Amidst the surge of anti-Semitic ugliness that has permeated the world, U.S. college campuses, social media platforms, and way too many organizational messages, we must stand strong. Although there are many ways to combat Jew hatred, such as debate, advocacy, and physically defending ourselves – God bless the IDF – I’m too old to fight, too tired to argue, and frankly growing angrier every time I fight fire with fire. No more, not for me. I’ve committed to flip the script on the haters. No, I won’t be putting daisies in their rifles or sending them light and love any time soon. What I will do is show them who we are, teach our non-Jewish brothers and sisters what we are all about, and remind the Jewish people of why we are here. It’s time for some inspiration, not desperation, for a little light to dispel a lot of darkness.
Let me start with this: one idea that has led to our survival, one word that encapsulates how we have overcome centuries of hate, defied the odds and will continue to flourish. That word is “aliya,” and it is the reason why we will thrive not in spite of the atrocities committed by Hamas but rather because of them.
What is aliya? It is the Hebrew word which literally means “to ascend.”
When you are at synagogue and given the honor of being called to the Torah during the Torah reading, it’s called an “aliyah.”
Also, when you move to Israel and become a citizen, which all Jews are guaranteed and which my family and I fulfilled a few years back, it is called “making aliyah.”
In the first case, being called up to the Torah makes sense, as the Torah scroll is always on an elevated platform to signify its importance in elevating our lives. However, regarding Israel, it makes no sense. Why? Because no matter where you are in the world, your journey to Israel will never be an ascent. Instead, it can only ever be a descent as Israel is geographically the lowest place on earth.
Let me say that again. Israel is the lowest spot in the world, with the Dead Sea at 427 meters below sea level. So, making aliyah means you are descending, not ascending. And this is the secret to Jewish survival. Just because you ascend in your outer, physical life doesn’t always mean you are going up. Quite often, it is the surest way to come crashing down.
Conversely, just because you are descending, like your plane touching down at Ben Gurion airport, doesn’t mean you are going down. Rather, the deeper aspects of life, the inner pieces of who we are, and the spiritual journeys we make often carry us upwards – descending up, not down.
Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people were conquered, massacred, and expelled from the Jewish homeland, yet here we are, descending up, against all odds.
We were forced to wander in exile for two thousand years, so we adapted our religion to work outside our homeland, descending up like our prayers.
We were subjected to prejudice, abuse, and second-class citizenship, so we circled our wagons and descended up by taking care of our own as no one else would.
We were constantly stripped of our possessions and expelled from our homes, so we invested in education, descending up, through outsmarting our adversaries.
We were banned from certain industries or forced into less desirable ones, so we mastered whatever we were stuck in, descending up financially.
We were hunted down, rounded up, tortured, and exterminated from Inquisitions to Pogroms to the Holocaust, and yet we descended up by returning to our homeland and making it flourish.
We transformed an empty, barren piece of desert in the Middle East into a lush oasis, descending up through liberation and becoming a Start-up Nation.
From Haman to Hitler to Hamas, the Jewish people have been forced down the darkest of paths, faced with the most horrific of descents, and yet…
We may have been victimized, but we were never victims…
We’ve been vilified but have never given way to hate…
We’ve been terrorized, but we’ve never succumbed to fear…
We have known more than our share of descents; however, unlike our enemies who have all ascended for a time but ultimately ascended down into the ground, into oblivion, and disappeared from the earth, the Jewish people only know a different direction. Whereas they always ascend down, with every suffering-filled descent, we are always people who only Descend Up.
Let this mission and mantra of Descending Up be a reminder for all. You can force us down, but we will eventually rise. You can murder our women and children, elderly and civilians, but we will always climb. You can chant for our destruction on college campuses, call for our annihilation in the streets of your hometown, slander us at the U.N., or rant in Congress like the Hamas Squad. Still, no matter how far down you try to make us descend, we will always and only Descend Up, never down, and Never Again.
