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Chaye Sarah: “We are the People Who Will Remember Who we Are”

At the beginning of our parasha, Abraham buys the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite in order to bury Sarah there. This is the first recorded real estate transaction in the Bible and although you might not be expecting real estate contracts in the Torah, it turns out to be both interesting and relevant. Abraham announces his desire to purchase. a burial site for Sarah but the Hittites protest — you are like a chosen one of God among us, bury your dead wherever you want. Nobody will object. Abraham bows low to the ground and again asks to buy land; this time, he specifies that he would like to meet with Ephron the Hittite and purchase the cave of Machepelah at the edge of his property. Ephron comes forward and protests — I’ll give it to you, but Abraham, bowing and scraping, again refuses. He repeats his desire to buy the land, and Ephron again refuses or sort of — he says what’s a piece of land worth 400 shekels between you and me? Just go bury your dead. Any good negotiator would quickly realize that Ephron’s refusal is in fact an offer. It is also undoubtedly an inflated price, an opening to negotiations. But Abraham, without delay, accepts the offer on the spot and pays the money at the going rate. Abraham is not going to accept favors, or buy the land cheaply, so that he can later be accused of not really owning it. He understands what is at stake and he seeks incontestable ownership.

Now although I would love to tell you that this is the first Jewish purchase of land in Israel, I can’t quite make that claim. We do not in fact know that Abraham was a historical figure anymore than we know that God’s promise of the land of Israel to the patriarchs or even to the Israelites in the desert is a historical fact.

What I do know are a few things. First, it was important to the writers of the Bible to tell this story. Living 1500 years or so after Abraham in the land of Israel they were keen on establishing legal title to the land. They had probably undertaken similar negotiations. Second, this story is relevant because Jews bought land in the land of Israel throughout history, most notably during the waves of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time of the establishment of the state of Israel, Jews had purchased and owned about 6% of the land in Israel, Arabs owned a comparable amount, and the rest was controlled by the British Crown. Moreover, by the time of the founding of the state, Jews had established a common life on the land — there were about 600,00 Jews living in Israel prior to the influx of refugees from WWII, they had built cities, hospitals, museums, cultural centers, and a pre-state government, they had established 150 collective agricultural settlements and cleared and worked the land, they had founded banks, bus lines, utilities, and even companies like Strauss Dairy, Wisotsky Tea, and Carmel Wines.

By 1947 faced with two peoples in the same land, the UN, following the Peel Commission’s lead a decade earlier, partitioned the land; although the Jewish population was accorded slightly more land — 56% — the vast majority of arable land was given to the Arabs while Jews were allocated land along the coast and the industrial zones. Jews as you know accepted the partition plan although it was not what they had hoped; Arabs promptly rejected it and neighboring Arab countries immediately waged war on what was then a tiny Israeli army.

Palestinians call this the nakba — the destruction. 700,000 Palestinians went into exile — some fleeing war, some urged by their leaders who promised a quick return, and some forced out by Israelis. I am not in any way denying their suffering. I am noting that this was the result of war, a war which the Arab countries initiated. I am noting that this occurred after WWII as the British Empire was being dismantled. Millions of Muslims were driven from India to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India — a total of 14 million people displaced in that region. After WWII 12 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the Czech republic, Poland, and elsewhere, many of whom had lived in those countries for centuries and had no desire to leave. Add to that the fact that about 850,000 Jews were driven from Arab lands where they had also lived for centuries, many fleeing certain death. This is the history of the world and this is the history of the post-war, post-imperial world.

My point is not that any of this is OK or engaging in whataboutism. My point is that this is what war, imperialism, and displacement look like. These are the facts of history. It isn’t pretty, it isn’t fair to the people who suffer and are forced to uproot their lives, but it is part of human history. The only thing that makes Palestinians unique in this story, is that while all other modern refugees were resettled in new countries, the UN created a special commission UNWRA, just for Palestinian refugees who, unlike all other refugees, maintain their refugee status three and four generations after their original expulsion and continue, somehow to demand the right of return to Israel.

