Are Jews different?

I cannot imagine Jews ever committing acts of genocide. Why? Are Jews good and Germans bad?

Expanding out to different places and times, were the Armenians in World War I good and the Turks bad? Wouldn’t the Armenians have attempted to exterminate the Turks if the positions had been reversed? Were the Tutsi in Rwanda good and the Hutu bad? Might not the Tutsi have committed genocide against the Hutu had the Tutsi been the stronger? Were the Ukrainians in the 1930s all good and the Russians bad? So if the Ukrainians had perceived the Russian threat and they had the power to starve out the Russians instead of the other way around, would they have done that? Were the European Jews good and the crusaders who murdered Jews on the way to the Holy Land bad?

How about if there had been fierce, genocidal warrior Jews in Europe —would they have massacred the crusaders tramping over their land?

Being in Germany made me think about what makes a people genocidal. There is no Holocaust denial in Germany although the Germans are sick of hearing about it (“it happened, it was horrible, but we didn’t do it, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers were responsible. . .”).

In several cities I asked the same question: “Are the Germans sincerely sorry?” In Mainz I asked the gabbai rishon at the beautiful modern synagogue and he said, “I think so.” At the Heidelberg University I asked an Orthodox student and she said “Most of them.” Well, I’d have to give the same answer in America, right? We have our own share of neo-Nazis.

Lower animals kill to defend themselves and for food. Only human beings commit genocide, but usually for other reasons. These reasons include mental illness on the part of a leader, a lust for power, a desire for more territory, for revenge, or out of sheer hatred.

The right question

Toward the end of our cruise it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been looking down the wrong end of the telescope. The question isn’t why were they bad? The question is why are we Jews good? Humans worldwide evolved similarly. We Jews are the same genetically as every other people in the world, we all have the same virtues and flaws, the same emotional make-up which varies from person to person. So how come we can’t imagine Jews committing acts of genocide? Jews are human beings with all of a human being’s frailties. What’s the difference?

Exiled from our land for 2,000 years while maintaining our traditions in the diaspora —traditions of study, education, tikun olam (repair of a world that is treating us so badly) and then coming back stronger than ever as the State of Israel in our ancient homeland —no nation, no ethnic group, no racial group and no religion has ever done that except for the Jewish people. No one else has even come close. What makes us so different?