By Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, JNS
Our enemies, ancient and contemporary, parade us around not out of kindness or magnanimity but to humiliate and destroy our people’s morale.
This past week, shocking images emerged from Gaza. Gaunt and emaciated Jewish prisoners flanked by balaclava-clad Hamas stormtroopers speaking in front of crowds of jeering onlookers. These scenes not only echoed the horrifying scenes of Oct. 7, 2023l they also touched the Jewish unconscious, evoking the trauma of German Nazi concentration camps, Spanish torture chambers and Roman execution rituals buried deep in our people’s collective memory.
Jews around the world are experiencing indescribable anguish as we see our worst nightmare unfolding before our very eyes. Never again is happening right now, and many are left wondering: Are we in the year 2025, 1944 or 1492?
One of those three captives was Eliyahu (“Eli”) Sharabi, a brave and humble father who endured 491 days shackled in the terror tunnels, immobile and in complete darkness. As he was being released, Hamas prepared a decorated stage with gift bags and hostage certificates, even giving them handshakes and hugs to boot. What kept Sharabi going was knowing that in short order, he would be reunited with his wife and two daughters in Israel.
In reality, his captors had neglected to inform him that all three had been murdered in the terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The uninformed masses of our planet were led to believe that this horse and pony show was a show of Hamas’s humanity. For right-headed people, however, this was nothing but a cruel joke.
While the brains behind Hamas’s PR stunt may have thought they were being clever, what they for sure weren’t was original. Sadly, this isn’t the first time that Gazans have paraded enfeebled Jews before exuberant spectators. In our sacred texts, we read of Samson—the Israelite warrior-judge possessing superhuman strength, who defended the tribes militarily while keeping the peace at home, adjudicating over intra-tribal civil and legal disputes.
As chronicled in the book of Judges, Samson was taken as a hostage to Gaza, where his eyes were gouged out and he was thrown in prison and forced into hard labor. The verse describes the scene as Samson is released from prison:
Philistine rulers came together to celebrate. ... The people were having a good time at the celebration. So they said, “Bring Samson out. We want to make fun of him.” So they brought Samson from the prison and made fun of him.
This passage eerily foreshadows Hamas’s recent spectacle and also explains its intended effect. Our enemies, both ancient and contemporary, parade us around not out of kindness or magnanimity, but in order to humiliate and destroy our people’s morale. This is as much a psychological war as an armed conflict, and our adversaries are masters of using propaganda to fight on that front.
This tactic has been used throughout history. Recently on a trip to Italy, I had the opportunity to visit the Colosseum, where countless slaves were forced to fight vicious animals before throngs of cheering onlookers. In tractate Avodah Zarah, the rabbis of the Talmud debate whether Jews were allowed to attend the gladiator spectacle. The majority decreed that Jews are forbidden from even entering the stadium because Jewish law is strictly opposed to senseless violence as “one who sits in a stadium is a shedder of blood.”
However, the minority opinion of Rabbi Nathan permits visiting the stadium. He holds that the presence and ardent dissent of just one moral objector is enough to save those wrongfully condemned. The scene is well-known: After the battle, the defeated slave is in the center of the arena, knocked down but still alive. His fate lies in the hands of the emperor, who before making his decision turns to the crowd of cheering, intoxicated spectators for their opinion. Oftentimes, when the time came to decide the gladiator’s fate, the collective audience’s thumbs pointed down, condemning the petitioner to death.
In Rabbi Nathan’s view, the hand of a lone and righteous Jew emerging from the crowd—his upward-pointing thumb voting to spare the condemned—is enough to save the wounded gladiator’s life. That is reason enough to permit him to enter the stadium. When the majority votes one way, the lone voice of truth may turn the tides toward justice.
Today, amid a sea of global condemnation, Israel is like the ancient gladiator battling for its life. The nations of the world denounce and chastise the Jewish state at every turn, challenging even its right to defend itself. Amid the flood of Jew-hatred online and on the streets, it is on us to be the lone voice of dissent and justice, no matter the wave of contravening opinions.
Back in the late 1980s, when Benjamin Netanyahu was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, the Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—offered words that would define his role as a leader in the land of Israel: “You will go into a house of lies, but remember that in a hall of perfect darkness, if you light one small candle, its precious light will be seen from afar, by everyone. Your mission is to light a candle for truth and for the Jewish people.”
Whenever our adversaries attempt to break our spirits as the Philistines tried with Samson, the Romans with captured Jewish slaves, the Nazis in World War II, and Hamas and Hezbollah today, we must be that singular voice of truth cutting through the darkness. Whether it’s 1492, 1944 or 2025, our response to those who seek to destroy us remains the same: We will not bow, we will not apologize, and we will not be silent. On the contrary, we will stand taller, and be prouder and louder as Jews.
Our actions, no matter how small they may seem, have the power to make a significant impact. In the realm of advocacy, each social-media post or comment is one more light in the sea of life. Each letter and phone call to our representative is another. Yet in the world of spirit, our tools are equally as robust. We can light Shabbat candles in memory of our slain brothers and sisters; give tzedakah in the merit of the hostages’ safe release; wrap tefillin with true kavanah and intention; and perform countless other mitzvot whose positive, spiritual light expels the forces of evil and darkness.
It is on each and every one of us to be that solitary flame of dissent, that lone voice of truth, that upward-pointing thumb among the throngs of naysayers that illuminates the path toward goodness, kindness, justice and truth. In the global stadium of hatred, we are the spark that keeps our people burning bright.
