Page 40 - HaMizrachi #15 2019 Chanuka USA

SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Rabbi Chaim Navon

BLACK and

WHITE?

n a third grade Chanukah play, this thinking. In his “Communist classes and sectors and genders, only
someone must be Antiochus. Eight Manifesto,” Marx argued that the exploitation and glass ceilings and
Ichildren will be candles and one history of every society is a history of oppression.
shamash, and some will be Mattityahu class wars. All aspects of our lives are
and his sons and a few other Macca- a manifestation of visible and hidden Sadly, sometimes power really does
bees, but without Antiochus – no play. power struggles. Religion, culture, creep into our relationships. The
That is why the Western world is hos- family – all are just manifestations of Torah taught us this with the curse
tile to Israel, and even international evil and oppressive control. of Eve: “Your urge shall be for your
athletes do not want to visit: the world husband, And he shall rule over you.” 1
has cast us in the role of Antiochus. Marx thought all power struggles We must be accurate though. It is not
revolve around money and property. that the family is a patriarchal system
The Western world has become After Marx’s failure, today’s neo- based on power relations, but that
accustomed to seeing the universe Marxists abandoned the economic power relations try to sneak into the
as a stage upon which there are only emphasis and began to talk about family, which precedes and is more
two sets of actors: strong and weak, power and oppression in broader important than them. Power is just
oppressors and oppressed. When contexts. Culture not only serves the one human weakness but it does not
trying to compress the Israeli-Arab economy but establishes elusive power control everything. Power and control
conflict into this mindset, it is clear relationships on completely different are not the foundations of the family,
how the roles will be divided. The levels. The difficulty in detecting these
Arabs lose wars, so they do not fit oppressive relationships just proves but one of the problems the family
the role of oppressor. This is how we how good the privileged oppressors faces.
became the oppressors, especially in are at their job. Social institutions – family, home,
the eyes of the intellectuals. But of community and people – should not
course that is not who we really are. This worldview captivates its be powerful organizations of lasting
supporters because it gives them oppression, but a fresh life force that
The story of our resurrection in an intoxicating feeling of exposing
this Land is not a story of power and collusion. Everyone else delineates bridges the common root with the
oppression. It is a story of love and that the family is based on love, young flowers. In our complex world,
hope, of great faith, and of sorrow that religion relies on faith, that the there is also corrupted power, but it
and pain. It is a story of the gamut of is not everything. Our world is not a
bright colors, not of black and white. community relies on friendship. haunted black and white wasteland
Only the sophisticated intellectuals but a colorful and flowering garden.
Nevertheless, the problem is that the understand that the family is an
black and white mindset, the division institution of patriarchal oppression,
of the world into oppressor and that religion is an opium for the 1 Bereishit 3:16.
oppressed, is part of a comprehensive masses, that the community is an
worldview that has taken over the arena for domination and exploitation.
Western world. It addresses not only There are no individuals in the world
Israel, and not only policy issues. who choose to do good or bad, but Rabbi Chaim Navon is a renowned author
It was Karl Marx who introduced only non-personal power struggles of and educator

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