Another Perspective about the Jewish People

When we say that the number of Jews in the world is such-and-such, it’s just a number; but it’s a number that we don’t feel, there is no sense of reality to that number.  Or the number of humans on planet Earth either.  So, let’s change what we count: let’s convert one human being to one second of time and see if that doesn’t land more feelingly.

The population of Jewish people who live in the land of Israel is roughly 7.5 million, so 7.5 million seconds, or 125,000 minutes, or 2083 hours, or 87 (rounded) days, or just under three months of Jews living in the land of Israel.

The population of Jewish people in the world is roughly 16 million, so 16 million seconds, or 266,667 minutes, or 4,444 hours, or 185 (rounded) days, or just over six months of Jews in the world.

The population of Muslims who live in the Middle East is 414 million, so 414 million seconds, or 6.9 million minutes, or 115,000 hours, or 4792 days, or 13.12 years of Muslims living in the Middle East.

The population of Muslims in the world is 2.07 billion, so 2.07 billion seconds, or 34.5 million minutes, or 575,000 hours, or 23,958 days, or 65.6 years of Muslims in the world.

The population of human beings in the world is 8.3 billion, or 8.3 billion seconds, or 138.333 million minutes, or 2,306 million hours, or 96,065 days, or 263 years of human beings in the world.

 

Let that sink in for a moment: six months of Jews vs. 65 years (an average lifetime) of Muslims or 263 years of fellow human beings (back to 1764 CE or forward to 2290 CE).  Yet millions of residents of planet Earth are convinced that these few Jews seek world domination.  Does that make a shred of sense?  Jews may excel, for their numbers, in Nobel Prizes, but most Jews have never met a Nobel Prize winner, much less have one in their extended family.  Most Jews are no more or less successful than their fellow Christians.  The same cannot be said about Muslims, especially those who live in the Middle East, many of whom gave up on science, education, and individual excellence more than half a millennium ago.

Many wise and thoughtful human beings believe that the root cause of antisemitism is envy of Jewish success.  But antisemitism, or Jew hatred, far predates any noteworthy Jewish success.  For example, Jews have been vilified as the killers of Christ for millennia.  During the Crusades, Christians killed Jews on the way to Jerusalem because, well, they were Jews.  It is my untested and unverifiable belief that antisemitism is based on two factors: one, for thousands of years, Jews have refused to bend the knee, even to their conquerors; they have persistently refused to assimilate completely into someone else’s culture.  Indeed, those cultures that most tolerated Jewish differences, and where Jews came closest to complete assimilation (Islam, long ago; Germany, not so long ago; the United States, today), ended up as the most rabid Jew haters of all.  Second, the God of the Christians and of the Muslims (Allah) is the God of the Jews, the people who first declared that there is but one true God; if you’re a Christian or a Muslim, the notion that you are worshipping the God of the Jews may be pretty hard to swallow.

Am Yisrael Chai!