In the month of Nissan, we were redeemed from Egypt, according to an ancient rabbinic quote: “B’Nissan higalnu, v’b’Nissan atidim l’higael.” This quote is also the source for the Mimouna feast, celebrated annually among Sephardi Jews and Hassidim at the end of the Passover Festival. This year, we celebrate Mimouna amid a global upheaval centred in Israel.
The Essence of Mimouna
Since October 7, 2023, Israel and the Jewish community have been the focus of worldwide attention due to the Hamas invasion and massacre of Israelis. This has led to a noticeable rise in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments, commonly referred to as “antisemitism.” Pro-Palestinian protests have been witnessed on city streets and at elite universities worldwide, including McGill University in Canada, the Sorbonne in France, and Columbia, Penn, and Stanford in the US. The world has been witnessing acts of terrorism that have endangered innocent men, women, and children for many years, threatening the stability of all nations.
Despite repeated proposals for a ceasefire, our adversaries continue to hold innocent lives hostage and pose additional threats. However, the resilience of the Israeli people is truly inspiring. They can persevere in the face of adversity, and their unwavering commitment to peace and justice is the essence of Mimouna. It is a testament to the strength of the human spirit and the striving for worldwide peace and harmony.
Amidst the turmoil of constant war, Mimouna shines as a bright beacon of hope. More than just a celebration, Mimouna holds the promise of world redemption; it represents the day our prophets speak of when ‘the lion will lie down with the lamb,’ and all nations will transform their weapons into plowshares to feed the hungry and the poor. It is a reaffirmation of the eternal faith of Jews in a coming world of peace and cooperation among all peoples.
From Miracles to Human Responsibility
However, Jewish tradition consistently emphasizes that Jews “do not rely on miracles.” This principle is underscored throughout our Torah:
“The Bible’s ultimate process is a movement away from visible miracles and public (heavenly) revelation toward a process of education and persuasion to get people to act properly. Increasingly, the historical outcomes are dependent on human behaviour and the equilibrium of forces rather than on divine intervention. By the time we reach the Talmud, the Rabbis tell us that the age of prophecy (direct messages from Heaven) and of visible miracles is over. Such miracles are too ‘coercive.’ God wants humans to use their reason and emotions and choose to do the right thing out of free will and choice.” (Rabbi Yitz Greenberg essay: Do Not Rely on a Miracle: Parshat Beshallach 5781)
Embracing Mimouna
As I sit here amongst tonight’s festivities, surrounded by my loved ones, I am reminded of Rabbi Akiva’s wise words: “Do not do to your neighbour what you would not have done to yourself.” These words are significant in today’s society, where the world remains divided and filled with discord. Let us all embrace the joyous atmosphere of Mimouna and reflect on its powerful message of hope and redemption.
May this celebration inspire us to work tirelessly towards a future where freedom and justice prevail and humanity can thrive in peace and harmony. We must remember that only our actions can bring about this future. It is up to you and me now!
May 10, 2024
Anti-Semitism and Millenarianism
After I published the above on my website, I discovered this lengthy essay in Mosaic Magazine that explains Dostoevsky’s antisemitism based on his embrace of the Russian Orthodox Church’s messianic ideology in the late 1800s. Here are some quotes from the essay which illustrate how ideology can lead one astray:
“When I began working on the diary (the published diary of Dostoevsky) 50 years ago, I had been reading Norman Cohn’s classic study, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957), which suggested another explanation of the Dostoevsky problem. Cohn described medieval movements anticipating an apocalyptic time when it would be possible neatly to separate Christ’s saints from sinners following the Antichrist and to cleanse the world of evil forever. I was struck that Russian revolutionaries, whose ethos was defined by priests’ sons (like the revolutionary novelist Nikolai Chernyshevsky) and former seminarians (like Stalin), thought in just this apocalyptic way, as Cohn seemed to recognize. In one passage, he identified medieval millenarian ‘free spirits,’ who affirmed a ‘freedom so reckless and unqualified that it amounted to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation,’ as precursors of the Russian revolutionary anarchist Michael Bakunin. For 19th-century Europeans, medieval mystical anarchism lay in the remote past, but for Russians, it was palpably present, only superficially updated so that materialist laws rather than divine intervention would realize the millennium.
