s curse? Some, most notably among the Ultra-Orthodox, will undoubtedly do so, but the overwhelming majority of Jews will want to break out of it.

And they can break out by reaching out to other communities—Christian, oppressed Middle Eastern minorities, or the more than 80% of Americans who, according to the Harvard Harris poll, support Israel in its war with Hamas. At the same time, Jews can act as we have so repeatedly in our past, overcome our differences, and unite.

The resistance has already been launched. In synagogues and community centers across the United States and throughout the Diaspora, Jews are coming together as rarely before—giving, volunteering, and sharing their feelings and fears. In Israel, too, much of the bitter divisions of previous years have been sidelined by an overriding sense of national purpose.

The U.S. Constitution, historians have noted, transformed these United States—a loose confederation of former colonies—into one nation, the United States. Similarly, the Torah turned the Jewish people who arrived at Mount Sinai as plural people into the singular noun, Israel.

Now is the time to recapture that unity. Bilaam might have been truly prophetic: Jews might be fated to dwell alone. But living singly doesn’t mean enduring loneliness. My barber’s lamentation needn’t be permanent if Jews stand together and resist. Though the “rain may never end,” Scaggs warned us nearly fifty years ago, we can still “close the window” and “calm the light.” Do that, he assured us, “and it will be alright.”

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