Imagining a world without Jews
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/imagini ... hout-jews/
作者: Matthew Rosenberg
一个没有犹太人的世界会是什么样子？
这是我多年来担任研究生的拉比时，向数百名正在思考犹太身份的年轻人提出的问题。大多数人为自己是犹太人而自豪，但很难说清为什么犹太教应该在他们的生活中扮演任何重要角色。而为了欣赏某样东西，考虑一下没有它的生活会是什么样子总是有帮助的。
一个没有犹太人的世界。如今似乎有更多人，尤其是在我常去的校园周围，喜欢这种说法。
这是一个难以想象的世界，就像很难想象在Waze（顺便说一句，它是以色列制造的 - 所以这是我们能划掉的一项）之前我们是怎么认路的一样。但逾越节哈加达的开篇为我们提供了一些帮助。在那里，我们遇到一个大胆的论断：
“如果至圣者，愿祂受称颂，没有将我们的祖先从埃及带出来，那么我们、我们的孩子以及我们孩子的孩子，至今仍会在埃及受法老奴役。”
乍一看，这句话似乎只是夸张，所以大多数人一带而过。（而且，他们也饿了。）我们当然不是真的在说，几千年后你我还会在尼罗河边把稻草踩进泥里做砖。
但是否可能，事实上，这正是我们在暗示的呢？
我相信哈加达是在让我们做一个思想实验：想象一个以色列人从未从埃及的奴役中获得解放的世界。这样的情景不仅会影响那一个历史时期，而且会从根本上改变人类文明的轨迹。我们今天所理解的犹太教将不复存在。但更关键的是（正如已故拉比乔纳森·萨克斯在其关于逾越节的著作中广泛讨论的那样），犹太教最终赋予世界的那些基本观念可能会一直沉睡，或者也许永远不会出现。
出埃及的故事具体化了《创世记》第一章所引入的观念：每一个人都是按照上帝的形象创造的；也就是说，是无限的一种反映，具有无限的潜能。这一革命性观念，是犹太思想和传统所有内容的核心，孕育了关于人与生俱来的尊严、自决权和价值的激进观念——这些观念回荡在西方文明的走廊里，并持续塑造着道德意识。
通过每年重述逾越节故事，犹太人教导世界：上帝关心人类的苦难，并介入历史以纠正道德上的不公，有时通过超越自然秩序的神迹。事实上，犹太故事支撑了“时间本身在向前演进”这一观念 - 人类存在除了单纯生存之外还有命运和目的，历史的漫长弧线终将弯向正义 - 所有这些改变游戏规则的概念，都源于出埃及的经历以及由此诞生的犹太民族。
没有出埃及，人类的意识可能会在道德和伦理上一直停滞不前，如同在公元前1300年就被低温冻结。就不会有基督教，不会有伊斯兰教，不会有科学革命，不会有美国独立战争。也不会有人去争论奴隶制是错的。无论受制于这个法老还是那个法老，生命的基本前提都将和从前一样，也将永远如此。这就是为什么，当几个世纪前哈加达的作者断言我们今天仍然会是奴隶时 - 他们是认真的。
在我们这个时代，仍然有许多人的世界观抵制逾越节这一核心信息，并且他们正在获得势头。他们像法老一样，相信生活是一场零和游戏。没有什么神圣不可侵犯。人类不可救赎，因此我们不喜欢的人是可以被抛弃的。这个世界注定要毁灭，所以我们不妨表现得好像它已经毁灭了一样。这些声音到处都能听到，尤其是在校园里。它们代表了许多意识形态，但有趣的是，它们往往在“不喜欢犹太人或犹太国家”这一点上意见一致。
毫不奇怪，也许作为最终极的“出埃及前倒退”，至少有一名获释的以色列人质据报道曾在加沙街头被当作商品出售。
不要搞错：现代以色列与其敌人的斗争，主要不是关于领土、种族，甚至宗教。这也不只是它自己的斗争。相反，这是两种基本价值观冲突的浓缩：一边是那些努力 - 尽管有时不完美 - 去维护植根于我们共同精神遗产中的道德律令的社会；另一边是那些受不宽容、沙文主义、虚无主义和残暴驱动的社会。
哈加达的作者们深知这一斗争。经文接着预言性地宣告：“在每一代人中，都会有起来消灭我们的人。”我也知道这场斗争：我的表妹黛比和她的丈夫什洛米·马蒂亚斯是和平活动家，但这并未阻止哈马斯在10月7日当着他俩年幼儿子的面杀害他们。
与其不断地在公共关系中处于守势（“看吧！真不是我们炸了那家医院，我们保证！”），犹太国家最好提醒国际社会和校园里的孩子们：他们可以选择支持 a) 一个没有犹太人的世界，还是 b) 一个没有哈马斯、真主党、胡塞武装及其在德黑兰金主的世界。你更愿意生活在哪个世界？
“而至圣者，愿祂受称颂，将我们从他们手中拯救出来。”愿这是您的意愿。
Imagining a world without Jews
What would a world without Jews look like?
