A Thought for the Week
The Bold, Proud Jews

And Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh and said to him "So says G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? — let my people go so that they may serve me!" (Exodus 10:3).

Unflinching in the face of the ruler of the greatest world power, undaunted by the awesome strength of Pharaoh's Egypt and the apparent weakness of their own position, Moses and Aaron do not cringe, fawn, or beg, cap in hand, for favors; they do not try to be "more Egyptian than the Egyptians" and impress Pharaoh with their superior command of language and their diplomatic skill. No! Standing in Pharaoh's court they are intensely, recognizably Jewish in dress and in custom; boldly and proudly they demand their people's rights.

An old, long-discredited assimilationist slogan declared, "Be a Jew at home but a person outside." It did not take long to become apparent that the person who was ashamed of his Jewishness in the street soon became weak in his Jewishness at home. A diluted version of the same approach still plagues some of our people today. They are not ashamed to wear a head-covering in public or to abstain from open prohibitions of the Torah, but they feel that here in the U.S. we are "a lone sheep..." and we should "keep quiet" and not be too blatant about our Jewishness; they would not want anyone to realize that they are Americans second.

Then there is the Moses-and-Aaron approach of complete openness and boldness about one's Torah priorities and Torah commitments.

What is the difference between these two approaches? The first "hide-your-Jewishness" attitude can deceive the Goy only temporarily. Ashamed to refuse, the Jew eats of the non-Jew's bread and drinks his wine, in the hope that this will earn him brotherhood with the gentile. But, sooner or later, the thought occurs to the Goy, "this is not the way his father, grandfather and great-grandfather conducted themselves. He has betrayed their trust, how can I be sure he will not betray mine?"

A century ago the assimilationists thought that if the Jews would become a nation like all other nations, and if, individually, would conduct himself as a Goy. Anti-Semitism would disappear. But now, after the First and Second World Wars, and subsequent events anyone who still clings to this belief, belongs in an old-age home in the company of those who are out of touch with reality and with the events of the past fifty years!1