We are facing an enemy as savage, voracious, and heartless as the Nazis. Yet sometimes, you would never know it from the way we speak about this war.
During World War II, we did not call the Nazi stormtroopers “freedom fighters.” We did not call the Gestapo “militants.” We did not explain the Nazis’ rise to power by blaming the Jews. And we certainly did not apologize for fighting back.
There was moral clarity.
We knew who the enemy was. We knew what evil looked like. And we knew that only victory over that evil could bring peace.
Yet in 2014, when Israel fought to stop rockets raining down on its cities and destroy tunnels built to murder Israeli civilians, something extraordinary happened. A wave of anti-Semitism swept across the world.
Synagogues were attacked. Jews were beaten. Demonstrators shouted, “Kill the Jews,” “Gas the Jews,” and “Hitler was right.”
And somehow, Israel became the villain.
Think about the hypocrisy. Hundreds of thousands were being slaughtered in Syria. Millions were dying in wars across the Middle East and Africa. Christians were being persecuted. Women were being raped and murdered. Terrorists were destroying entire communities.
Where were the massive demonstrations?
But when Israel defended itself against Hamas, the world suddenly discovered its outrage.
Why?
Because beneath the political arguments, something much older was revealing itself.
Why Do We Deserve This?
For decades, we believed that the Holocaust had taught humanity a lesson. We believed that the world had learned the dangers of racism, hatred, and bigotry.
We Jews, tried to become part of the family of nations. We built successful lives, contributed to society, and became doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, business leaders, and citizens of the countries in which we lived.
We thought we had finally become just another people.
And then, suddenly, the hatred returned.
But this is not a question Jews began asking in 2014.
We have been asking it for thousands of years.
Pharaoh hated us. Nebuchadnezzar hated us. Rome persecuted us. Crusaders massacred us. Expulsions followed expulsions. Stalin persecuted us. Hitler attempted to annihilate us.
The names change. The countries change. The ideology changes.
But the hatred keeps returning.
As Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin put it so powerfully: economic depression does not explain gas chambers.
There may be political, economic, or social factors that intensify anti-Semitism. But they do not explain its existence.
And Then Came the Joke
An Israeli in Paris once saw a pit bull attacking a little girl. He killed the dog and saved the child.
The reporters ran over.
“What's your name? You're a hero! Tomorrow's headline: Hero Saves Girl from Vicious Dog!”
The man said, “But I'm not from Paris.”
“That's okay,” they replied. “The whole of France will love you!”
“I’m not from France.”
“Then all of Europe will celebrate you!”
“I’m not from Europe.”
“Where are you from?”
“Israel.”
The reporters looked at each other.
“Israel? Tomorrow's headline: Cruel Israeli Murders Dog!”
We laugh because the joke exposes something painful.
Never Again Must Mean Never Again
The question before us today is not only what the world will do.
It is what will we do?
Will we lose our moral clarity?
Will we be embarrassed to defend ourselves?
Will we allow others to define the Jewish people as the problem when Jews are once again being targeted?
No.
We must know who we are.
We must stand proudly as Jews.
We must support Israel.
We must defend Jewish life.
And above all, we must never apologize for fighting evil.
The lesson of Jewish history is not that hatred will disappear.
The lesson is that we must never forget who we are, never surrender our identity, and never lose our courage.
Because Never Again is not merely a phrase about what happened to our grandparents.
It is a commitment to what we will do for our children.
Yet the most fascinating question is not simply why anti-Semitism exists.
It is how the Jewish people understood it—and how we responded to it—for thousands of years.
Every morning, 365 days a year, we say:
“How fortunate we are! How good is our portion; how sweet is our lot; how beautiful is our inheritance!”
In simple Yiddish:
Oy vey, how great to be a Yid!
How wonderful it is to be a Jew!
Are we delusional?
How can we call our lot “sweet” when our people have been hated, persecuted, expelled, tortured, and murdered throughout history?
The answer is profound.
You can look at anti-Semitism and kvetch.
Or you can fight it with everything you have—and at the same time understand that Jewish existence itself represents something extraordinary.
For thousands of years, the Jew has been an irritant to those who cannot accept what the Jew represents.
Why?
Because approximately 3,400 years ago, at Sinai, the Jewish people received something that changed history forever:
Torah.
Torah gave us a mission: to bring holiness into the world, to teach that every human being is created in the image of G-d, to stand for morality, justice, compassion, freedom, and responsibility.
At Sinai, we were given a torch to illuminate the world with love, goodness, kindness, and holiness.
We were given a blueprint for healing humanity and bringing the world toward redemption.
Through Torah study, we connect with G-d.
Through a mitzvah, we embrace G-d.
