In the midst of that horror, one Jew turns to the other and says, \u201cYankel, you are always urging us to be thankful to God for what we have. What do we have to thank Him for now? Our brothers and sisters and children are being tortured and butchered in front of our eyes, and, in all likelihood, these Nazis will come after us next!\u201d<\/p>\n
To which Yankel replies, \u201cWe can be thankful that we are Jews and not Nazis. Not only can we be thankful, but we can be proud. We can be proud that we are Jews and have retained our humanity, and not become the beasts that these Nazis have become. We can be proud that we can still claim to have been created b\u2019tzelem Elokim<\/em>, in the image of God. Our tormentors have forever relinquished that claim.\u201d<\/p>\nThere are numerous other stories told with similar motifs, indicating that Jews were able to retain their Jewish pride even in the unspeakably horrible conditions of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, Jewish pride has also been amply manifested in much happier circumstances. The encouraging cheers which echoed across the world as Jews from behind the Iron Curtain heroically struggled for their freedom, and the celebratory cheers which resounded when they finally achieved that freedom, expressed that pride dramatically. \u201cAm Yisrael Chai<\/em>, the Jewish nation lives,\u201d were the words chosen to express that pride.<\/p>\nJewish pride is sometimes even evidenced in American culture, such as in the boasting one hears about the Hank Greenbergs and Sandy Koufaxes whose Jewish identities were apparent even to the baseball fans of yesteryear.<\/p>\n
In more significant areas of human accomplishment, have we not all occasionally gloated over the disproportionably numerous Jewish Nobel Prize winners in science and literature? Do not the lifesaving medical discoveries of generations of Jewish physicians stir Jewish pride in our hearts?<\/p>\n
Most important, of course, are the contributions that Jewish leaders have made, from the times of Abraham to this very day, to human religious development and to the advancement of ethics and morality for all mankind.<\/p>\n
In is sad, therefore, and some would say tragic, that Jewish pride seems to be on the decline in recent times. The consequences of such a decline are poignantly illustrated in this week\u2019s Torah portion, Parshat Shelach<\/em> (Numbers<\/em> 13:1-15:41).<\/p>\nWe read this week of the adventures, better misadventures, of the spies. They spent forty days scouting out the Promised Land and discovered much that was very good. But in their report back to \u201cMoses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community,\u201d they chose to emphasize that \u201cthe people who inhabit the country are powerful and the cities are fortified and very large.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Caleb, the very embodiment of Jewish pride, confidently assured the people that \u201cwe shall surely overcome it,\u201d they shouted words of rebuttal, culminating in this assertion: \u201c\u2026we saw giants there, and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.\u201d (Numbers<\/em> 13:33).<\/p>\nGrasshoppers! No more, no less.<\/p>\n
An individual with such a puny self image is doomed to a life of mediocrity, if not failure and frustration. A nation which perceives itself as grasshoppers, which lacks proper pride in itself, has already fallen victim to God\u2019s curse: \u201cAnd I will break your proud glory\u2026\u201d (Leviticus<\/em> 26:19) Such a nation cannot live up to its mission.<\/p>\nThere are those who would object and insist that the Almighty wants us to be humble and that pride is a negative value. To those, we must object that just as there is a \u201cfalse pride,\u201d which is really nothing but arrogance, there is also \u201cfalse humility,\u201d which leads one to shirk responsibility and to eschew greatness.<\/p>\n
I have at least once before referred in this column to some of my classmates in high school and college and yeshiva who were voted \u201cmost likely to succeed\u201d but who by no means succeeded. Many of them suffered from this very \u201cfalse humility,\u201d and it resulted in their failure to use the talents and skills with which they were blessed in a properly prideful manner. That was their loss, and a loss to the world.<\/p>\n
The Jewish people, as a nation, can easily fall prey to this \u201cfalse humility.\u201d As a nation, despite our faults and shortcomings, we have much to be proud of. We have much to teach the world spiritually because of our rich biblical and rabbinic heritage. And we continue to contribute to mankind\u2019s material welfare in countless ways.<\/p>\n
We would do well to heed the pithy counsel of an early 20th century Chassidic sage, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch, who said, \u201cMan must be proud, but he must grow higher and higher, and not wider and wider.\u201d What he meant to say is that if we use our pride to grow wider, we are bound to infringe upon another person\u2019s space. That is selfish arrogance, and not proper pride.<\/p>\n
But if our pride motivates us not to grow wider, but to grow ever higher and higher, we displace no one. Instead, we draw closer to the Almighty and do what He demands of us.<\/p>\n
Jewish pride takes us higher and higher. Am Yisrael Chai<\/em>.<\/p>\n
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