While traveling in Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, I ran into many Israelis in Paris who, upon seeing my yarmulke, came over and said hello.
No one was wearing a kippah, just a baseball cap. “Europe is full of anti-Semites.” So what? I asked. No one called Israelis cowards. “You guys are brave enough to fight Hamas, but you’re scared to put on a yarmulke and go to the Louvre?”
“Jews have been murdered in Europe for 2000 years. They are all anti-Semites.”
For all the bravery the Israelis show (there is no braver nation on earth than the Israelis), they still live in a Jewish bubble in the Middle East and want to avoid confrontation when they venture into a continent that they are convinced hates.
But what proves that Europe is anti-Semitic? Europe has been killing Jews for 2000 years.
Likewise, can we pray to God that our Creator doesn’t like the Jews very much, after all, who has allowed the Jews to be murdered for 2,000 years?
Let me be clear. I do not believe in God. Rather, I am convinced that God exists. I am convinced that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, the ruler of the universe, and the ruler of all history. Maimonides said that there is no commandment to believe in God, but the commandment is to know that God exists.
Don’t doubt your faith, but doubt whether God loves you.
I know. It’s mathematically certain. And October 7th didn’t shake my faith in God one bit. But it did make me question whether God likes the Jews.
What does God want for us Jews? Why does He seem to have broken so many of His promises to us? He says He loves us, yet He allows us to be gang-raped, beheaded, disemboweled, massacred and cremated. I wonder if Europeans would make a similar argument: We love you to death.
Yes, Jesus promised the regathering of the exiles, and while the Messiah has yet to come, that has come close with the miraculous state of Israel. But October 7th shattered the founding principle of the Jewish state: that if Jews could return to their own land, protected by a military force, nothing like the genocide or the Holocaust would ever happen again.
We have been waiting for Israel for 2,000 years. Did God have to so decisively dash his promise of security for our land?
Many argue that God has a plan, and that good things will come from October 7th. Shani’s father, Nissim Luke, said at a public forum in New York, where I dedicated a Torah to the sacred memory of mother and daughter, that “Shani” means change, and that “great, positive changes will come from this massacre.” Nissim is a man of great faith. But whatever good may have come from that horrific day, was it only the result of his daughter being publicly desecrated by a monster?
I know countless people who have told me that God had a great plan for the Holocaust.
Seriously? So in some heavenly realm far beyond our limited understanding, killing a million children in gas chambers is somehow a good thing?
Has Israel gotten what it deserved?
Some say Israel deserved what it suffered on October 7 because of the irrational hatred Israelis have for one another, but Americans hate each other just as much, yet Manhattan women were not punished by being gang-raped at a concert in Central Park.
And to those who say we Jews are sinful and don’t keep the Torah, give me pause. There is no more faithful people on earth than the Jews. Even after Auschwitz, we continue to wear tefillin, eat kosher food, and send our children to Jewish day schools. There is no other people on earth that can even come close to the Jewish loyalty to God, even when God seems not to be rewarding.
So, back to my original question: Is God an anti-Semite? If He has no good reason to hate us, does His hatred of the Jewish people make Him any more than the United Nations or the European Union, who unreasonably despise us?
While I understand the immorality of the UN and the inclusion of countries like North Korea and Russia on the UN Human Rights Council has made it a laughing stock, the same cannot be said for God, the source of all morality. Shouldn’t God Himself act morally?
Abraham said to God, “Will the Judge of all the earth not execute justice?” Moses went further, threatening to abandon the Torah altogether if God wiped out the Jews: “But if you wipe them out, I beg you, blot out my name from the book which you have written.”
I have no idea what God has up its sleeve with anti-Semitism resurging around the world. Yes, humanity has the freedom to choose, and those who choose to hate the Jews, such as the maggot-like Islamic leaders of Iran, are responsible for that hatred. But if it were not God’s will, in their efforts to kill the Jews, they would not even be able to harm a single hair on Nir Oz or the baby of Sderot.
Why did God allow all this garbage to come back? Were six million Jewish martyrs not enough?
Next week marks 30 years since the Rebbe’s death. In one of his final public speeches, the Rebbe spoke about the rape and murder of a young mother in Crown Heights. He looked up to the heavens and debated with God before a worldwide audience. “Zektz korbanos?” “Lord, are further sacrifices necessary?” “Ad mattai?” Will this be enough?
In Deuteronomy, Moses famously said, “The hidden things belong to God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children.” I have no idea what God is up to after October 7th. As a man with two sons fighting in the war for Israel, I tremble, shudder, mourn and grieve every time an IDF hero is killed. Will thousands more 20-year-old Jewish boys have to die before God’s thirst is quenched?
But none of that is my job. My job is to protest God’s seeming inaction and to demand that He show up in history to finally protect His people, just as He did the day the four hostages were rescued and the day the satanic Iranian president burned to death in a helicopter crash.
Is God anti-Semitic? My role is not to answer that question, but to defiantly pray to God that He would not give any political party even a hint that He might be.
I don’t know why the world hates the Jews. But my job is not to understand, but to fight, explain, argue, and win. My job is to be an Israeli, “one who wrestles with God.” My role is to keep the Sabbath whenever it seems like God is allowing it to be violated, like October 7th. My job is to honor my wife and respect women, even when it seems like God is allowing monsters to violate them. My six daughters’ mission is to light their Sabbath candles and dispel the darkness, even when it seems like God has snuffed out hope, like October 7th. And my job is to fight for Israel and support the IDF, even when it seems like God is letting their lives slip through His fingers.
No, God is not anti-Semitic — the very fact that Jews still exist proves that — but it’s time for God to start showing His love, not just talking about it.
The author is the international bestselling author of the new guide to fighting for Israel, “The Israel Warrior.” Follow @RabbiShmuley on Instagram and Twitter.