That’s a question I’ve posed to hundreds of young adults grappling with Jewish identity over my years as a rabbi for graduate students. Most are proud of being Jewish but have difficulty putting their finger on why Judaism should play any significant role in their lives. And in order to appreciate something, it’s always helpful to consider what life would be like without it.
A world without Jews. There seem to be a lot more people today, especially around campuses I frequent, who like the sound of that.
It’s a world that’s hard to imagine, kind of like it’s hard to imagine how we got places before Waze (made in Israel, by the way–so there’s one thing we can cross out). But the opening lines of the Passover Haggadah provide us some help. There we encounter an audacious assertion:
“If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our ancestors out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.”
At first glance this statement appears mere hyperbole, so most people gloss over it. (Also, they’re hungry.) Surely we’re not really suggesting that you and I would still be stomping straw into mud bricks by the Nile thousands of years later.
But could it be possible that, in fact, this is exactly what we are suggesting?
I believe the Haggadah is engaging us in a thought experiment: Imagine a world where the Israelites had never been liberated from Egypt’s bondage. Such a scenario would not merely impact that one historical period but would fundamentally alter the trajectory of human civilization. Judaism, as we understand it today, would not exist. But more critically (as the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discussed extensively in his writings on Passover), the foundational ideas that Judaism eventually bestowed upon the world would have remained dormant or perhaps never arisen.
The Exodus narrative crystallizes what Genesis Ch. 1 introduced: that each and every human being is created in the image of God; i.e., a reflection of the Infinite with infinite potential. This revolutionary concept, central to all of Judaic thought and tradition, birthed the radical notions of intrinsic human dignity, self-determination and worth – notions that resonated through the corridors of Western civilization and continue to shape moral consciousness.
Through retelling the Passover story each year, the Jews taught the world that God cares about human suffering and intervenes in history to right moral wrongs, sometimes through miracles which transcend the natural order. Indeed, the Jewish story undergirded the very idea that time progresses at all—that there is a destiny and purpose to human existence beyond mere survival, that the long arc of history bends towards justice—all these game-changing concepts trace to the Exodus experience and the Jewish People that emerged from it.
Without the Exodus, human consciousness could have remained morally and ethically static, cryogenically frozen as of 1300 BCE. There would have been no Christianity, no Islam, no Scientific Revolution, no American Revolution. And no one to argue that slavery is wrong. Whether in bondage to this Pharaoh or that, the basic premise of Life would have remained exactly the same as it ever was, and always was to be. And that’s why, when the authors of the Haggadah asserted centuries earlier that we would have still been slaves today—they meant it.
There are still many in our time whose worldviews resist this central message of Passover, and they are gaining traction. They, like Pharaoh, believe that life is a zero-sum game. That nothing is sacred. That humanity is irredeemable and thus people we dislike are disposable. That this world is doomed, so we might as well behave as though it is. These voices can be heard everywhere, especially on campus. They represent many ideologies, but interestingly they tend to agree on not liking Jews or the Jewish State very much.
Not surprisingly, in perhaps the ultimate pre-Exodus retrogression, at least one freed Israeli hostage has reported literally being sold on the streets of Gaza.
Make no mistake: modern Israel’s struggle with her enemies is not primarily over territory, ethnicity, or even religion. Nor is it her struggle alone. It is rather a distillation of the clash of fundamental values between those societies who strive, sometimes imperfectly, to uphold the ethical imperatives rooted in our shared spiritual heritage, and between those societies moved by intolerance, chauvinism, nihilism, and brutality.
The authors of the Haggadah knew this struggle well. The text goes on to prophetically proclaim: “In every generation, there are those who will rise up against us to wipe us out.” I too know the struggle: my first cousin Debbie and her husband Shlomi Mathias were peace activists, but that didn’t stop Hamas from murdering them in front of their young son on October 7.
Rather than continually playing defense in its public relations (“See? It really wasn’t us who bombed that hospital, we promise!”) it would serve the Jewish State well to remind the global community and kids on campus that they have a choice of supporting a) a world free of Jews, or b) a world free of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and their benefactors in Tehran. Which world would you rather live in?
“And the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.” May it be Your will.