What Abraham’s story exemplifies as it is relived throughout Jewish history in the land of Israel, is that Jews are anything but colonialists. Jews are indigenous to the land — we have lived there continuously since Abraham and surprisingly the genetic markers of most contemporary Jews point to their origins in the Middle East. Jews purchased land and established a common life; Jews were allotted the land by the UN at a moment when the British Empire — the biggest colonialists —was being dismantled. Jews were never interested in converting the other occupants of the land, unlike most colonialists, and Jews, unlike other colonialists, had and have nowhere else to go — Europe was certainly not welcoming them back after the war and our ancestral homes in Poland and the former Soviet Union are hardly inviting us to return. And a quick visit to Israel would confirm for anyone that Israeli Jews are not white colonialists, as they have been portrayed — half the population of Israel descends from immigrants from the Middle East, in addition to Jews from Ethiopia, India, and other places in Africa and Asia.

Why am I telling you history that you probably know? Because last week Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayr of New York, and because he is among those whom in recent years have championed the idea of Zionism as Colonialism. Although I am not at all happy with Mamdani’s views on Zionism, I am not in a panic that somehow Jews in New York will suddenly no longer be safe to live there. I am worried, though, that Mamdani’s victory signals a shift in the Democratic party, a shift that has been going on over some years, that has accelerated since October 7, and, with Mamdani’s victory, seems to herald a new era. Support for Israel will no longer be taken for granted and antiZionist tropes of Israel as a white colonial genocidal occupier will become even more mainstream.

I want to say a few things about this.

First, this idea of Israel as the ultimate and worst colonizer has emerged from academic circles on the left in recent years and has been picked up by the anti-Zionist movement, particularly on campus, since October 7. Besides being a ridiculous accusation, as I have already outlined, I started thinking about the accusers. They are denizens of universities in Europe and the US, in other words the great colonizing powers of the world. So much of the wars of the 20th century are direct outcomes of European and British colonization in the 19th century. And do you think that Presbyterian ministers preaching in churches in places called Connecticut or Manhattan or North Dakota might think twice about their anti-colonial passion? You know, people who live in glass houses… Could perhaps the pileup on Israel as the world’s greatest colonialist perhaps be a displacement of their own white guilt?

Second, the more one reads, the more one starts to feel that new antiZionism is just antisemitism dressed up for a new era. Anitzionists attribute unique destructive power to the Jewish state, and then, if you accuse them of antisemitism, they claim that there can’t possibly be antisemitism because Jews are white oppressors, not subject to oppression. Does that sound familiar? Jews are destructive and manipulative, malevolently scheming to take over the world and evade criticism. In other words, Zionists — code for Jews — are the embodiment of evil and just as no one would challenge the goal of destroying evil, the destruction of Jews qua Zionists is necessary for the world’s redemption. Sound like good old-fashioned medieval anit-Semitism? Think Shylock, think blood libels, think Crusades, think Holocaust, think Bolsheviks. If we just get rid of the Jews… Journalist Haviv Rettig Gur explains that antiSemitism is not just about prejudice or hatred against Jews but rather the belief that “Jews stand in the way of the redemption of the world.” He describes a meme common at campus demonstrations in which a large circle is drawn, surrounded by small circles, like a seder plate. The large circle is Palestine and the small circles are issues like police violence, climate justice, capitalism etc. “All of it ultimately intersects, he notes, “ultimately there’s only one great struggle, and the heart of that is struggle is the struggle against Zionism. That is the Jews once again, being the thing holding back the redemption of the world.” 1

Of course all of this distracts from making any headway on the real issues in the Middle East and it makes it hard for Jews and Israelis to engage in self-critique or even empathy over the horrors of the recent war or the ongoing displacement and murder of Palestinians in the West Bank, much less feel safe enough to find a way to peace.

