Parashat Ki Tavo - WARNING! - When Love Turns Deadly

Let me tell you what I’ve seen. Not secondhand. I lived through it. I felt it.

People ask: Why do they hate us? Why does anti-Semitism persist in every generation, every land, every era — even when we’re on our best behavior?

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and the answer isn’t in any sociology textbook. It’s right here, in Parashat Ki Tavo. And it’s been in the Torah all along.

The hatred of the Jew is irrational. Totally illogical. I’ve seen it in Russia — one moment you’re a neighbor, a comrade, a schoolmate… and the next, you’re “the problem.” The excuses change, but the hatred remains.

In some places, they hated us because we were poor and backward. In others, because we were successful and “controlling.” In one country, we were accused of religious fanaticism; in another, of being freethinkers and atheists. In Germany, we were hated for staying separate. In Spain, we were hated for integrating too well.

There is no logic. And that’s the point.

Anti-Semitism is not natural. It is Divine. It is a punishment. A consequence. The anti-Semite, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter once said, is the stick in Hashem’s hand to awaken us.

And here’s the terrifying part: Hashem usually punishes us using the very people we tried to imitate.

Let me show you how this pattern repeats:

In Egypt, Jews abandoned brit milah and began copying Egyptian ways. Immediately, the oppression began.

In the days of the Judges, Jews bowed to Philistine idols. And then the Philistines conquered them.

During the First Temple, we worshipped Babylonian and Assyrian gods. Those same nations destroyed us.

Under Hellenist influence, Jews ran from Torah. And the Greeks almost wiped it out.

Christianity, invented by Jews who had left Torah, became a weapon that killed millions of us.

Enlightenment-era Germany — the land we worshipped for its “culture” — gave birth to Reform Judaism… and then to the Holocaust.

Even Communism — that false messianism — was led by Jewish minds. Marx himself was born to Jewish parents. Jews in the Soviet Union helped suppress Torah, outlaw Hebrew, send yeshivah students to gulags. And then, when Stalin was done using them, he slaughtered them too. I knew some of those Jews. The lucky ones repented before the end.

This isn’t history. This is prophecy fulfilled.

As the Navi Yirmiyahu says:

“Your own evil will punish you… see how bitter it is to abandon Hashem.”

But there is always a path back.

As the prophet Hoshea cried:

“Return, O Israel, to Hashem your God.”

And if we do? “I will be like dew to Israel… it will bloom like a rose.”

That is our future — if we choose it.

 By Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber, zt”l, Founder, LaMaalot Foundation