A good name is better than precious oil. Ecclesiastes 7:1
An autocratic egoistic dictator who sees himself as part of a superior race that has been mistreated decides to expand his territory by annexing border areas where many of the people speak the dictator’s language, and then brutally invades a peaceful neighbor on ridiculous conspiratorial pretenses. The war weary population of democratic Western nations do not want war and our leaders, with eyes to elections, appease this dictator in the hopes that it will not go further.
Air raid sirens are going off all over Ukraine. Russian troops are rolling in and ICBM’s are lighting the sky of Kyiv, and I can’t stop thinking of Sudetenland. History does not repeat, but rhymes, and I am shaken. Haven studied Russian language and history in college, I am not at all surprised that Russia sees Ukraine as an integral part of Russia and the Slavic Origin Story; it is also the breadbasket of the region. While Putin’s invasion is a clear marker in the fraying of the post-war European consensus, it is not the invasion itself that I keep thinking about. What gives me chills is his justification: crazy conspiracy theories, a racial view of history, and a menacing sense of grievance and spite that animates his speeches.
Putin speaks of the Slavs and their history in ways that are evocative of Aryan revisionist histories and racial theories. Kyiv is the mythic birthplace of Russia rule, ordained by God to unite the Slavs for Holy Russia. In this view, it is good for Russian to take over Ukraine because it is really a form of liberation, reuniting the Slavic race that the West has falsely severed.
Eerily resonant is the entry in Encyclopedia Britannic that describes Hitler’s strategy for taking over Czechoslovakia: Decisive action therefore would take place only after a period of political agitation by the Germans inside Czechoslovakia accompanied by diplomatic squabbling which, as it grew more serious, would either itself build up an excuse for war or produce the occasion for a lightning offensive after some “incident” of German creation.
Putin has followed this playbook. He has used his propaganda machine to convince a large percentage of Russian citizens that there is a genocide against Russians happening in Ukraine. It preaches that some nefarious cabal has secretly taken over Ukraine and is using its (Jewish) prime minister to fool Ukrainians into committing genocide against (gasp!) “their own people.” It would seem falsely accusing Jews of genocide has become vogue of late.
Putin is also bizarrely claiming that this war is necessary to stop the “Nazification of Ukraine and Kyiv.” Why would he use this language? Because even more than in the West, the Nazis represent the worst horrors and brutality to Russians. Millions of Russians died in the fight against Hitler, and so calling the Ukrainian government “Nazi” creates dread and fear among older Russians and justifies dehumanizing Ukrainian leaders. Dehumanization, as Jews know all too well, lays the groundwork for slaughter. The Jewish prime minister, it is implied, could not have won an election and so is really a puppet of the new Nazis: the US and NATO. It would seem that falsely accusing Jews of being Nazis has become vogue of late.
As Jews, we can’t help but see WWII through the lens of the Holocaust; they are deeply intertwined in our experience and our understanding of history. The West’s appeasement of Hitler when he grabbed Czechoslovakia is seen by many of us, not only a tragedy for that nation, but as what allowed the Holocaust to happen. Again, Brittanica puts it, “Neither France nor Britain felt prepared to defend Czechoslovakia, however, and both were anxious to avoid a military confrontation with Germany at almost any cost.” Ironically, Russia was prepared to go to war against Hitler if Britain and France would join – Russian offers were rebuffed, and as a result millions more Russians died when they finally had no choice but to engage Hitler.
Jews also tend to see America’s resistance to getting into WWII as a moral failure for political purposes. Growing up in a home that idolized FDR and still had a framed photo of him in our living room, I was nonetheless clearly taught that his hesitation to get into the war even when he knew what was happening was his great moral failure, his hamartia. It is hard for me to see what is happening in Ukraine without thinking of that moral failure, and of what delayed resistance ultimately cost our people, and what it might cost the world today.
At the same time, living through this I see more clearly how people back then, going about our daily lives, dealing with work, finances, and children put an invasion half-way across the world much lower on the priority list than it should have been.
I’m shaken, and I’m torn about what we should do, how far should we go to protect a country that is half a world away. Like many of us, my gut inclination is to stay out, and focus on things that improve American lives. In talking to people, I see that there is no appetite for war, and a profound skepticism that there would be anything we can do to stop this. At the same time, I can’t help but see what a power vacuum invites, and I fear the way one expansion can tempt another.
We know that leaders who dream of empire push boundaries to test resolve. Putin tested us on Crimea and Donetsk. Now he is expanding that test to the second largest nation in Europe. Are the sanctions we are imposing enough to count as resistance? Will we do nothing when China invades Taiwan as well? Have we as Americans so lost our sense of purpose and ability? How have we forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust so quickly? Are we repeating the mistakes of the past, and is the mistake going to war or staying out of war?
In Jewish tradition, nothing is more valuable than having a shem tov, a good name and reputation. As Proverbs 22 teaches,
Repute is preferable to great wealth,
Grace is better than silver and gold
Ecclesiastes picks up this theme when he reflects:
A good name (shem tov) is better than precious oil (shemen tov).
A person with a shem tov is a person who is known to have integrity and tell the truth, a person who is trustworthy. There are few values more central to Rabbinic Judaism than the importance of integrity. Without it, societies begin to unravel. One leader who lies with impunity gives permission to all other leaders to do the same.
When the Soviet Union collapsed there was great concern about the nuclear weapons located in former Soviet states, and particularly Ukraine. Britain, the US, and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, promising Ukraine protection and assistance in exchange for their giving up their nuclear weapons. How would you feel if you were a Ukrainian in Kyiv today? Do you feel that economic sanctions on Russia fulfill our promises, our integrity, our shem tov? American overreach in the past does not justify an underreach now. Expediency is not morality.
As we inevitably watch the fall of an independent democratic Ukraine, we must ask ourselves if we are fulfilling the obligations of our history as Americans and as Jews. I have a worrying sense down deep that we are not.