And if you start thinking that perhaps antiSemitism is only a problem on the left, we were treated last week to Nick Fuentes, the Hitler fanboy being hosted by Tucker Carlson, the most watched prime time news show on cable television — I use the word news in quotation marks — and Kevin Roberts, head of the Conservative Heritage Foundation too timid to condemn Fuentes or Carlson. I might add that Carlson, speaking at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, compared the slain conservative to Christ, brought down “by a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us?’” 2

Hmm. Right meets left. As Bret Stephens wrote this week, “it bears reminding that antisemitism isn’t a prejudice. It’s a conspiracy theory about Jews. Who actually killed Christ? Or brought on the bubonic plague? Or got America embroiled in unnecessary wars in the Middle East? Or replaces American workers with cheap immigrant labor? The idea that modern politics amounts to a malicious scheme organized by an insidious cabal of deep-state insiders and globalists at the expense of ordinary people is now received wisdom on the right, paralleling far-left convictions about the purported evils of Zionists and their billionaire backers.” 3

Finally, lest you think that this is new, or it is somehow a result of Israeli policy, however reprehensible Israeli policy might be, or October 7, think again. Eric Ward, an expert on White Christian Nationalism, who spoke this week at Mishkan Israel, makes the point that people only organize in fertile ground; they only organize the bigotry that already exists. Antisemitism, like sexism, racism, and homophobia are all hatreds already in the water, there to be capitalized on anew. Ward notes that antisemitism is often a convenient crutch used to provide answers at complex moments in history.

What to do? First of all, maintain perspective. Mamdani will not be the end of New York City as we know it nor the end of America. In reality, despite the disturbing rise of antisemitism — and it is indeed disturbing — to date I know of no Jews today who have been denied a job, or a home, or entrance to a university because they are Jewish. That was simply not true 75 or even 50 years ago when universities had quotas or, as my father recalls, resorts and hotels displayed signs emblazoned with the words, “No Dogs. No N-word. No Jews.”

Second, if you think the other guy — whoever is the other guy for you — the folks on the right, the folks on the left — are worse, think again. Antisemitism is endemic in both camps, neatly slotting in to regnant prejudices.

And finally, I was deeply moved by Ward’s words which he asked us to repeat more than once the other night, “We are the people who will remember who we are.” As he put it, his grandparents did not come this far only for him to bow down before a new Pharaoh.” 4

If that is true for him, how much moreso for us, the original slaves of the original Pharaoh. I take great comfort in Jewish history and the strength and resilience of Jews who proudly kept their names, their language, and their identities under much more trying circumstances. The ones who found a way to make seder in the camps, the ones who blew a shofar during the Inquisition, the ones who packed up their families and moved to a new place, and learned a new language and didn’t forget who they were. I take comfort from the strength of my great-grandmother, Tova Rivka, my namesake, who came to this country all alone at the age of 19 against the wishes of her father who said America was a treyfe medineh, who married, sent her hair back to her father to prove that she had maintained her Judaism, lost her husband when she was pregnant with her second child, opened a boarding house, at the suggestion of her rabbi, for Jewish men, met and married one of them, and gave birth to five more children, of whom my maternal grandmother was the youngest. Antisemitism may be the oldest hatred, but Jews are also the longest running show, still here after the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British Empire, the Soviets — have faded into the annals of history. We are the people who will remember who we are. That we defied tyranny and followed God into the desert, that we were given a code to live by and a mission to bring God’s presence into the world. We rightfully worry about rising antisemitism, intermarriage, Jewish illiteracy, and the policies of the state of Israel, but we are still here. Ani Od Chai. I, daughter of Ann and Don, Tova Rivka and Samuel, Harry and Gussie, the Vilna Gaon, the Besht, Maimonides, Rashi, Shimon bar Yohai, Rabbi Akiva and Rachel, Hannah and Shmuel, Miriam and Moses, Abraham and Sarah, and I am still here. We are the people who will remember who we are.

Citations

1. quoted in Sarah Hurwitz, As a Jew: Reclaiming our Story from Those who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us (New York: HarperOne, 2025) p. 200.

2. Bret Stephens, “Meet the New Antisemites, Same as the Old Antisemites,” New York Times, November 11, 2025.

3. Stephens, ibid.

4. Eric Ward in a lecture at Congregation Mishkan Israel, November 11, 2025.