Since October 7, 2023, Jewish communities across the globe have been confronted with a surge of antisemitic violence unprecedented in recent decades. Jews have faced widespread harassment, vandalism, and threats directed at individuals, communal institutions, and places of worship. This alarming trend has culminated in horrific acts of murder: the killing of two staff members at the Israeli embassy in Washington, worshippers attacked outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, and, most recently, the murder of fifteen Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney.
In the face of this renewed hatred, Jews everywhere are asking a painful and urgent question: What can we do to stop it?
Some advocate for increased security at Jewish institutions and public gatherings. Others stress the importance of political advocacy, engagement with law enforcement, or the cultivation of alliances with other minority and faith communities. Still others—among them rabbis and communal leaders—argue that the most effective response is for Jews to express their Jewish identity even more visibly and proudly.
Each of these responses deserves serious consideration. Yet I would like to suggest that the Torah itself offers another perspective—one we encounter in the story of Joseph, read at this very time of the year.
After Joseph is cast into a pit by his brothers, he is sold into slavery and brought to Egypt, where he enters the household of Potiphar, a high-ranking official in Pharaoh’s court. Joseph quickly distinguishes himself. Seeing that Joseph’s presence brings blessing and success, Potiphar entrusts him with authority over his entire household.
Joseph’s meteoric rise, however, is abruptly derailed. Falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, he is cast into prison, where he languishes for two years. Yet even this setback proves temporary. When Joseph successfully interprets Pharaoh’s troubling dreams, he is elevated to the highest position in the land, second only to Pharaoh himself. By any measure, Joseph had fully “made it” in Egypt.
What is remarkable, however, is that Joseph never severs himself from his people. When his brothers arrive in Egypt seeking food, Joseph ultimately reveals his identity and interprets his life story through a theological lens: his rise to power, he insists, was part of God’s plan to preserve the family during famine. He then summons Jacob and the entire clan to Egypt, settles them in Goshen—the choicest region of the land—and ensures their protection and prosperity.
At first glance, Joseph appears to embody an ideal model for Jewish life in the diaspora: full integration into a powerful non-Jewish society, extraordinary success within it, and unwavering loyalty to Jewish identity and family.
But the Torah insists that this is not the end of the story.
At the opening of the book of Exodus, we are told that a “new king” arose over Egypt—one who did not know Joseph—and who soon subjected the Israelites to oppression, forced labor, and ultimately genocidal violence. Whether this “new king” refers to a new Pharaoh or to the same ruler who adopted a radically different outlook, the message is clear. Jewish fortunes can change overnight. Sometimes they change with new leadership; at other times, they shift when familiar leaders embrace new ideologies, fears, or cultural trends.
Through the Joseph narrative, the Torah thus presents both the promise and the peril of Jewish existence as a minority within a dominant culture. Significantly, however, when Jewish life in Egypt takes a catastrophic turn, God does not instruct the Israelites to pursue better security, diplomatic engagement, coalition-building, or even more visible expressions of Jewish pride as a long-term strategy for survival in exile.
Instead, God chooses a radically different solution: He takes the people out of Egypt entirely, brings them to Mount Sinai, gives them the Torah as “the constitution of a self-governing nation” (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Future Tense, p. 136), and leads them to the Promised Land, where they are to live in accordance with that constitution.
Even more tellingly, once the people settle the Land, the Torah does not articulate a vision for Jewish life elsewhere. Life outside the Land is consistently portrayed as galut—exile—a condition of displacement and impermanence, endured only when the people fail to live in accordance with God’s will in their own Land.
This helps explain why the exile of the Ten Tribes in 722 BCE resulted in their assimilation and disappearance, and why even the people of Judah, who, against all odds, survived the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE, never regarded life in exile as normal or desirable.
To be sure, not all Jews today accept the biblical conception of diaspora as exile. Some view Jewish life outside the Land as legitimate or even flourishing; others believe redemption will come through divine intervention alone, as it did in Egypt. Yet many Jews today believe that we must assume responsibility for our own destiny rather than wait passively for miracles.
If that is so, then regardless of whether the nations among whom Jews live hate us, tolerate us, or even embrace us, the diaspora cannot be our permanent home. Instead, our task must be to prepare for the day when we build our individual and collective future in the one and only Jewish homeland: the Land of Israel.
Shabbat Shalom.
