Is there such a thing as Jewish Unity?

It seems with each passing day that humanity is plunging deeper into a state of hopelessness. What does that have to do with each of us, with the grouping called Jews, and with human survival? Is there a science that can explain the laws that govern our development as a society, as a species? Is it possible that science, religion and human history are not at odds with each other but are actually different points of view of the same thing? Different points of you?

There is a new video by Robert Kraft , shown at the Superbowl, that calls upon viewers to stop the hatred of Jews, essentially saying that we can just paint over it and then live happily ever after. At TheJewFunction we would like to go beyond that, to resolve things from a deeper perspective.

Is Jewish unity and its opposite, disunity, somehow central to getting closer to the root of antisemitism?

We recently had the opportunity to meet with Seth Menachem on this topic. Seth is an actor, a writer, and now a psychotherapist. He strives to help his clients understand their history by discovering the ways in which they currently operate in the world.

SM: Collectively, as Jews, it has been an interesting time. I have heard you both speak a bit about the idea of unity and disunity, and I’m not convinced yet. I heard you once say that all major antisemitic events were preceded by periods of disunity among Jews, that the solution could be found there. I’m not entirely sure that Jews have ever been united. The Talmud is nothing but Jews debating and arguing. We are not of one unifying thought!

Something happened on October 7 that unified Jews in a certain way. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t Jews who have been very vocal about their anger towards what they see as an Israeli occupation, or what I personally see as a very right-wing government that is dangerous in Israel. Some have a hope for a Palestinian statehood, but there are also many of us who also agree that you cannot live next to neighbors who want to kill you and have repeatedly tried to do so.

TJF: We have gone through the entire Jewish history, leading up to the establishment of Israel, and we just couldn’t help but see patterns. There was a period where Jews were united, in between the temples. There were a few hundred years when everything was great, but not much has been written about us at that time. It’s lost. There is a historian, Paul Johnson, who studied all the ancient writings. There are obviously many stories about quarreling Jews and worldviews. And then, leading up to the Temple, which symbolized the highest degree of unity that the Jews had ever reached, there was a spiritual renaissance. It was a symbol for everyone from all around. Jewish people were doing pilgrimages to Jerusalem and everybody was embracing them, loving them, giving them a place to stay, and an oven to bake their offering on. We had a discussion on this history which can be found on Episode 7 of our podcast.

SM: I went to Burning Man about 10 years ago and it was a wish that society could operate like that. It lasted two weeks, but how sustainable is it for any group of human beings to be united? I’m a therapist, I work with couples and individuals. No one can stay in a certain state forever. There will always be periods where we disagree, where we have struggles, where we are doing better, where we are doing worse, where we are arguing more.

I have been with my wife for 23 years and the only thing that has been consistent is that we have continuously wanted to work on the relationship. In terms of unity and disunity among Jews, historically, I wonder if it is more about a tolerance for differences. This may be what is missing now, and it’s what couples do best when they are able.

TJF: We are not made the same. God specifically made us with very different qualities. Let’s understand who we are, how we got here, and most importantly, what is the goal? You said that in your relationship with your wife you have this shared goal.

It’s like this quote in the Pirkei Avot: ‘Every argument that is for the sake of Heaven’s name is destined to endure. But if it’s not for the sake of Heaven’s name, it is not destined to endure.’ Meaning, if you have a higher goal in that triangle, it’s going to survive. If the goal is lower, you think, ‘oh, we’ll stay together for the kids’, or for the business, or for the house. That’s not going to last. You are always going to find ways to break it up. And we just saw that occur in Israel. When people agree that there is a uniting principle that you don’t depart from — whether you call it God, the force of love, or the highest force in nature — that can be a uniting principle, would you agree?

SM: As a therapist, people come to you expecting that there is just one way to do things. How do I parent my kids? How do my husband and I get along or work through this argument, and who’s right? They are both pitching their side to you. Therapists do not consider which side to take, but rather how the couple argues, and where they are getting in their own way.

As another example, I have two kids. If you have one child, you think you understand how to parent. When your kid is upset, you know how to handle it. Maybe you put them in time-out and they sit quietly, and then they come out and they’re remorseful. You then have a second kid and you realize that you have no idea what you are doing. ‘Wait, they don’t operate the same way? This is insane, this doesn’t work, my kid doesn’t go into time-out!’ You have to be creative. What works is listening to the other person, being accepting of differences.

TJF: So we need a system that is very elastic and inclusive. When it’s our own kid, we are willing to bend, to be patient, to take the time, to understand, to put in the time and effort to figure it out, because we feel that it’s ours.

SM: I can sit with my family or close friends on a couch and we have our arms around each other. If I’m on a subway in New York with strangers, on the other hand, suddenly I’m irritated that people are touching me. It’s the same distance, but it irritates me when I’m with a stranger.

TJF: I think this is the point where it gets really interesting. Somehow, for whatever reason, Jewish people became a group, a nation of sorts, made up of representatives of all the other nations. If you look back to the time of Abraham, that’s who we are. By default, our starting point is not the same as other nations that are much more homogenous in terms of their background.

One of our premises is that the Jewish people are a microcosm of humanity. As Paul Johnson said, we are a pilot program for humanity. Jordan Peterson was in Israel and he said that for whatever reason, everybody is looking at us to see if we can make it work. You can argue the reason, you can ask whether it is purposeful or coincidental, but it doesn’t matter. It’s like all rows are pointing in this direction. People may not believe in the Bible, that’s fine, but it is the book that shaped humanity, our collective psyche. We can argue as much as we want, but that is the reality we live in. It is almost like we are bound to move in a certain direction.

