Darth Vader, as viewers discover while watching the “Star Wars” film series, had turned to evil. Luke Skywalker learns that Vader helped the Empire hunt down the Jedis, and he even betrayed and supposedly murdered Luke’s own father, Anakin Skywalker.
It was only in a sequel to the 1977 film that we came to realize that Anakin’s “death” was a metaphor. It was his soul and his values that had died, whereas his physical being was severely damaged, causing voice alteration, among other things.
It was Yoda, in the 1980 film “The Empire Strikes Back,” that provided us with a greater understanding of the “Dark Side.” The Siths of that place disdained defense and preferred attack. They were described as: “Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.”
Judaism has its own version of that fictional universe called the Sitra Achra, or the “Other Side.” It is the opposite of a world of holiness, a realm populated by impure forces. As we read in the Zohar (Pekudei 14:89), “when a man is under the care of the side of holiness, the ‘other side’ will never come near him and is powerless to thrust him out of his place, or of whatever he is doing.”
The Jewish people are currently engaged in a series of military engagements on a variety of fronts that aim to weaken our identity and draw us away from our heritage and legacy, as well as our destiny. Our opponents are using all sorts of lightsabers with their plasma blades.
That isn’t the worst. The unfortunate reality is that Jews have chosen at this time to go over to the other side—the dark side. In truth, there have always been such Jews.
In 1905, the Constitutional Democratic Party (K-D) was founded in Imperial Russia seeking to promote a Western constitutional monarchy. Members were referred to as Kadets (from the abbreviation). Jews flocked to it, but earned the mocking term “Katsaps of the Mosaic faith,” as they were viewed as subordinating Jewish interests to the achievement of liberal principles.
In 1909, Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote sarcastically about one of their leaders, Maxim Moiseevich Vinaver, in a column titled “The Bear From His Lair,” published in the Rassvet periodical. He attacked “Jewish desertion” and made fun of their desire to integrate into Russian culture.
Vinaver’s basic position, which should bring to mind not only yesteryear’s Jewish communists and Bundists but our current crop of those blending in à la Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s appeal to “self-sacrifice,” was that “the Russian people is our political nation, while the Jewish people is our cultural nation.” They rejected Zionism and the need of Jews for a separate political future.
Jabotinsky objected to Vinaver’s position, which placed Russian Jews in a dependency upon Russian liberalism. For Jabotinsky, the Jews of Russia are citizens of the country and demand equal rights as such. However, they don’t need to prove that right by demonstrating usefulness to Russian culture and society. Jews are not foreigners.
Jabotinsky added another element.
He argued that what will happen is that the Russian cultural elite, while praising individual Jews, will remain hostile to Jews as a collective and deny them their rights, as well as reject Zionism. He called these Jews “Jewish servants of the Russian palace.” He didn’t deem it a tragedy that Jews would be excluded from literary, artistic or cultural affairs since he saw those intellectuals eventually spurning those Jews wishing to become part of Russian culture.
Jabotinsky continued and added one more additional factor: that of antisemitism or “Judeophobic persecution,” in his term.
In the article, he castigated anti-Jewish “repulsions” and used the imagery of a bear held up in its den. The bear will emerge, he wrote; in fact, “the bear has long since begun to stir in its den and is about to poke its head out.”
He voiced a warning not to “trustingly disarm, disband our moral self-defense, pawn and re-pawn all our valuables in [Russian] pawnshops” because Jews will discover to their “heartfelt sorrow that the bear was not guarded and … he broke out of his den.”
That was in 1909. It’s now 2026. Yet the same picture exists of Jews wanting to seek inclusiveness within the general population and being more than willing to deny the basic fundamental elements of Jewishness to be accepted.
There is U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who began his explanation of his sanctimonious slandering sanctions policy on Jews of Judea and Samaria by telling Parliament that “I would like to make a statement on Israel and Palestine. I do so as a proud British Jew … .”
There is writerHugo Rifkind in the London Times insisting, after his government decided to boycott goods in Judea and Samaria, penalizing Jewish residents and settlements there, that it’s just “an issue about a few hills,” a throwaway line that deculturalizes Jewish history. And there are Israeli “As-A-Jew” signing on to a letter in that newspaper.
There are the Jews of Hollywood, who sign “genocide” petitions “as Jews.”
There are young people involved with IfNotNow and Yachad on both sides of the Atlantic.
A letter penned by anti-Israel journalist Peter Beinart, requesting financial support for the anti-Zionist Jewish Currents, writes of the need to “fully repent for what a Jewish army—with the backing of Jewish leaders around the world—did after October 7.” Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream fame, accepts an award from Muslim anti-Zionists affiliated with the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Rosh Hashanah.
In The New Yorker, Isaac Chotiner describes Israel’s military actions against Hamas, a real strategic requirement to assure future security by denying the terrorist group more armed capability, as “collectively punishing Palestinians,” as if the Israel Defense Forces, after years of trying to find hostages dragged and kept across the border in Gaza, was operating in an irrational rage.
They and others engaged in chipping away at Jewish solidarity are not only seeking favor within the circles they wish to gain adulation and recognition, but also to spread a corrupt, incorrect narrative that endangers Israelis and Jews.
The “bear” Jabotinsky conjured up as an image of Jew-hate, of canceling Jews in artistic and economic fields and, eventually, of isolating them in a lead-up to actual violence, has indeed emerged from its den.
The bear is moving about. It is shuffling around.
It has scented that Jews are being targeted by Islamists reinforced by Marxist leftist progressives. Jews—all Jews, not only pro-state supporters labeled as Zionists, but also the uber-religious and the secular—are being zeroed in on by blatant antisemites of manifold political persuasions, sectors of the right included. The language loathing of Jews has not been at this level of sickening aversion and hostility—on podcasts, at rallies, on websites.
Despite the obvious danger, in disregard of the developing pernicious hate promoted by the very forces they identify with, certain prominent Jews consistently provide backing for this targeting. In doing so, they prefer to remain on the “Other Side,” the wrong side. Yet they may be next in line.
