The Jewish people are SPECIAL!!! No denying that. The other side of our incredible capabilities is that when we sink low - we sink the lowest... [as we say in our slichos "אשמנו מכל עם"]. This idea is found in a gemara in Ksubos which I will quote followed by the explanation of two of my favorite people EVER - The Maharal and Rav Yosef Engel. Afterwards a few more sources to prove this idea.
Then I will copy an article which gives a real life example of a Jew who is a modern day expression of this idea - Henry Kissinger. He is today 96 years old and the gates of teshuva remain open for him!!! As a youth he was a frum bochur who davened in Breuers in the Heights and I am sure he still retains some of his גירסא דינקותא. He even wrote a paper when the Jewish State was born asserting that the laws of the State must be governed by Torah!! To quote [my neighbor] Rabbi Norman Lamm Shlita: “Dr. Kissinger is an illustration of how high an assimilated Jew can rise in the United States, and how low he can fall in the esteem of his fellow Jews.”
ת"ר מעשה ברבן יוחנן בן זכאי שהיה רוכב על החמור והיה יוצא מירושלים והיו תלמידיו מהלכין אחריו ראה ריבה אחת שהיתה מלקטת שעורים מבין גללי בהמתן של ערביים כיון שראתה אותו נתעטפה בשערה ועמדה לפניו
The Sages taught: There was an incident involving Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai. When he was riding on a donkey and leaving Jerusalem, and his students were walking after him to learn from him, he saw a certain young woman who was gathering barley from among the dung of the animals of Arabs. She was so poor that she subsisted on the undigested barley within the dung. When she saw him, she wrapped herself in her hair, as she had nothing else with which to cover herself, and stood before him.
אמרה לו רבי פרנסני אמר לה בתי מי את אמרה לו בת נקדימון בן גוריון אני אמר לה בתי ממון של בית אביך היכן הלך אמרה לו רבי לא כדין מתלין מתלא בירושלים מלח ממון חסר ואמרי לה חסד ושל בית חמיך היכן הוא אמרה לו בא זה ואיבד את זה
She said to him: My teacher, sustain me. He did not recognize her, so he said to her: My daughter, who are you? She said to him: I am the daughter of Nakdimon ben Guryon. He said to her: My daughter, the money of your father’s household, where did it go? How did you become so poor? She said to him: My teacher, is it not that they say such a proverb in Jerusalem: Salt for money is lacking [ḥaser]? There is nothing with which to preserve it and prevent it from being lost. And some say the proverb asserts that kindness [ḥesed] is salt for money, i.e., using money for acts of kindness preserves it. He continued to ask her: And the money of your father-in-law’s house, which was used properly, for benevolent acts, where is it? She said to him: This one came and destroyed that one; all the money was combined, and it was all lost together.
אמרה לו רבי זכור אתה כשחתמת על כתובתי אמר להן לתלמידיו זכור אני כשחתמתי על כתובתה של זו והייתי קורא בה אלף אלפים דינרי זהב מבית אביה חוץ משל חמיה בכה רבן יוחנן בן זכאי ואמר אשריכם ישראל בזמן שעושין רצונו של מקום אין כל אומה ולשון שולטת בהם ובזמן שאין עושין רצונו של מקום מוסרן ביד אומה שפלה ולא ביד אומה שפלה אלא ביד בהמתן של אומה שפלה
She said to him: My teacher, do you remember when you signed on my marriage contract? He said to his students: I remember that when I signed on the marriage contract of this woman, and I read in it, it listed a thousand thousands, i.e., one million gold dinars as a dowry from her father’s house, aside from that which was promised her from her father-in-law. Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai cried and said: How fortunate are you, Israel, for when Israel performs the will of the Omnipresent, no nation or tongue can rule over them; and when Israel does not perform the will of the Omnipresent, He delivers them into the hand of a lowly nation. Not only are they delivered into the hand of a lowly nation, but even into the hand of the animals of a lowly nation, as in the pitiful instance of Nakdimon’s daughter.