And when a Jewish child understands this inheritance, he naturally says:
How fortunate we are! How good is our portion! How sweet is our lot! How beautiful is our inheritance!
Leo Tolstoy captured this mystery beautifully. He asked:
“What is a Jew?”
A people persecuted by empires and tyrants, yet still alive.
A people who refused to surrender their faith.
A people who taught the world liberty, education, morality, and the dignity of every human being.
The Jew is the emblem of eternity.
That is the secret.
The Jewish presence forces humanity to confront a question: Is life merely physical, or is there something higher?
Some respond by being inspired by the Jewish message.
Others respond by attacking the messenger.
Maurice Samuel put it brilliantly:
“No man loves his alarm clock.”
The Jew is civilization’s alarm clock.
We are here to remind the world that there is a G-d, that life has purpose, that morality matters, that every human being possesses a Divine soul.
And that is why the Jewish story is so remarkable.
We sometimes ask: Are we really the same Jews who stood at Sinai?
Are we the descendants of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Rabbi Akiva, Rashi, Maimonides, and the Baal Shem Tov?
Is the Jewish student walking across Oxford or Harvard the same Jew who stood at Sinai?
Is the Jew living in Bayside, working hard to support his family, really part of the same people chosen to carry the Torah into history?
Look at our history.
Look at the hatred.
After thousands of years, the world still reacts to the Jew with extraordinary intensity.
And perhaps that tells us something profound:
The Jewish soul has not changed.
The Jew has not lost his spiritual power.
The covenant has not disappeared.
The light of Sinai is still burning.
Every one of us is a living miracle of Jewish history.
You may be religious or secular, affiliated or unaffiliated. You may feel deeply connected to Judaism—or barely connected at all.
But inside you is the same Jewish soul that stood at Sinai.
You are carrying a piece of eternity.
And that is why, every morning, we can say with complete confidence:
How fortunate we are!
How good is our portion!
How sweet is our lot!
How beautiful is our inheritance!
Oy vey, how great to be a Yid!
We will be strong.
And at this moment, we must express our deepest appreciation to the brave men and women of the IDF, who are literally standing on the front lines for the Jewish people.
We will not duck.
We will not buckle.
We will not cower.
We will protect ourselves with determination. We will speak up and speak out. We will stand with Israel and with the Jewish people with every fiber of our being.
As the prophet Isaiah declared:
“For the sake of Zion I will not be silent, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest.”
But there is another battle we must fight—not only against those who hate us, but against the temptation to internalize their hatred.
European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made a tragic mistake. They thought:
“People hate us because we are different. So we will stop being different.”
They assimilated. They hid their Judaism. They abandoned one tradition after another.
And what happened?
Anti-Semitism did not disappear.
All Jewish self-blame accomplished was to weaken and demoralize the Jewish people.
The most important thing we can do is therefore simple:
Never internalize anti-Semitism.
Instead, be proud Jews.
Because we may not always know who we are—but the world does.
There is something unique about the Jewish people. We carry a Jewish soul. We carry the legacy of Sinai. We carry a mission.
And when we proudly embrace that identity, something extraordinary happens.
The Jewish Response to Bigotry
In 2007, an anti-Semitic preacher came to the University of Kansas carrying hateful signs and screaming that Jews belonged in hell.
Jewish students came out to protest.
But one student was different.
His name was Charles Goldberg. He was completely secular, barely connected to Judaism, and had little involvement in Jewish life.
But something inside him awakened.
He remembered that a Chabad rabbi had once left a tallit at his fraternity house. Charles ran back, found the tallit, wrapped himself in it, climbed onto a bench, and began to pray.
The Jewish students began cheering.
The media came.
The next day, the university newspaper featured a photograph of Charles wrapped in a tallit.
The headline said:
“The Jewish Response to Bigotry.”
What a message.
He did not respond by hiding his Jewishness.
He responded by becoming more Jewish.
And that is our response.
If every Jew took just one baby step closer to Judaism, imagine the power.
Put up a mezuzah.
Put on tefillin.
Light Shabbat candles.
Study Torah.
Give your children a Jewish education.
Give tzedakah.
Make your home a Jewish home.
Celebrate Shabbat.
Strengthen your connection to mitzvot.
You don't have to change everything overnight.
Just take one step.
Because every Jewish soul is a flame.
And when millions of individual flames come together, they become a torch.
The world may try to extinguish our light.
Our answer is to make it brighter.
The Jewish soul was given a Divine mission: to illuminate the darkness with Torah and mitzvot.
The ball is in our court.
Let us become who we truly are. Let us light our flame. And together, let us illuminate the world.
Shana Tova, a happy and sweet New Year,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky