Common Jewish misunderstanding

We work hard to understand others yet fail to understand what is important.My mother was a sensitive artistic type who taught me to feel sympathy for animals, and for “others less fortunate.” When I formed the tenants association to fight for the rights of 150 families, my mother worried that maybe the landlord was having his own problems, as she shivered in a 53 degree kitchen! I did not understand. Later she would feel for the nursing home staff that I knew to be neglecting her. She did not want to bother them. I could not understand.

Jews take pride in police presence provided to some shuls at holidays or on Shabbat, when all across America, churches large and small don’t have such police protection — because they don’t need any! I don’t understand this thinking. 

Now it’s another week in which Jews have been killed and injured in Israel. How do we benefit from “trying to make sense” of this latest round of violence against us? In any prolonged interaction between two people there is bound to be incidents that could be viewed as improper, but I don’t understand how we as a people who have been preyed on for so long by so many can choose to accept criticism or consequences for an occasional misdeed so far outweighed by the countless vile actions against us. We embrace the ideology that we must never be like “them” (those who treated us in such a way), rather than saying a-ha! — so you know it is not right but seemed to think it was alright for us to be treated that way. That could make sense to me.

I don’t understand how a society so committed to learning can fail to assure that every Jew, everywhere, of every affiliation, is exposed to the information needed to denounce the media and celebrity detractors who seem to only know right from wrong when it involves injustice committed against non-Jews.

 It’s clear that Americans hold Israel to a higher standard than they hold themselves. If only we would persistently, passionately and powerfully publicize Israeli history, Americans could discover that Jews have far deeper roots in the land of milk and honey than Americans have in the land of the American Indian. Meanwhile, some Jews insist on expressing sympathy for Arabs in Israel or near Israel, when these same Jews have failed to publicize Arab mistreatment of Arabs (and, of course, of Jews!) in Arab countries.

 It is vital that American Jews of all affiliations speak up and speak out so that everyone can understand the history of the Middle East, including the last 100 years. It’s a scorecard that most Americans don’t know, and which we need them to understand.

Gary Rabenko is artistic and technical director of Rabenko Photography and Video Arts, 516-593-9760, gary@rabenko.com