המהר"ל (גברות השם פ"ד, נצח ישראל פרק י"ד) מקשה, שלכאורה משמע ממדברי ריב"ז, שמה שהוא אמר "אשריכם ישראל" הוא נסוב בין על הרישא של דבריו – שבזמן שישראל עושים רצונו של מקום אין אף אומה ולשון יכולה עליהם, ובין על הסיפא של דבריו, לפיה בשעה שאין ישראל עושים רצונו של מקום הם מושפלים תחת בהמתן של אומה שפילה. כמובן שלפי הבנה זו קשה, מדוע ריב"ז אומר "אשריכם ישראל" על מה שהם מועדים לשפלות גדולה שכזו. (יש לציין שעוד אחרונים הקשו כעי"ז - עיין מהרש"א בכתובות שם).
המהר"ל מיישב את הסתירה, וז"ל (נצח ישראל פי"ד): "וכל ענין זה מפני כי הצורה מצד עצמה ראוי לה השלימות, כי זהו עצם הצורה שהיא שלימה, וכאשר אין לה השלימות שראוי לה - כאילו היא נעדרת לגמרי. והשפל, אם הוא פחות ושפל, אינו נחשב נעדר, ויש לו מציאות מה, הן רב הן מעט. אבל זה נחשב נעדר לגמרי. ובודאי יפה אמר על זה 'אשריכם ישראל' וכו'... שאין לישראל שום מדריגה בינונית. או שהם מושלים על הכל, או שהכל מושלים עליהם".
היינו, הואיל ויש לישראל את מעלת "הצורה" – ששאיפתם היסודית והעמוקה היא לשלימות, אזי בשעה שיש בהם חסרון – יש ביטול למהותם, וממילא הם מושפלים. השפלה זו, ביסודה, היא תוצאה של שאיפה לאין-סוף האלוקי, וממילא על שאיפה זו אמר ריב"ז "אשריכם ישראל". השאיפה של ישראל היא לא להיות במצב בינוני, ותרני ופשרני. הבינוניות היא ביטוי להתאמה למצב הנתון, ואילו השאיפה לאין-סוף – למרות שבזה היא יכולה לדרום גם לשפלות בעולם הזה – מבטאת אמון גדול בקדש ובנצח ושייכות אליהם.
בהקשר זה יש להביא את דברי הגאון ר' יוסף ענגיל, בספרו ההלכתי-למדני "לקח טוב" שג"כ ביאר את דברי ריב"ז באופן קרוב לזה של המהר"ל, וז"ל (כלל ו' אות ב'): "וע"ע בכתובות... בכה ריב"ז ואמר אשריכם ישראל בזמן שעושין רצונו של מקום אין כל אומה ולשון יכולה לשלוט בהם ובזמן שאין עושין וכו' ע"ש וקשה... מה אשרו וטובו ומה זה שאמר אשכירם ישראל, דמוכח דקאי על כל דבריו ואפי' אבבא דאין עושין וכו'. ואולם הכונה בזה ג"כ לפי דרכנו דהגרעון פועל ביותר לפי גודל המעלה וע"כ ישראל שיש להם מעלה יותר לכן גרעון ופחיתות העביר' על רצונו ית'... פועל בהם ביותר לרוע עד שגורם להם ההכנעה ביד בהמתן כו' מה שאין עונש כזה לשום אומה בעברה על רצונו ית' וזה בעבור שאין מעלה עצומה כאשר לאומה הישראלית וע"כ ג"כ אין הגרעון והפחיתות פועל בהם כל כך כמו באומה הישראלית. וע"כ שפיר קאמר אשריכם ישראל וכו' דמה שמוסרן ביד בהמתן כו' כשאין עושים כו' הרי זה גם כן מורה על מעלתם העצומה אשר עבורה הפחיתות ההפיכית ג"כ פועל בהם ביותר".
