I recently read the book The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner (highly recommended). The book goes into great detail on the societal and personal causes of anger and how to deal with it, but the general idea that it gets across is that anger is a dance.
When there’s an issue between two people in a relationship (of any kind, though the book focuses on familial and romantic relationships), a pattern of behavior develops that Dr. Lerner likens to a dance. So long as one person keeps dancing the same steps, the other person will too. As long as one person maintains the status quo in the relationship, the other will too. And as any good therapist or bartender will tell you – you can only change yourself, not anyone else.
So what do you have to do if you’re stuck in a situation that makes you angry? You need to change the steps of the dance. What happens next is either your dance partner will adapt to the new dance, or you’ll break apart to find a new dancing partner elsewhere.
Now, this is Vision Magazine, not Psychology Today or Women’s Health, and I mentioned anti-Semitism in the title of this piece, and you’re probably wondering what I’m rambling on about.
Well, as I said, I highly recommend this book because I personally learned and grew so much from reading it and I’m trying to apply the advice to all aspects of my life. It’s on my mind a lot. Anti-Semitism is also on my mind a lot these days. And just a few days ago, I made a connection between the two.
Anti-Semitism, like other relationships, is a dance. And the Jewish people have been trying for millennia to do exactly what every bartender would tell us can’t work: we’ve been trying to change the anti-Semites, when what we need to do is change ourselves.
For generations, we’ve been kowtowing to the very people who hate us the most, in a misguided attempt to secure protection, upward mobility, what have you.
Every time we get somewhat comfortable with our situation, some natural or economic calamity or the justified uprising of an oppressed people causes an upsurge in Jew hatred, because we’re always the ones to be blamed (check out this video for a better explanation on why that is).
So what do we do? Kowtow to the big guns some more, to get more protection? Seek legal recourse against those who say mean things about Jews? Head over to social media and whine, counting the likes and shares and hoping that more followers means that the next American mass shooting won’t be at another Synagogue? Try to convince the masses that they shouldn’t hate us? And this goes on and on, spinning around in a never-ending waltz.
We’re trying to change the anti-Semites, but that won’t work. We can’t change anyone but ourselves.
Now, when I say we need to change ourselves, I mean that both on an individual and on a national level, we need to toughen up.
It’s no secret that Diaspora Jews are generally thought of as kind of nerdy, neurotic, whiny, weak (Ross Geller comes to mind as the archetype). We can say that this image is actually part of our curse of exile but it’s not who we truly are.
Ḥanukah is approaching, and what better time to remember that heroes like the Maccabim are part of our history. They didn’t take shit from anyone. Avraham, Yehoshua, Shimshon, David – some of the greatest warriors to have ever existed are our ancestors, their blood runs through our veins.
Two thousand years of oppression in exile clearly was enough to condition us to be subservient and cowardly, but we don’t need to take that anymore. I’m not saying we need to go out and pick fights with the biggest, baddest bully in the yard, but we definitely need to show some strength.
And on a national scale, we need to start acting like the independent nation we’re meant to be. As long as we’re acting like an outpost of some superpower we’ve convinced ourselves we’re dependent on for survival, that’s the way it’s going to stay. It works out well for the empire to have us under their thumb; why would they change anything if they don’t need to?
We’re a young country, but we have a solid infrastructure, as well as strong military and manufacturing capabilities. The problem is that as a people, we’re still deeply colonized and traumatized. Two thousand years really is a long time.
But we can heal.
And once we decide to take ownership of our situation and start changing how we act in our political and diplomatic relationships, the other peoples of the world will have to make a choice: either change their steps to the dance and change their attitudes towards the Jews, or deal with a stronger Israel than they’ve ever encountered before. But so long as we continue doing what we’ve been doing, we can’t expect the gentiles to change anything. Hating Jews, using Jews, scapegoating Jews – it works for them. Always has and always will.
Until we change the dance.
