Q:
I was approached on the street by a gentile, a neighbor, and he said that the reason why the gentiles dislike Jews is because we keep our laws and we remain separate—we wear different clothing and things like that. What should I answer him?
A:
Answer him, “Do you hate the Amish?”
Have you ever seen the Amish? They look like Satmerers. They have big beards, black hats. Their women wear their hair tied up with kerchiefs. Who hates the Amish? Nobody.
And so the answer is it’s not true. It’s only an excuse. The hatred against Jews comes from an entirely different cause; not because they’re different. Actually it’s the opposite. When the Jews are different, Hakadosh Baruch Hu sees to it that the hatred is minimum. Of course there’s always going to be, to some extent, animosity against the Jews because if not, the Jew might mingle with his environment and get lost. It’s always going to be there until Moshiach comes, but if we look and act differently it’s kept to a minimum. Because it doesn’t always require such a big wall—it can be kept on a low flame.
The hatred increases in proportion to the way the Jew begins to resemble the Gentile. That’s why in Germany—I’m talking about before the Holocaust—it became virulent. In Germany, the Jews did the best job to resemble Gentiles. The German Jew spoke perfect German. He acted like a German gentleman. He mixed with them and their culture. And once in a while, he even intermarried with the Germans. And that’s where the real hatred originated. Because the more the Jew comes close to the gentile, the more Hakadosh Baruch Hu has to erect a fence of hatred to keep him away.
And so these are only excuses—that we dress differently, that’s why they hate us, that’s only an excuse.
Of course, when the Nazis portrayed in their newspapers, they showed Jews with beards holding a Talmud, but that wasn’t the reason they were hated. If all the Jews in Germany had beards and held a Talmud, there wouldn’t have been any Hitler. That I can guarantee you.
(September 1979)