הגמ' שם דוחה ק"ו זה ואומרת שיש לומר איפכא: "כהנת דקדיש גופה פסול לה לוי' וישראלית דלא קדיש גופה לא פסיל לה". והיינו שהגמ' אומרת שדווקא מי שגופה קדוש (בת כהן) אזי בעילה לפסול לה פוגם את קדושתה, משא"כ מי שאוכלת תרומה משום קדושה קלה (מכח בנה כנ"ל) אין היא נפגמת משום בעילת פסול, ומותרת לאכול בתרומה.
א"כ עולה מדברי הגמ' שמי שקדושתה חמורה – קל לה לאבד מעלה זו ביתר קלות ממי שקדושתה נמוכה יותר.
מקור ב' - המשנה במסכת טהרות מדרגת את רמות הטומאה השונות, כך שככל דרגת הקדושה של הדבר מקבל הטומאה גבוהה יותר – כך הוא מוכשר יותר לקבל טומאה. והיינו, בחולין דרגת הטומאה הקלה ביותר היא "שני לטומאה" (והיינו שחולין מקבלים טומאה רק מ"ראשון לטומאה" שהופך את החולין ל"שני לטומאה"). בתרומה יש "שלישי לטומאה" אך לא "רביעי לטומאה". בקדשים יש "שלישי לטומאה" ואף "רביעי לטומאה".
אם כן גם כאן בא לידי ביטוי העיקרון – שככל שדבר הוא יותר בעל מעלה – כך הוא מוכשר יותר לחסרון.
מקור ג' – לגבי דברים הגורמים טומאה, ג"כ מצאנו כעין הדרגה כזו. שטומאת ישראל חמורה מטומאת עכו"ם, וטומאת עכו"ם חמורה מטומאת בהמה – וכן הלאה.
רבי שלום נתן רענן זצ"ל (חתנו של הראי"ה קוק זצ"ל) הביא את הדברים בצורה ערוכה ומסודרת בדברים שנשא בפני תלמידיו בשבת פרשת חוקת, וז"ל:
המיתה – העדר השלימות. וטומאתה – ביטוי ההעדר.
וככל שהעדר גדול – ביטויה גדול.
לא הרי טומאת מת ישראל שמטמא אף באהל.
כהרי טומאת עכו"ם שאינו מטמא באהל.
ולא הרי טומאת מת שמטמא טומאת שבעה.
כהרי טומאת נבילות שאינו מטמא אלא טומאת ערב.
ולא הרי טומאת נבילת בהמה, שמטמאה במגע ובמשא.
כהרי טומאת נבלת עוף טהור, שאינה מטמאה במגע ובמשא.
ולא הרי טומאת עוף טהור, שמטמא בבית הבליעה.
כהרי דגים וחגבים שאינם מטמאים כלל.
זה הכלל: כל שערך חייו מעולה ומשובח – גילוי העדרו גדול יותר.
כל שערך חייו נכבד – ביטוי העדרו קשה יותר.
המיתה – העדר השלימות. וטומאתה – ביטוי ההעדר.
וככל שהעדר גדול – ביטויה גדול.
לא הרי טומאת מת ישראל שמטמא אף באהל.
כהרי טומאת עכו"ם שאינו מטמא באהל.
ולא הרי טומאת מת שמטמא טומאת שבעה.
כהרי טומאת נבילות שאינו מטמא אלא טומאת ערב.
ולא הרי טומאת נבילת בהמה, שמטמאה במגע ובמשא.
כהרי טומאת נבלת עוף טהור, שאינה מטמאה במגע ובמשא.
ולא הרי טומאת עוף טהור, שמטמא בבית הבליעה.
כהרי דגים וחגבים שאינם מטמאים כלל.
זה הכלל: כל שערך חייו מעולה ומשובח – גילוי העדרו גדול יותר.
כל שערך חייו נכבד – ביטוי העדרו קשה יותר.