Cohn stressed that medieval millenarianism was almost invariably accompanied by anti-Semitic violence, partly because of the tradition, dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries, that the Antichrist would be a Jew of the tribe of Dan and would exalt Jews over all other peoples. Jewish control over world events would be a sure sign that the end was near.”
Here is Dostoevsky, in his own words, describing his millenarianism as reported in the same source:
“Tracing Russian history since Peter the Great, Dostoevsky maintains that Russians absorbed flawlessly each European nation’s way of thinking in all its particularity, a feat attributable to the uniquely Russian ability Dostoevsky called otzyvchivost’ (receptivity)—’ the capacity to discover the truth contained in each of the civilizations of Europe or, more correctly, in each of the personalities of Europe.’ Only in this way could Russia satisfy its ‘need to be just and above all to seek only the truth.’ Now, though, the time has arrived for Russia to stop absorbing others’ words and to speak its own ‘words’ to achieve ‘universal reconciliation’ once and for all.
To fulfill its mission, Dostoevsky supposes, Russia must liberate first the Slavs and then all other Orthodox Christian peoples. Then Russia must seize Constantinople, the traditional center of Orthodoxy, at which point the millennium will be at hand.
The imminent conquest of Constantinople will ‘happen of its own accord, precisely because the time has come . . . [or] is at hand, as all the signs indicate. This is a natural result decreed by Nature itself, as it were.’ It will not be a mere seizure of territory, as Westerners presume, but an entirely millenarian achievement:
There truly will be something special and unprecedented here: . . . it will be a true exaltation . . . of the cross of Christ and the ultimate word of Orthodoxy, at whose head Russia has long been standing. It will be a temptation for all the mighty of this world who have been triumphant until now and who . . . do not even comprehend that one can seriously believe in human brotherhood, in the universal reconciliation of nations, in a union founded on principles of universal service to humanity and regeneration of people through the true principles of Christ.
Whenever he expresses such views, Dostoevsky anticipates the scorn of the sophisticated. ‘Heavens, what a mocking smile would appear on the face of some Austrian or Englishman if he had the opportunity to read all these daydreams!’ But events will confirm Dostoevsky’s predictions. ‘And if believing in this ‘new world’. . . is a ‘utopia’ worthy only of ridicule, then you may number me among these utopians and leave the ridicule to me.'”
Here is another way that Dostoevsky theorized about the role of the Jews (quoted from the same source as above):
“There is another role usurped by the Jews. In addition to rivalry in messianism, Dostoevsky sees rivalry in suffering. Russia is the ‘man of sorrows’ mentioned in Isaiah 53:2, ‘despised and rejected’ by other nations and ‘acquainted with grief’ that those nations cannot even imagine. That is why he seems particularly irked by Kovner’s descriptions of unsurpassed Jewish misfortune. As the epigraph to Karamazov suggests, suffering offers the only path to transcending ordinary human egoism and achieving holiness: ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit’ (John 12:24).
Not Jews but Russians exemplify such suffering! ‘Can one really claim that the Russian people have endured fewer misfortunes . . . than the Jews?’ he demands. ‘Our great people . . . have suffered torments . . . for all their thousand years of existence, torments such as no single nation of the world could have borne without disintegration and annihilation.’ Of course, as Dostoevsky well knew, the Jews have existed and suffered still longer.”
I eagerly await your comments.
Footnotes:
- It has been pointed out by Francisco Gil-White and others that these anti-Israel perspectives are associated with Muslim/Jihadi ideology and the Progressive/Communist ideology, both of which pose challenges to democracy, freedom, and global cooperation and stability. For further exploration of this, I refer you to the work of Francisco Gil-White.
- Greenberg, Yitz. “Do Not Rely on a Miracle: Parshat Beshallach 5781.” Hadar.org, https://www.hadar.org/torah-tefillah/resources/do-not-rely-miracle.
- “Why Dostoevsky Loved Humanity and Hated the Jews.” Mosaic Magazine, Dec. 2023, https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/arts-culture/2023/12/why-dostoevsky-loved-humanity-and-hated-the-jews/. The case of the literary master helps explain why people who devote themselves to compassion for all, so often, make an exception for Jews by analyzing his ideas as a part of his historical period and his ideas re Russian Orthodox Christianity and Russian messianism which he passionately espoused.