The Search for Truth

I’ve been saying forever that truth doesn’t matter when there is an agenda. Nowhere do we see this rule more clearly than dealing with antisemitism. No blatant lie is too low for those who search to find the slightest fault to magnify, or when they don’t find, just make up outright lies in order to “prove” their hatred for Jews. The most recent article by The New York Times¹ that correctly caused quite an uproar is a perfect case in point. 

In response to every ridiculous accusation, Jews worldwide have a tendency to immediately jump to disprove the lie from every angle. One commenter said that it seems that the haters derive the most pleasure just from watching the Jew being humiliated and forced to “empty his pockets” so to speak, just to prove himself innocent. Although I think that their antisemitic agenda really is so overarching in their minds that they do actually believe all these imaginations about the Jewish people, there is no doubt that they do derive pleasure from our vehement protests of innocence. Not that it matters, because they already made up their minds about the Jewish people – which is what brought them to create the wild blood libels in order to “prove” their hatred as having some base. 

So, why do Jews keep trying to prove themselves innocent? Why don’t we just shrug our shoulders and call the world a lost cause? 

I think the answer to this question might just also answer another question many people ask across the entire world: How come the Jews are so outrageously over-represented in Nobel Peace Prizes and so many other awards of every type? 

Of course, Jews are particularly smart on average. But so are other much less decorated groups. So, what sets Jews apart? 

JUDAISM TEACHES JEWS TO SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH!!! 

Even for the less religious among us, our culture is built on questioning and searching for the truth. The Oral tradition is literally the Sages debating each other over the truth. Unlike other forms of wisdom,  Torah is uniquely supposed to be learned in pairs or groups and not alone. Why? In order to encourage questions and open debate!  

From the youngest age, children are taught to ask questions. It is literally built into one of the oldest books in Judaism – the Four Questions in the Passover seder Haggadah, and by tradition, the youngest child is supposed to ask the questions first. In Jewish culture, it is a source of pride if a student asks a difficult question that forces the teacher to search for the answer. The examples are endless.  

Rabbi Shalom Arush writes right in the beginning of The Garden of Emuna that even if you have to  change 1,000 times a day, it doesn’t matter – the most important thing is to live according to the truth! And keep learning more and more truth. The Jew is never supposed to be satisfied with their level of spirituality – rather, always learning and growing.  

God says that His seal is Truth. With a capital T. There is no relative “truth.” It is becoming increasingly obvious that this belief in relative “truth” is simply abject immorality searching for some basis in which to do whatever a person’s most base lusts and desires lead him to. 

Judaism, on the other hand, insists that morality is based on rigid rules set by God Himself.  Hashem challenges the Jewish people through the 613 commandments to work on themselves to strive for increasingly holy conduct and to overcome their base lusts and desires. But this value is not limited to the Jewish people – the Creator demands a minimum of morality from all humankind through the Seven Noahide Commandments.  

Even secular Jews have this same, although perhaps unnamed, need to search for the truth. So, they search for truth in physics, in medicine, in whatever specialty they choose for themselves. This search also explains why so often Jews excel in their professions – they don’t just want to be “the best” in a vacuum. They truly want to do the right thing, and they want to do it right, according to the truth. Taught to challenge preconceived notions and widely held beliefs from childhood, they start thinking outside the box about how to solve the problems in front of them. Sadly, there are lists of Jews like Trotsky who tried to figure out how to make it better and got it terribly wrong, but ultimately they were still searching for something better, however misguided. 

The problem is that Jews struggle to understand that the rest of the world doesn’t share this value of caring about the truth above all else. It’s sadly a lot more rare than most of us are prepared to recognize.  Hence, we continue to push truth, explanations, proof and logic onto a world stage that in general, frankly doesn’t care.  

Not only do they not care, they don’t WANT to listen – because listening to truth means they would have to CHANGE their behaviors, and they don’t want to! Hitler himself said it best: “Conscience is a Jewish invention.”² His idea was to eradicate Judaism and thus enable mankind to do whatever they want  without remorse! 

In truth, this subconscious desire is what actually fuels antisemitism. Jews  represent God, and God gives humankind rules and morality, right and wrong. It’s not just a war against Jews as much as it is a war against Truth and God who teaches it!  

The reality is that while we cannot convince others to care about truth, we don’t have to. It’s not our job! 

Teaching the entire world truth and morality is the job of Mashiach and God Himself. In the meantime, we are best served to do everything to teach ourselves more and more truth, and challenge ourselves to live our lives according to that truth more and more. 

Even and especially when it’s uncomfortable and different than the culture around us, which only becomes more and more extreme in its lack of morality and values. 

With Hashem’s help, I pray that more and more people will join us – Jews and non-Jews alike! 

Editor’s Notes 

¹ “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” Nicholas Kristoff, New York Times, May 11, 2028 

² The quotation is found in Gespräche mit Hitler (published in English as Hitler Speaks or The Voice of Destruction), Hermann Rauschning, 1939. The full quotation is: “The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. ‘Conscience’ is a Jewish invention, a blemish like circumcision.” 

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Rachel Avrahami grew up in Los Angeles, CA, USA in a far-off valley where she was one of only a handful of Jews in a public high school of thousands. She found Hashem in the urban jungle of the university. Rachel was privileged to read one of the first copies of The Garden of Emuna in English, and the rest, as they say, is history. She made Aliyah and immediately began working at Breslev Israel.   
  
Rachel is now the Editor of Breslev Israel’s English website. She welcomes questions, comments, articles, and personal stories to her email: rachel.avrahami@breslev.co.il