Profiting From ADVERSITY

No-one wants to have hard times assigned to them as a matter of course. We all want our daily lives to be the essence of normality. Living with parents and siblings, dad, or/and, mom going on to perform the daily tasks they have chosen. The kids going to school and preparing themselves for careers they find appropriate to the talents and skills they discover they have. Don’t we look on that sort of pattern as what we want for all peoples around the world? We know that that reality is not one that we can take for granted.

Distress is not something we want to wish on people. We want to do whatever we can to avoid putting people into difficult situations that will cause them distress. Yet, it is a feature of human nature that when people find themselves placed in difficult situations, some sometimes come up with actions and behaviors in dealing with them that result in benefits not only for themselves, but for many other people around them. The stress that is created by such situations can stimulate a level of creativity that benefits not only the individual, but many people around them.

These situations are not the ones that most of us would want to see happen. But when they do happen, we can, looking back, discern that the phenomenon we are describing does in fact appear. Good things, in historical terms, in fact, sometimes arise out of evil events, even if most of those involved may suffer the ultimate in distress. Some grains of good can arise from bushels of bad.

I am convinced there are examples of these phenomena to be found in the stories of many peoples making up the panorama of human history. My better acquaintance with history of my own people enables me to draw forward a few examples to illustrate the truth of the thesis.

The Hebrews established a nation state on a small territory near the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. They were a vassal state to larger powers for most of their existence. The northern (larger) half was ultimately absorbed by one of these and its population was dispersed. We can only speculate if any remnants survived with an identity. Judea persisted into the Roman era, but it was itself erased as an independent entity and its population also dispersed. The monotheistic credo they espoused in that land, however, survived. One strain became Christianity. Another, the original, is what we call Judaism.

The nerve center of the latter remained initially in the Galilee of the original territory. The communities of Jews in the Diaspora took their direction from leaders there. Confronted with the elimination of the Temple priesthood primarily responsible for religious observance, the leaders dictated that the Jews henceforth would express their religion by daily observance and study of biblical writings. Jews were henceforth to engage in individual prayer and continuous study of biblical writings, and to educate their children to do the same from the earliest age. The burden of such observance in an agrarian society is thought to have turned the majority toward conversion to other beliefs, to Christianity in many cases. But for those that remained, Jewish communities became islands of literacy in an ocean of illiteracy.

Most do not appreciate how challenging intellectually some of those studies can be. Imperative community attitudes toward education remain to this day. An intellectual superiority relative to their neighbors, over the centuries, militated toward their survival. This decision by Jewish leaders created an environment where educational attainment was highly valued. Those with means competed to marry the brightest among the students to their daughters. These were the offspring who had to use their wits to survive in an external environment that was increasingly hostile as time went on. The majority of the people they had to deal with on a daily basis had little or no education and experienced little incentive toward mental stimulation in their lives.

How these elements played out we can trace to some extent. Jews were demonized in Christian societies when the Church shifted the direct responsibility for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews. By adopting the Gospel of St. Mathew, (written some hundred years after Jesus’s death,) into the New Testament, they placed his execution at the door of Jews instead of the Romans, as was the case, seeking to attract Romans and their followers to the new religion.

This led to persecution, expulsions and exclusion. Jews could not own land and were excluded from Guilds. They had to find occupations that others shunned. They became moneylenders, peddlers and small shopkeepers. They could find employment only with their own co-religionists. But when the climate changed, they were often well-placed to take advantage of new opportunities that their neighbors were slow to pursue, clinging as they did to the traditional occupations that had served them well.

When Napoleon changed access to citizenship from religious belief to residence, Jews in Europe flooded out of the closed communities they occupied. The intellectual capacities many had developed in their communities equipped them to participate successfully in the sciences and in medicine, law and business. Out of all proportion to their numbers they made their mark in a wide variety of activities.

As America opened its doors they emigrated there in the millions. With much less in the way of restrictions, Jews have sometimes dominated whole industries newly developing. Their leading role in banking, supermarkets, department stores, Broadway and Hollywood is a matter of public record. Their interest in entering universities for the study of medicine and law was so strong that there were early efforts to limit Jew’s entry into these professions. Contributions to the welfare of humanity, particularly in science and medicine, have been made by Jews out of all proportion to their numbers.

These instances of profiting from distress cannot in any way compensate for the inconsolable losses Jews have suffered over the centuries. These gains remain, however, as historical realities.