Pilot Project For The Entire Human RaceMany non-Jews such as Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy have penned keen insights into the Jewish people. Paul Johnson in his…www.jewishhistory.org

SM: Jews have managed to not only survive, but often thrive, and to do so without victimhood. When it comes to my clients, I want them to understand their history. It is very important for us to understand the ways in which we were raised and how that influences the way we see the world. The coping mechanisms that may have been effective in childhood can become completely ineffective later in life. Even though something negative happened, and it changed the way that you view the world, and you developed some negative coping mechanisms as a result, you should not feel shame. Rather, you should understand that you needed it to survive, but that it is no longer working for you, it is no longer sustainable. It is better to view the world in a way which allows you to not only survive, but thrive. Some of this is letting go of victimhood.

Despite all of the varied attempts to kill Jews, despite antisemitism, which we are reminded of throughout many of our holidays, Jews have managed to not only survive, but often thrive, without victimhood. Regardless of differences in our history, culture and education, there is something that just works.

TJF: I know someone who has been in therapy for 20 years, and it’s as if they are meant to remain in that cycle. It’s just where they are. We as Jews, even though we don’t have a short memory, it’s like we keep looping around, like a spiral, rather than evolving. Every time something negative happens, it’s just another loop of the same thing. It’s incumbent upon us to grab it and hold it and ask what is happening. How can we use this like an airplane to take off? It’s as if it needs that resistance in order to lift. One of the problems that we see is that people generally don’t have the ability to look at these cycles as something that we can grow from.

SM: That’s a good point. People do have the ability to observe the cycles, but are we able to grow from them? So a terrible event happens, like October 7th. We know how to look at it because we have done this so many times. Any of us who grew up in the wake of the Holocaust, where it was typical even at a young age to push the idea that people are trying to wipe our people out simply because they were Jews, we understand how to look at this. The question is, are we doing the right thing in terms of helping people grow from it?

TJF: People are not the same, and that’s ok. We just need to understand the differences. Where does everyone fit in this big equation? Maybe we as Jews should ask what our role is in this system. We can’t be only the guys who keep getting hunted down and exterminated. That’s not a role. That’s such a bad script, and I refuse to accept it. And, lo and behold, we look at our scriptures and sages and they say that we have a very distinct role. They say, in black and white, that you have to unite and show the world how it is done. Love the other as yourself, practice it, and then give it to everyone else. They have been saying this for thousands of years. So we are asking you, as someone who grew up in the United States, do you feel like Jews are somewhat different, that they may have a different place in this whole system?

SM: We are capable of bettering society and being a light unto the nations. All human beings are, but absolutely Jews are. You talk about changing the psychology of people. Who invented psychology, right? It’s a Jewish invention. So my hope is that, yes, Jews do better society. We have proven to better society. And the question is, can we do that in a way in which society starts to love us rather than hate us? Inevitably, society is going to hate something, and right now it happens to be Jews because it is so deeply embedded into all cultures. The impact on humanity is gigantic.

TJF: If you really love something, you fear losing it. The fear is almost like a gauge of the love. Hate should be a hate of anything that comes against love, anything that wants to destroy it. The exact quantity and quality of the hate can exist, but not aimed towards a person. Let all of humanity hate the fact that we are not living in love. Let all of humanity hate anything that comes to separate us. Hate the ego. Let’s unite. Let’s band against our egoistic attitudes that go against this quality of love. When you’re with your kids, your ego just melts away. Yes, it comes back and, arguably when you just start out on the path of parenting, you think that your kids are disrespecting you. As you continue, you understand that they aren’t against you, they are just trying to help you grow up. With others, in the subway, when something flares up, there are boundaries, there’s me, there’s you. If we focus all our hate on that, on these qualities that separate us, that think only of ourselves, care only about ourselves, then we have a perfect equation. We can band together and have internal wars instead of all of these external wars.

SM: The understanding that all of us are capable of all of those emotions, it’s within all of us. So what you’re pushing against is this ideal, finding a way to rise above it?

TJF: Exactly. It doesn’t disappear, it is what makes each one unique. But you have to rise above it and cover all of those things, while keeping them in place.

SM: Maybe the answer is making sure everyone understands that we are all capable of it.

TJF: That was the failure of the love revolution. They thought ‘it’s only love, there’s no ego’, but they discovered that they hate each other. And that’s what happens in marriages. Unless you work on it, you discover that you are two egoists that can’t possibly make it last, that you might as well just break it up. Instead, we have to realize that yes, we are two egoists, and always rise above it, always cover it with more love. It’s like spiritual physics. We have so much evidence, so much experience already. We can start to identify all of these things, use them all and launch into a really good life for everyone. We really have all that we need. We’re not really missing anything anymore.

SM: I think that the spiritual physics idea is a beautiful one. A wonderful way of wording that. You are really counterbalancing things and you have to view it through the same spiritual lens, even though it’s less tangible, to be able to understand it. I guess it’s what psychology tries to do, but to have us understand it and extend those theories outward onto society.

TJF: We were really grateful to have spent some time with Seth on this topic, it was a true pleasure. It is clear that unity finds itself intertwined within many, if not all, themes in our lives, such as couples, raising children, history, and conflict. Is Jewish unity in particular central to all this? We hope that this conversation has helped towards starting to piece together such an understanding, so that we can start exploring solutions to unite above our differences and reach a common good future for all of humanity. We will continue our discussion with Seth in our next post, stay tuned!