מקור ד' - הגמ' בפסחים אומרת שעמי הארץ שונאים תלמידי חכמים יותר מעכו"ם, ואילו מי ששנה ולמד תורה – ופרש ממנה שונאם יותר מכולם. והיינו שמי שלמד תורה ופרש ממנה, איבוד מעלתו הביאה אותו לגרעון יותר שפל מהגרעון שהגיע מי שכלל לא היה שייך למעלת התורה.
Henry Kissinger is one of the most influential Jews in American history—and one of the most controversial. In the 1970s, if Woody Allen was all about using Jewish smarts to manage the world’s insults and sorrows, Henry Kissinger was all about using Jewish smarts to manage the world.
This brilliant refugee from Nazi Germany with the gravelly voice, Teutonic accent, and thick Poindexter glasses, embodied the pinnacle of a certain type of Jewish aspiration and achievement in 20th-century America, becoming a Harvard professor in 1954, Richard Nixon’s foreign-policy mastermind in 1969, and the first Jewish secretary of state in 1973. For the past four decades, he has remained the dean of America’s foreign-policy establishment, advising presidents and foreign governments alike. “Everywhere I go,” said Hillary Clinton, “people talk to me about Henry.” Yet at the same time he remains a profoundly polarizing figure. In the last few years alone bloggers have called him a kapo who should have been gassed, and the late Christopher Hitchens pronounced him a “vile creature.” [My note: It takes one to know one. E.E.]
Jews have similarly ambivalent feelings about the man. The Richard Nixon tapes released in 2010, in which one can hear Kissinger advising the president that “if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern,” triggered a new round of denunciations. Indeed, just as Kissinger has long struggled with his Jewish identity, Jews have long struggled with him.
The particularly Jewish indictment of Henry Kissinger features four major aspects: attacking Kissinger as a non-Jewish Jew who was actively ashamed of being Jewish; for his Machiavellian manipulations during the 1973 Yom Kippur War that critics believed spilled more Israeli blood than necessary; for his insensitivity to the plight of Soviet Jewry; and for undermining U.N. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s heroic fight against the General Assembly’s infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution out of a cowardly fear of being “too Jewish.” That each of these charges is backed up by vivid, epigrammatic, self-incriminating statements from Kissinger’s own mouth is not surprising, considering Kissinger’s rhetorical rowdiness in his heyday. Yet each situation was actually more complex than Kissinger’s devastating one-liners suggest and must be understood in the context of Kissinger’s own tragic, traumatic, and yet surprisingly characteristic nine-decade Jewish journey from Fürth to Fifth Avenue.
***
In the 1970s, many traditional Jews considered Henry Kissinger the ultimate contemptible German-American hofjude, the court Jew who succeeded in the world by betraying his people—and himself. In this popular Jewish narrative, Kissinger seemed to imagine that the price of his journey from persecuted Bavarian Jewish teenager who fled the Nazis in 1938, to Washington Heights immigrant yid, to Harvard whiz kid, and then to the White House was to deny his Jewish identity. Critics grumbled about the three S’s: that he married a shiksa on Shabbes and served shrimp—a pained judgment on his second wedding to the tall, blonde, well-bred WASP Nancy Maginnes. Kissinger fueled perceptions of self-hatred by rudely ignoring old friends who called him “Heinz” or tried to “bagel” him—today’s shorthand for the Jewish tendency when out in public to connect, subtly or otherwise, with a fellow member of the tribe. But, as befits an intellectual swashbuckler who coined memorable phrases such as “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” Kissinger distanced himself from his Jewish roots with damning wisecracks. “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti-Semitic,” he once quipped, and “any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.” Another time, he told a friend, “I was born Jewish, but the truth is that has no significance for me. … America has given me everything.”
In fact, in a sense, Kissinger was right: He needed to negate his identity to climb as high as he did in the Nixon Administration. White House tapes capture Nixon’s contempt for Jews generally—and for his “Jew boy” foreign-policy maven particularly. Especially when Kissinger was national security adviser, Nixon tried banning all Jews from Middle Eastern matters, doubting their objectivity. At one point, after Kissinger analyzed an Israel-related issue, the president crudely asked: “Now, can we get an American point of view?” John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s closest aides, would recall that “For Kissinger, being Jewish was a vulnerability as he saw it, and he was not fond of being vulnerable. But Nixon liked him to feel that way.”
