London vs. Israel
Which is safer?
Many years ago I gave a series of talks at a shul in Ramat Beit Shemesh. The day that it was due to begin, posters appeared around the neighborhood warning against anyone attending and hearing my “heresy”:
For a moment this week, I had a sense of deja vu. I just arrived in England, and while this Shabbos I’m speaking at Alei Tziyon in Hendon, on Monday I’m speaking at a different shul in a different neighborhood. I sent them my standard flyer for my current top topic, with space for them to fill in the details of the shul name and address. They did it as follows:
But it turns out that this has nothing to do with any problems with me in particular (or at least, that’s what they told me). Rather, England is a place where five firebombs attacks were directed against Jewish institutions in the past week, and this shul is very nervous about advertising events.
At this point you might be expecting me to talk about how everyone should move to Israel because it’s safer to be Jewish in Israel. But I won’t, because it’s not.
Things in England (and other countries) are bad, and will probably get worse. But there will not be mass slaughter of Jews. It’s just not going to happen. Yes, there could be terrorist attacks, but those can happen in Israel too. And Israel also has much greater threats, in terms of ballistic missiles that might one day carry nuclear warheads. Plus, if you’re a loyal citizen and sending your children to the army, there are certainly much greater dangers in Israel.
However, there are three counterarguments to be made.
First is that we’re not talking about statistically high levels of danger. I mean, you’re statistically much more likely to die of heart disease if you move to the US, but I don’t think that anyone has ever not moved to the US for that reason. If people wanted to absolutely minimize their chances of being killed, then they would move to Alaska or New Zealand.
The second is that for many people, being safe is about feeling safe rather than objectively being safe. Planes are safer than cars, but many people feel safer in cars. And Israel is a place where, for many if not all, it feels safer. You can proudly, openly express your Judaism in much of the country, albeit not in certain Arab and Charedi neighborhoods.
The third point to be made is that life is about more than maximizing lifespan and minimizing risk. Life has to have meaning. Now, that may be different things for different people. But certainly, many people find much more meaning in living in Israel. (For more on this, see my posts Why Israel and Who Has Another Land?).
Just to be clear, I’m not saying where anyone should live. I think it’s good to have dispersed satellite Jewish communities. I’m just explaining that the “safety” topic is more complicated than it may initially appear.
Looking forward to seeing my London friends! (And if anyone is available to drive me on a museum mission tomorrow or Monday, please be in touch!)
Same precautions about not giving out location publicly in Toronto, after my former shul sponsored and advertised an event to learn about buying a home in Israel. There was a huge anti-Israel demonstration outside.
Physical safety is not just about the odds of getting killed. Its also about not being harmed, being verbally abused or being afraid to walk in the street. While London and other diaspora Jews are not currently afraid of being murdered for being Jewish, they are afraid of other consequences for being visibly Jewish which do not exist in Israel and which they never had to worry about until recently.
The big difference is the ability to defend oneself. Between 1882-1914 almost 2 million left Jews because of the pogroms there. The percentage of Jews who were actually affected by the pogroms was far below 1% but the feeling of helplessness in the face of govt sanctioned persecution led to so many people leaving because they knew they had no way to defend themselves if the next pogrom came for them. In Israel, however high the casualties, we know that we can and do fight back and that gives us a greater ability to face the future that we will never have elsewhere.