I recently returned from a trek with an Israeli adventure group through the Himalayan mountains in Nepal to Everest Base Camp.
I went from the holy hills and mountains of Jerusalem to the holy Himalayan mountains of Nepal. The Himalayas are considered sacred to Buddhists. It is where Buddha was born, with various mountain shrines representing meditation and Buddhist enlightenment practices.
It was the hardest thing I had done in all my 75 years.
Like all Israelis, I struggle to be “resilient” and cope with the anguish, stress, sadness, confusion, and anger of the October 7 war. We try to act normal, but normalcy is elusive and ill defined.
As a mental health professional, with support, I thought I had done a pretty good job of coping. Still, the Everest trek gave me an entirely new perspective and understanding.
The Nepalese are Buddhists and Hindus (non-idol worshipers). The Nepalese didn’t want anything from us as Jews or as Israelis other than our cooperation with their rules and regulations, appreciation of the mountains, and our patronage.
Buddhism and Hinduism are not triumphalist religions. These religions have no intent to dominate, convert, or make other religions and peoples submissive – leaving just the challenge of “Me and the Mountain” to contend with.
Fear, hate, or constant efforts to dominate – or to harm us as Jews physically, spiritually, psychologically, or emotionally – were absent. The mountain, Everest, and the Himalayas, became a respite from physical and spiritual assault.
Upon returning home to Jerusalem, I was struck by the full scope of what we face in Israel: not just a war waged by Islamist extremists on seven physical fronts, or the eighth front of social and traditional media – but also a quiet, relentless battle by radical Christian missionaries. Most Israelis remain unaware of these conversion efforts, and are even willing to excuse or ignore them.
Israel’s reality of extremist Islamists who want to destroy us physically, and extremist Christians who want our souls, became surprisingly clear. Radical Islam and Radical Christianity are triumphalist religions and theologies. They need to dominate to justify and substantiate their own beliefs and actions.
To Jerusalem and Back
IN HIS 1976 book To Jerusalem and Back, American Jewish author Saul Bellow writes:
“Perhaps there is something exceptional in all our Jewishness, in all the risk we take upon ourselves, in the fact that we live on the brink of an abyss and know how to do so. To us our Jewish nature is clear and we can feel it – but it is hard to say that the world can understand it… because when you come right down to it, the phenomenon of the ‘Jew’ is not an easy one to understand.
“For nations…, like the Germans and the Arabs, our very existence, and the uncertainty of our nature in their eyes, could provide the spark for whatever kind of insanity was afflicting them at the time,” Bellows wrote almost 50 years ago. “Rule out the possibility that a power of darkness or a spirit of evil cause this and you are obliged to think that certain of us may, without knowing how, provoke others to madness and murder.”
We Israelis didn’t drive the Nepalese to madness and murder. It didn’t appear that the Nepalese were inflicted by any kind of underlying insanity.
Why, then, are extremist Muslims and extremist Christians so driven and inflicted? What is it about the Jews that awakens the darkness and spirit of evil extremism in them?
A friend and colleague remarked:
“Bellow’s view is why we Jews need to stubbornly adhere to our non-belief in Jesus. Because such a belief limits possibilities, solutions, and creativity. That non-belief in a god of the flesh gives us the ability to see and believe in the impossible. That’s what the rest of the world can never have – and that limit causes madness.”
Extremist Christians want to convert us to adhere to their physical view of a god, a tangible theology that minimizes doubt and wonder. For this they need to convert us, to be triumphant? For this they try to pull us away from 175 generations of Jewish history and ancestry to become Jesus believers?
And extremist Islam: Why the murderous rage and obsession with our deaths? Because we once were “dhimmi” (second-class citizens with restrictions in traditional Arab society), and now we are once again a proud, determined, and self-reliant people in our own land? Is it, as Bellow contends, that “our very existence, and the uncertainty of our nature in their eyes, could provide the spark for whatever kind of insanity was afflicting them at the time”?
These triumphalist religions are in stark contrast to my brief experience in Nepal. Instead of contending with the assault on us Jews in Israel by radical Islam and radical Christianity and the massive psychic and social energy it requires, I had to contend with… myself.
Fortunately, Israel is also blessed with plentiful fresh air, and spiritual hills and mountains of our own.
Just leave us alone, triumphalist Christians and Muslims, so we do not have to constantly contend with acts of physical and spiritual violence, and the murderous physical and soul-sucking impact of your triumphalism.
We Jews can triumph on our own for our own benefit. And then, perhaps, be a light unto the nations like you know we are supposed to be.
The writer is a medical and rehabilitation psychotherapist from the University of Washington in Seattle, now living in Jerusalem.