Yet despite Nixon’s contempt, he also needed Kissinger. Kissinger was the superstar diplomat who helped establish détente with the Soviet Union and Communist China, ending decades of isolation. Kissinger—perhaps the most influential, famous, and talented secretary of state since Thomas Jefferson—was, in foreign-policy circles, both pop star and powerhouse. And later, as the administration imploded in scandal, Kissinger became even more important, reassuring worried Americans and foreigners that all remained normal and functional—even when it was decidedly not.
This rivalry between Nixon and Kissinger—and its toxic turn, thanks to Watergate—provides the essential context to the Yom Kippur War. After Egypt and Syria surprised Israel on its holiest day, Kissinger can be heard saying on the tape that the “best result would be if Israel came out a little ahead but got bloodied in the process.” He believed an Egyptian-Israeli “standoff” could produce a “viable peace agreement.” These comments, as well as Kissinger’s two-and-a-half-hour delay before telling a vacationing Nixon in Key Biscayne, Fla., about the “war dangers,” impute to Kissinger an omnipotence he never had. Israel was so “bloodied” it almost collapsed, suffering 2,656 dead. Kissinger eventually jump-started the Middle East peace process with his “Super-K” peace shuttling that enhanced his legend and established the groundwork for 1979’s Israel-Egypt peace treaty.
All this evidence can be marshaled in a way that blames Kissinger for delaying Israel’s life-or-death military resupply to advance his Machiavellian vision. But that harsh interpretation overlooks the war’s chaos, Nixon’s Watergate distractions, Washington’s bureaucratic torpor, and America’s historic, generous resupply effort—all of which took place within one week. The official who truly resisted the resupply was a different neurotic Marrano with a Germanic-sounding last name—James R. Schlesinger, Nixon’s secretary of defense and Kissinger’s main rival within the administration. Schlesinger, who was born into a middle-class Jewish family of Lithuanian origins and converted to Lutheranism, initially doubted that Israel needed help, so confident was he—like most—that Israel would win easily. Kissinger and Schlesinger clashed over the timing, the volume of weaponry, and America’s direct involvement in the 1973 war. As historian Robert Dallek concludes in Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, Kissinger “persuaded Nixon to ignore Schlesinger’s advice and allow him to begin a large-scale resupply of Israel that would allow it to achieve a balanced outcome to the fighting.”
Kissinger’s role in the Soviet Jewry and Zionism-racism struggles is equally morally problematic, while also historically more complex. Having written his Harvard doctoral dissertation on the 19th-century Austrian Prince Metternich and the balance of power, Kissinger sought to teach realist doctrines to the American foreign-policy elite. This practitioner of realpolitik believed that countries have no friends, only interests, and that America should resist sentimental crusades. He viewed emigration as an internal Soviet issue and less pressing than the threat of nuclear destruction—even as he was proud that “quiet diplomacy” had boosted Soviet Jewish emigration levels from 700 in 1969 to almost 40,000 emigrants in 1972.
Kissinger made his offensive remarks while opposing the Henry Jackson-Charles Vanik amendment, which linked America’s granting “most favored nation” trade status to a country’s emigration policy. Kissinger abhorred such intrusive legislative grandstanding, leading to this tone-deaf exchange with Nixon: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” Nixon replied: “I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
Other zingers—which I recently publicized in my book on Daniel Patrick Moynihan—include Kissinger mocking Moynihan’s passionate defense of Zionism by saying, “We are conducting foreign policy. … This is not a synagogue,” joking about whether the Irish-Catholic Moynihan wished to convert to Judaism, and dismissing Israel’s leaders during heated negotiations as “the world’s worst ----.”
