Very interesting question if I may say so. Of course
this is only my humble opinion, and I believe I have efficiently typed up every follow up question you could ask with an answer as well within my post. Many Jews would disagree with my answer, and that is okay, but this is mine. The universal hatred against our people is actually one of the greatest miracles of history. It is indeed not explainable. You are right that men formerly thought that the differences between Israel and the gentile nations were caused by the Torah as opposed to religion. But this was entirely disproved with the case of the German Jews. To provide you with a background, no Jewish community, ever in history at this point in time had rebelled against the Torah as much as Germany’s Jewish community. Formerly, all Jews were conspicuous in garb, beards, language, and customs which should have more readily have excited the animosity of the gentile nations.
When the German Jews forsook the Torah, intermarried with gentiles or had been converted to Christianity, this should have gave their neighbors less cause for animosity, however, instead arose the mightiest wave of hatred in history, at a time when religious bigotry was at its lowest. There can be no doubt that the background of this hatred was the religious bias of the Germans’ ancestors. But that this should come to such a catastrophic climax in a time of extreme religious laxity and against Jews who were entirely assimilated proves the miraculous nature of this hatred.
The function of this hatred is to preserve the Chosen community from being swallowed up by the nations, or from imitating them. The more Jews resemble the gentiles or come close to them, the greater degree of hatred is necessary to prevent assimilation or imitation. This has happened in Spain, Russia, Poland and elsewhere. Germany is the most conspicuous example. Ezra said:
“We are slaves, but in our slavery, our G-d has not forsaken us.” (Ezra 9:9)
What is interesting is the condition of gentiles compared to Jews in their own lands,
when it came to success in a variety of aspects. But I will not go off topic.
Since you are interested in this subject, I will provide you with another example. It is well known that throughout the Middle Ages, a Jew could have escaped persecution by renouncing his faith. In almost all persecutions, expulsions and massacres this alternative was almost always offered to us. Rarely was it accepted. Any one of our masses could have attained liberty by saying only one word. Yet even among the worst of us, this rarely if ever happened. At the expulsion of Spain, the offer was made that anyone who accepted conversion could remain. Only a small group remained, and they even continued to be Jews in secret. Now, note this remarkable fact: Of the six million Jews killed by Hitler’s demons, not a single one was given the offer to save his life by renouncing his religion. Now what is the significance in that?
During the previous centuries when the Jews were ready to die for the Torah, they were given this ordeal because G-d knew they could withstand it. In Hitler’s time, when all to many Jews were forsaking the Torah by their own violation, such a test would have resulted in mass conversion. Nowhere were Jews so eager to be lost among the gentiles, as in Germany. Yet nowhere in the world was such a efficient machinery to identify assimilated Jews, and to separate them, as in Germany. A vast index system was set up for all Jews and “part-Jews”. Jews had all taken gentile names so a decree went out that all male Jews must add the name “Israel” and ever female Jew must add the name “Sarah”. The Jews had merged identities with the gentiles, so each Jew was forced to where a Star of David on this clothes. All this was pure madness for the Nazi’s because they gained nothing from it! The only thing the Nazi’s achieved by this was to lose valuable elements of the populace, like professionals and business men. Had they not been molested they would have been like every other German, and supported their own nation! But this madness was for a very great purpose, as we now perceive in light of G-d’s plan.
For men whose final goal is the afterlife,
assimilation is worse than death. These phenomenons’s are but a few of the countless machinery that which the Master of history has ceaselessly carried out to preserve the Chosen community. When Hitler was burning European Jews, a prominent newspaper here expressed some pity for these “miserable wretches”. This mentality of these gentiles to admire the men of violence and those who “fight” and despise the weak, is a disgusting one.
Since the Jews fell into the trap of trying to emulate the Germans so much, G-d allowed the Germans to do their utmost to show who they truly are. Those Jews that began to ignore their soul, and in imitation, like all those around them began to only focus on the needs of the body, were made to see how their efforts were ended in the worst ruination of Jewish bodied in history (The Germans burned my people after gassing them). The Jews at this point were so infatuated by the schools of science and the German physicians and ignored their religion, and the covenant, therefore, look at the disgusting nature of the physicians which were revealed (They performed disgusting experiments on my people).
In an era, when such discriminatory laws and ghettos were unknown, this sudden phenomenon to medieval times was truly startling! Now this theory may seem disgusting to you, and it is to me as well, but ponder on this. Judaism teaches that you should die than rather renounce the Torah. Therefore, a Jew who died in the Holocaust is tremendously better off in the long run as a Jew who died because of his religion, then a Jew who would assimilate and renounce the Torah in Germany. Of course, Hitler and his demons had free will as we all do; their true nature was just revealed to us. Therefore, every action they committed results in punishment for them. I am no way saying the Holocaust is not anything less than the worst of all genocide, I am just saying that evrything in the world has a purpose, which we may or may not ever understand.
The bottom line is that the more anti-Semitism, we as Jews receive the more our community is preserved and the more we as Jews are not so eager to intermarry and forsake the Torah to join secular culture. It is a known fact that the less anti-Semitism is exhibited in an area, the more assimilation occurs.
