On Tuesday, it’s my turn to open the December board meeting of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies (I am vice president) with a “dvar Torah”. I have written something out, and am circulating it as today’s blog post. Here goes:

This week’s Torah portion is Vayagash, the second to the last reading in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). It’s a continuation of the Joseph story – Joseph tells his brothers who he is, instructs them to return from Egypt to Canaan and bring his father Jacob/Israel back to Egypt with the entire family. Joseph promises to settle his family in Goshen, the best land in Egypt, a place for them to graze their flocks. Jacob returns with 70 members of his family and settles in Goshen with the blessing of the Pharaoh. And it looks like they will live happily ever after. But they don’t.

God’s promise was to make Joseph’s family into a “great nation”. Presumably He does that. At least for a while, they prosper, and they live in Goshen for about 400 years. But then something happens. They have become not a favored people, but an enslaved people, the slaves of the Pharaohs who knew not Joseph.

God had made them into a great nation, but the great nation was not prospering in lands controlled by a greater nation, so God arranged, through Moses, that Joseph’s family, the descendants of himself and his brothers, leave the land of Egypt and return to Canaan, the land promised to their forefathers centuries before.

And the Jews conquered Canaan, says the Bible, and lived there for about 1000 years (with a few interruptions), but about 2000 years ago, they met their match. Another greater nation, this one the Roman nation, took control and, when the Jews rebelled, conquered the Jews, killed them or forced them out of their land.

Over the last 100 years or so, the Jews have been coming back into this land, or at least to a large part of it, now 6 million strong. Once again, they conquered the land. But also once again, they are surrounded by a greater people – at least much greater in numbers – who want, once again, to take the land from the Jews. This battle is being fought out as we sit here today.

We obviously do not know how the current battle will end. We are not endowed with the ability to foresee the future. But we know that the Jews living in this land need allies outside of the land. They are supported by a very large percentage of the Jews living in other lands, who have the ability to influence, or at least who can try to influence, their governments to support the government in what is now known as the State of Israel.

This is certainly true in the United States, which holds the second largest (or maybe the largest) number of Jews in the world. And the American government has been very responsive.

But there are clouds on the horizon. There are supporters of the greater nation, the Arabs nation, in our country. These supporters include, but are not limited to, Arabs living in the United States. They seem to include a large number of young people, ages 18-24, who have been schooled in what is now know as “progressive” social studies, or “social justice”. This school divides the peoples of the world into groups: religious groups, national groups, ethnic groups, gender groups, skin color groups. It proclaims that members of various branches of each of these groups are “oppressors”, who oppress other member of the same groups. For example, “white” people oppress people of color, and if you are white, you are an oppressor, even if you think that you personally are not. The same goes for men, who oppress women. Israelis who oppress Palestinians.

If you are strong, you are an oppressor. It is as simple as that. The purveyors of progressive social studies tend to classify Jews, who are perceived as strong and ambitious, as oppressors, even though their numbers are small. The Jews are viewed as oppressors in part because they are viewed as white. The Arabs are viewed as oppressed, in spite of their numbers, in part because they are viewed as not being white.

You may argue that the Jews shouldn’t be viewed as white in this sense, that white supremacists – for example – don’t view Jews as white at all. You may argue that the majority of Israeli Jews, coming from the Middle East and North Africa, have the same skin tone as the Arabs living in that area. You may argue that the entire division of human beings into these various categories is absurd on its face, and to the extent these differences exist, they should be fought, not applauded or exploited.

But at this point what you may think may be totally irrelevant. The progressives are growing in number, influence and power. The Harvard/Harris monthly poll for December showed that, while 2/3 of American support Israel in its current battle against Hamas, only 50% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 do.

As to the progressive way of looking at the world, which I described above, the Harvard/Harris poll shows that 80% of those between 18 and 24 support this ideology, this vantage point, in analyzing society. Of those over 65, only 19% do. Of the Americans in the 18 to 24 cohort, 67% agree that Jews should be classified as oppressors (9% of those over 65 do). 

There are many statistics, on many subjects, in this polling and if you Google the Harvard/Harris poll, you can see them all, and they all will fascinate you. I cite only a few of the more startling.

We in American have a lot of learning and teaching to do. We need to learn why the results are what they are, and what needs to be done to combat them.

The Haberman Institute is an educational organization. We serve an audience which is by and large well over the age of 65. We are preaching to the choir. We are carrying coals to Newcastle.

Should we be doing something different?