***
As a conflicted Jew, a proud American, and a driven careerist perfectionist, Kissinger felt contradictory tugs when issues involving Israel crossed his desk. He had built his career as the German intellectual, not the striving Jew. His status as a Nazi refugee and a U.S. Army sergeant who helped de-Nazify Germany during World War II made his Germanic manner proof of brilliance, not a mark of Cain. The outsider even as an insider, he endured the president’s anti-Semitic rants—and then endured the same contemptuous cries of “Jew-boy” from harsh critics in Israel.
As both courtier and careerist, as both traumatized Holocaust survivor and crafty Run-Sammy-Run, Portnoy-like, all-American striver, Kissinger absorbed the anti-Semitism around him and encouraged it, seemingly to prove his independence from his “co-religionists.” In late 1974, while briefing the president aboard Air Force One, speaking of American Jews, Kissinger said: “Their power in the United States derives from campaign financing. It is not easy to explain to the American people why we must oppose 115 million Arabs who possess all the world’s oil, permanently, on behalf of a nation of 3 million.” Kissinger’s words unconsciously, pathetically, echoed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George S. Brown, who explained “Jewish influence in this country” and American support for Israel by looking “where the Jewish money is.”
But it was Israel’s own behavior that most frequently frustrated Kissinger. At one point, he condemned Israel’s leaders as “a sick bunch” for their backstage maneuvering against him with reporters and members of Congress; and as an ambitious American leader trying to save the world, he resented this small country’s disdain for his country’s big-picture needs. In one of many Oval Office tantrums President Gerald Ford’s stenographers recorded, the secretary of state denounced the Israelis as “fools, “common thugs,” and “the basic cause of the trouble.” “This is terribly painful to me,” the ever-melodramatic Kissinger confessed. “I am Jewish. How can I want this? I have never seen such cold-blooded playing with the American national interest.” When accused of bullying Israel, Kissinger was not above playing the Shoah card, asking: “How can I, as a Jew who lost 13 relatives in the Holocaust, do anything that would betray Israel?”
In his legendary post-government career as consultant, author, and elder statesman, Kissinger has been much less insecure personally and much more focused on guaranteeing Israel’s security. In what might be seen by some as his own form of penitence, Kissinger has over the past three and a half decades used his unique perch to champion the American-Israel relationship as good for America—not just for Israel. Shortly after leaving office in November, 1977, Kissinger declared: “The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.” Thirty-five years later, upon getting one of Israel’s highest civilian honors from his friend Shimon Peres, Kissinger spoke about Israel being “in many respects an island of stability and of domestic cohesion at a moment of upheaval everywhere else, although you couldn’t necessarily prove that from debates going on sometimes in the Knesset.”
While reflecting most Jews’ still surprisingly insecure odyssey in America, Henry Kissinger nevertheless embodies the American dream. You did not have to flee Nazi Germany as a young man to perceive pressures to fit in, to act “normal,” to abandon your unique religious and ethnic heritage in order to enjoy America’s bounty—or to delight in how far you have traveled socially, economically, culturally. “Can you believe she is a member of the Colony Club and wants to marry me?” Walter Isaacson quotes Henry Kissinger as saying in his 893-page biography, about his second wife, Nancy.
In fact, American Jewish history is filled with more Gatsbyesque Henry Kissingers than Wiesel-like Joseph Liebermans, Jews who remained religiously pious and flamboyantly Jewish while rising politically. American Jewish life is also filled with many older men and women who, having succeeded—and aged—recalibrated their internal identities and remade their external images to incorporate more Jewish elements into their lives. At his worst, of course, Kissinger was far too European, brutally sacrificing his dignity and his country’s conscience in implementing amoral policies. But at his best, he used realpolitik to advance American ideals that made the world, including America and Israel, a better, safer place—while the utopianism that underlies those ideals has been the key to much American Jewish success. This underlying American optimism helps explain Kissinger’s enduring greatness and influence, providing a deep sense of vision, mission, and security, even amid all our—and his—blind spots, shortcomings, and insecurities.
