The privilege of being born before 1948

I believe it is a privilege to have been born before 1948. As contentious as that may sound, let me explain why.

I take tours of Jews, young and old, to Israel, Poland, Lithuania, and Europe. Many of those tours are focused on connecting Jews to a heritage that many of us view as long gone – the Lithuanian and Polish shtetl; the tight-knit community; worlds of pre-war Zionism, Jewish life, culture, Judaism, Hasidism, and more.

It’s so difficult to reconstruct a mode of living, breathing, and existing which is so far removed from our own modern sensibilities, but I have had the privilege of working with survivors of all shapes and sizes who are able to make this happen. They can weave the visions of life as it was. It’s astounding to walk with them through their home towns and see their lives glimmer and take shape around us – the loves, the petty squabbles, the grandeur, the ordinary, and the sublime. It’s truly humbling and grounding. They enable our groups to shift their minds and hearts back 100 years to sync (however partially) with the life and mores of Jews at that time.

But year after year, the most difficult thing for 21st century Jews to grasp, in any way, is how Jews processed, reacted to, and lived with antisemitism. It’s one of those areas which seem perpetually lost in translation. For years after the Holocaust, many survivors were discouraged, even by fellow Jews, from discussing their experiences. My own family told me that my two great-aunts, both survivors of Auschwitz, who arrived in South Africa after the war, were told squarely that “everyone suffered” in the war, and they shouldn’t focus on their past and suffering.

I suggest that the reason that Jews after 1948 – and that includes all of us born after 1948 – struggle so mightily to deal with the events of the Holocaust, why so many inaccurately described their fellow Jews as “sheep” being led passively to their slaughter, was because after 1948, every single Jew in the world had their minds switched completely into a new mode of thinking, feeling, and being.

As Rabbi Soloveitchik said, this shift in mindset was simple yet so profound: after 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel, Jewish blood was no longer “hefker” (valueless). After 1948, Jewish blood was worth something, and shedding Jewish blood incurred consequences. For 2 000 years, Jewish life and death were irrelevant in most of the countries of our exile. In Europe after the Crusades, this point was driven home again and again. But how do you view your life if you know that your neighbours and fellow countrymen don’t view you as a real human being? How do you live knowing that today or tomorrow, you might be fined, sanctioned, exiled, pogromed, raped, pillaged, or tortured? What happens to you, your family, and your collective psyche if you live like that for 1 000 years? Can you imagine that?

You see, you can’t imagine it. I can’t; we can’t. And that’s Israel’s gift to us; that we cannot possibly imagine that reality. We can read about it, we can try to talk to our precious few survivors to understand it. But we can’t really.

And that’s the privilege that we lack, being born after 1948.

Someone born significantly before 1948 really gets antisemitism in a way that we cannot. That person has lived in both worlds – before 1948 and after. Such a person can truly appreciate the sea-change wrought by the founding of Israel for Jews in this regard. In other, more positive areas, Israel’s founding, surviving, and thriving has had a tremendously positive impact on Jewish life worldwide. However, this soul-wrenching change regarding antisemitism seems to me to be one of the most significant for all of us, especially today, in a period of resurging hate for Jews worldwide.

For that reason, most of us born after 1948 cannot fully appreciate Israel’s impact on our lives. Before 1948 there was no person, no group, no state who would inevitably stand up to protect Jews no matter where they were in the world. After 1948, every Jew knows that Israel will always be there for them, everywhere. The impact this has had on every Jew everywhere is incalculable – we no longer live with the same fears, insecurities and instability that were our staple for two millennia.

After Yoni Netanyahu and his team swooped into Entebbe in 1976 to free all the Jewish (Jewish, not Israeli) hostages, how could my worldview be anything like a Jew living in Warsaw in 1930? I’ve always lived in an environment where my life matters; I simply cannot appreciate what it is like to live without that, and that is a privilege someone has who was born before 1948 – they can really appreciate Israel.

Just this past week, a member of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom wrote openly that Jews have never suffered from racism. She likened the discrimination against Jews to that made against redheads.

If that’s the comment made today post-Holocaust, can you imagine how people were speaking and writing in 1939?

Well, you cannot imagine it! And that’s Israel’s gift to all of us.

• Rabbi Ramon Widmonte is the dean of the Academy of Jewish Thought and Learning.