What Do I Want Jews To Do?

Alright, Good Jew, you’ve got a lot to say about the rest of us Jews, not all of it flattering – but what is it that you want? What should we do, according to you?

Finally, someone asked.

What I would like Jews to do is learn. I want you to educate yourselves about the dark side of Jewish history, and the negative contributions our people have made.

That’s it. Once you gain the knowledge, I have faith that the correct courses of action to remedy the situation will become clear, and you can start contributing to the resolving of our conflicts, and the healing of our relationship with “the nations.”

Learning about one’s dark side is the core of the process of introspection – which is essential to the psychological health and social cooperation of any human being. And I’m asking you to apply that process to the collective. To the group what you’re a member of, regarding its relationship to other groups.

Think of it like The Jewish People™ is collectively introspecting on its role in contributing to the conflicts it perennially finds itself in – and you are doing your part to help in that process, as an individual Jew who is a part of that collective.

Make sense?

We all learned about the good contributions of Jewry to the world, and we learned the light side of Jewish history – the history from the perspective of us being righteous and innocent victims of other people’s aggression – but we were not taught the dark side of it. We were not taught about what our people did to them.

And so when we compiled the chart in our heads – the chart comparing “Things the Gentiles did to us” versus “Things we did to the Gentiles”, we never even made the second column!

We didn’t acknowledge the column even existed.

(In fact, if anyone had ever suggested that the second column exists, we would have reflexively called them an antisemite and shut down the conversation before they got a chance to share any of what was on that list.) And so, suffice it to say, we never learned what was on the list.

And so we went about our lives thinking that nothing was on it. That it didn’t exist. We convinced ourselves that we could never have done anything to the Gentiles to warrant any legitimate anger from them whatsoever!

And thus, antisemitism maintained a mystique. Its inner workings remained a mystery to us. By never learning the reasons for others’ anger at us, we maintained the delusion that that anger had no cause, no source, no reason. Purely irrational. The goyim hate us because God made them that way. It’s in their DNA.

Ishmael was mad at Isaac, and Esau was mad at Jacob, and so their descendants’ respective DNA is mad at our DNA, and becomes inflamed to aggression whenever it thinks about us.

And since it was intrinsic, there was no way to change it. Gentiles will always hate us, we thought – no matter what we do or don’t do. They’ll always hate us regardless.

And so it seemed the only thing we could possibly do to survive was to build up strong defenses. To amass lots of money. And power. And influence. And to occupy the governments of our host countries. And to pass laws making it illegal to hate us. And to censor the speech of people talking about what we were doing. And to control. Our strategy became about staying safe from Gentiles by controlling them.

And that, of course, is what leads to us hurting them, and restricting them, which leads to them being angry at us.

We caused the very animosity we sought to protect ourselves from, in our attempt to protect ourselves from it. A classic case of the solution being what turns out to have created the problem.

But we only did so through a misunderstanding. We misjudged the reason for antisemitism. And we did that because our parents and schools and rabbis and movies never taught us about the other list – the list of things our people have done to the Gentiles. The dark side of Jewish history.

All I’m asking of Jews is to learn that history.

Jewish values are supposed to venerate education. Jews are supposed to care about Jewish history.

Right?

So educate yourselves about the dark side of Jewish history. The things we did to them. The negative ways our people have contributed to the world.

Yes, I know about the good things, the light side. We all do. We learned it throughout Hebrew school, and even in regular school too. And from the movies. And from literature. We’ve all enjoyed numerous Jewish inventions and art and hilarious comedy, and we appreciate the courageous heroism of many individuals who were Jewish.

Yes, we all know the light side.

But it’s time for some education about its counterpart.

Once you learn about it – about the negative things our people have contributed, and the ways we’ve hurt other peoples over the centuries – you’ll understand why we have been so often hated.

And when you finally see that there is a reason for it, the other side no longer seems so irrational. They are not chest-beating brutes, programmed in their DNA to hate us from birth. They are rational people whom we’ve harmed, and they have a right to be angry at us. They can be reasoned with.

And if they can be reasoned with, then that means peace can be reached, and coexistence (the kind without us controlling them ) is possible. We don’t need to build missiles and drop bombs and build internet censorship machines. We can be safe, with or without an Israel. We can be safe, through diplomacy and mutual understanding, rather than violence and control.

Isn’t that great news?